Author: Jane Devry

In 2023, there was a 72% increase in data breaches since 2021, which has previously held the all-time record. In response to this growing frequency of cyber threats, cybersecurity insurers have significantly revised their policies for businesses, making them more stringent and demanding in terms of risk mitigation and management. Insurers are now requiring businesses to demonstrate not just the presence of cybersecurity protocols, but also their effectiveness and ongoing maintenance. For example, organizations are expected to implement comprehensive security measures, including advanced threat detection, regular vulnerability assessments, and a robust incident response plan. Failure to meet these heightened standards could result in denied claims, leaving businesses exposed during a cyber event and costing them financially. 

What Is Cyber Insurance?

Cyber insurance, also known as cyber liability insurance, is a specialty insurance that aims to cover the financial losses that organizations face as a result of ransomware attacks, data breaches, and other cyber incidents. Having cyber insurance can lessen the financial impact of a breach and can protect organizations with the following coverage:

  • Financial loss due to business disruption
  • Incident response, system repairs, forensic investigations, and other services following an attack
  • Legal expenses
  • Cost of notifying customers of hacks where personally identifiable information (PII) has been compromised
  • Ransom payments
  • Public Relations to deal with reputational management post-breach

What Are the Risks of Not Being Covered?

Without cyber insurance coverage, a company faces the full financial burden of a cyber attack, including costs associated with data breaches, ransomware payments, legal fees, regulatory fines, and the expense of restoring compromised systems. These uncovered costs can quickly pile up, particularly for small to mid-sized businesses, leading to significant financial strain or even bankruptcy. Additionally, the lack of cyber insurance can damage a company’s reputation, as clients and partners may lose trust in an organization unprepared to handle cyber threats. Without the safety net of insurance, businesses are left vulnerable to the escalating threats in today’s digital landscape, with little recourse for recovery if an attack occurs.

How Businesses Can Meet Insurance Requirements

To ensure businesses meet insurance requirements they should conduct a comprehensive audit of their current security posture. This is often led by a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and can be done using a cybersecurity risk assessment or other measure of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time To Acknowledge (MTTA). 

Organizations should review their existing protocols against any specific criteria laid out by insurers to ensure they’re meeting minimum security requirements for coverage. Using the CIS 18 Critical Security Controls to establish a roadmap for cybersecurity hygiene can greatly help businesses bolster their security posture. A few measures businesses should ensure are in place include:

  • Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
  • Incident Response Plan
  • Data Encryption
  • Regular Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Testing
  • Patching Management Plan

How to Attest to Meeting Insurance Requirements

Currently, there are limited ways in which businesses can prove their cybersecurity stack has been set up correctly and protects their systems from risk without facing a real attack. Insurance providers have to rely on businesses doing their due diligence and continuously testing their systems. For businesses to attest they’re able to mitigate risk, vulnerability testing and penetration testing are good options to show that risk is low. These tests can also be used to see what services are working well for your business, and which can be deprioritized or upgraded. Once an incident occurs and cyber insurers verify that your business has done what it can to effectively mitigate the breach, then you’ll be able to get the financial coverage you’ll need. 

Additionally, businesses must stay informed about the evolving standards in cybersecurity insurance, as what was acceptable a year ago may no longer be accepted for coverage. Consulting with a cybersecurity expert or managed services provider for a third-party audit can provide an unbiased evaluation of potential security risks and weaknesses, and help businesses align their practices with the latest requirements, ensuring they are fully covered in the event of a cyber attack. 

Outsourcing can also help businesses get a better understanding of what their security weaknesses mean in terms of business continuity and risk, and better prioritize what aspects of their IT stack they should upgrade first.

Having a tailored strategy in place and taking the time to meet insurance requirements will help ensure cyber threats are mitigated in a timely manner, and also reduce overall risk. Although meeting requirements can be a lengthy process, it is a worthwhile investment for businesses, and will ultimately strengthen their security posture. 

 

The post Meeting the New Cyber Insurance Requirements appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Today’s digital transformation is rapidly changing the IT and cybersecurity landscape: Remote work and the increased shift to the cloud has broadened the attack surface, introducing new vulnerabilities as employees connect from everywhere. This situation is compounded by the rise of sophisticated cyber threats, like ransomware and phishing, demanding proactive defensive security measures.

Addressing these challenges, Syxsense Enterprise offers a comprehensive solution engineered to reduce an organization’s attack surface and risk profile.

Syxsense Enterprise is the world’s first cloud-based IT management and cybersecurity solution that combines patch management for operating systems and third-party applications, security vulnerability scanning, and remediation with a powerful no-code automation engine. This combination delivers a complete, unified solution that supports patching, security, and compliance needs efficiently.

What level of visibility do you have into vulnerabilities across your IT environment?

About half of the respondents (49%) have high or complete visibility into vulnerabilities across their IT environment, while the other half (51%) have, at best, only a moderate level of visibility. This is concerning, as lack of visibility can lead to unaddressed vulnerabilities and subsequent breaches.

Source: 2023 State of Vulnerability Management Report produced by Cybersecurity Insiders

COMPLETE VISIBILITY AND MANAGEMENT OF IT ASSETS

According to a 2023 Cybersecurity Insiders vulnerability management survey, 49% of the respondents have high to complete visibility into vulnerabilities across their IT environment, while the other half (51%) have, at best, only a moderate level of visibility. Syxsense Enterprise addresses this challenge by providing complete visibility and management of IT assets regardless of their operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android) or location (roaming, at home, on the network, or in the cloud). This is achieved through a live, two way connection to devices, providing real-time data that enables not just automated remediation but also more accurate compliance reporting.

ROBUST ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT

The platform’s endpoint management capabilities deliver critical intelligence on operating systems, hardware, software inventory, and a complete endpoint timeline. This feature ensures that any missing patches, from the operating system to third-party applications like Adobe, Java, and Chrome, are immediately visible, presenting a clear picture of device changes over time. This allows security and IT operations teams to scan, track, prioritize, and customize security and patching actions, focusing on the most critical patches relative to exposed risk.

With additional features such as pre-built security vulnerability remediations, a policy-based, Zero Trust evaluation engine, and extensive integration capabilities with ITSM tools through its Open API, Syxsense Enterprise addresses the multifaceted challenges posed by current IT and cybersecurity trends. It not only ensures the security of systems but also supports robust audit and compliance initiatives, including compliance proof, ultimately enabling organizations to maintain operational efficiency and security.

UNIFIED SECURITY VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

Syxsense Enterprise also offers a single console for vulnerability scanning, remediation, and advanced policy automation. Coupled with endpoint management, this unified approach enables teams to work from a singular information source that is fully aware of the environment’s health and each endpoint’s state. Such comprehensive visibility is critical for improving security, making smarter decisions to reduce risk, and maintaining compliance through actionable insights.

Furthermore, the integration of endpoint management and remediation workflows alongside a Zero Trust evaluation engine allows organizations to build trusted profiles for enterprise devices and verify each device is in a trusted state before granting access, ensuring a seamless blend of security and management capabilities.

ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY WITH NO-CODE AUTOMATION AND ORCHESTRATION

At the core of Syxsense Enterprise is Syxsense Cortex™, a no-code workflow designer that enables operational staff to orchestrate complex IT and security processes without needing specialist scripting skills. Cortex is designed to streamline IT and security operations through automated endpoint and vulnerability management, enabling organizations to concentrate on their core business objectives rather than being bogged down by IT and cybersecurity risks.

KEY CAPABILITIES

Syxsense Enterprise distinguishes itself with an array of innovative features that empower organizations to streamline processes, enhance security, and ensure comprehensive endpoint management:

1.Syxsense Cortex™ Workflow Builder: An intuitive, no-code automation and orchestration builder that simplifies complex IT and security processes with a drag-and-drop interface. Syxsense Enterprise includes an extensive library of pre-built Cortex™ playbooks, ready to deploy at the push of a button for effective management and monitoring of devices.

2.Security Policy Enforcement: Easily implement a Zero Trust approach for continuous evaluation and authentication of both user and device, alongside automatic remediation of noncompliant endpoints to enforce compliance with security policies.

3.Vulnerability Scanning and Remediation: Automatically identifies and resolves vulnerabilities upon detection through policies triggered by predefined conditions.

4.Vulnerability Database: Features over 3,800 common configuration vulnerability fixes and more than 1,500 security remediation workflows. These are designed to conditionally respond to behavioral and state changes and are available as standalone tasks or as part of automated policies on local systems.

5.Unified Secure Endpoint Management with Open API: Cloud-native and OS-agnostic, Syxsense supports cross-platform management (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android), enabling the administration of desktops, laptops, servers, virtual machines, and mobile devices (MDM) from a single console. Syxsense Enterprise includes software distribution, feature updates, configuration management, a network map, and troubleshooting tools like remote control.

6.Patch Management and Deployment: Detects OS and third-party patch updates and security configuration issues, prioritizing the management and deployment of updates to devices at critical risk. It keeps systems up to date on releases, prioritizes critical patches, and targets vulnerable devices with accurate detection and rapid deployment.

7.Customizable Dashboards: Allows customization and sharing of discoveries and actionable insights with key stakeholders through interactive visualizations of vital security metrics.

8.Compliance Reporting: Generates proof of compliance reports for audits by regulatory agencies, covering standards like HIPAA, PCI, and SOX.

KEY BENEFITS

Exploring the benefits of Syxsense Enterprise, we highlight how it enhances security, improves operational efficiency, and drives cost savings for organizations:

  • Reduced Risk of Security Breaches: The risk of data breaches and unauthorized access due to exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities is markedly reduced with Syxsense Enterprise’s comprehensive approach to vulnerability scanning and remediation. The capability to quickly identify and address vulnerabilities is crucial, especially when considering that 44% of organizations report systems with unintended open access and 24% have reported breaches caused by unaddressed vulnerabilities.
  • Improved Security Posture & Uninterrupted Productivity: Syxsense Enterprise offers real-time visibility into all devices within an organization, identifying those in need of patches or harboring vulnerabilities. This enables IT teams to prioritize critical tasks effectively, ensuring that productivity remains uninterrupted, contributing to a remarkable 80% reduction in unplanned downtime.
  • Improved Productivity & Reporting: With Syxsense, reporting on key IT infrastructure metrics becomes effortless, from patch status and time-to-patch to compliance with regulatory requirements. This streamlined reporting contributes to a 30% decrease in IT support cases related to maintenance. Moreover, the solution facilitates a more than 50% faster resolution of IT support cases, underlining its efficiency-boosting benefits.
  • Cost Savings Through Automation: The solution offloads tedious tasks, allowing IT professionals to redirect their focus on more strategic initiatives. Specifically, Syxsense has been shown to reduce patch management resource needs by up to 90% by automating policy application and software installation, freeing up significant amounts of time for IT staff.

DEPLOYMENT

As a cloud-native software vendor, Syxsense delivers its solutions via Software as a Service (SaaS), ensuring a seamless integration into existing IT infrastructures without the need for additional hardware investments. This cloud-based delivery model not only facilitates rapid deployment and scalability but also offers the flexibility required to adapt to evolving security needs.

Speed of Deployment

One of the standout features of Syxsense Enterprise is its quick deployment time. Organizations can have the solution up, configured, and operational within 15 minutes, a stark contrast to the days or even weeks required for deploying traditional IT management solutions. This rapid deployment capability is especially beneficial in scenarios requiring swift action to mitigate existing vulnerabilities or to enhance IT management efficiency without significant downtime.

Subscription Pricing

Syxsense operates on a subscription-based pricing model, which is dependent on the number of endpoints managed. This model allows for a scalable and flexible approach to pricing, ensuring that organizations can tailor their subscriptions according to their specific needs and growth trajectories. Additionally, for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Syxsense offers specific packaging options, enabling MSPs to utilize the platform both for managing their endpoints and for offering vulnerability management services to their clients.

Free Trial

Prospective clients can explore the benefits of Syxsense through a free trial, available for up to 50 devices and 50 mobile devices for 14 days. This trial offers organizations the opportunity to evaluate the solution’s effectiveness and ease of use in their environment before committing to a subscription.

CONCLUSION

In summary, Syxsense Enterprise stands out as a unified solution tailored for the modern digital enterprise, tackling the multifaceted challenges of endpoint and vulnerability management with a comprehensive, efficient, and scalable approach. By providing detailed visibility, control over endpoints, and a suite of automated vulnerability management and remediation tools, it enables organizations to safeguard their IT environments against the evolving threat landscape while ensuring compliance and operational efficiency. In essence, Syxsense offers a robust platform that not only fortifies an organization’s cybersecurity framework but also streamlines its IT operations. Its comprehensive approach to managing security, efficiency, and compliance across a variety of use cases makes it an extremely valuable asset in the arsenal of modern IT and cybersecurity teams.

ABOUT SYXSENSE

Syxsense is the world’s first software vendor providing cloud-based, automated endpoint and vulnerability management solutions that streamline IT and security operations. With our advanced platform, businesses gain complete visibility and control over their infrastructure, reducing IT risks and optimizing operational efficiency. Our real-time alerts, risk-based vulnerability prioritization, pre-built remediations, and intuitive automation and orchestration engine enable organizations to focus on their core business goals—confident in the knowledge that their enterprise is secure, compliant, and running smoothly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post SYXSENSE ENTERPRISE appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Safety is one of the top concerns with AI. Organizations have seen the incredible power the technology wields and the many use cases it can support – and they’re eager to begin leveraging it. But they’re also worried about the risks, from data leakage to cyberattacks and many other threats. 

That’s why the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) release of its Dioptra tool is so important. The introduction of the tool marks a significant milestone in advancing the security and resilience of machine learning (ML) models. As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, Dioptra provides a helpful framework for addressing vulnerabilities such as evasion, poisoning, and oracle attacks. These attacks pose distinct risks, from manipulating input data to degrading model performance and uncovering sensitive information.

By equipping developers with the means to simulate these scenarios and test various defenses, Dioptra enhances the robustness of AI systems. The ultimate beneficiaries are the companies looking to employ these systems. Many organizations, especially larger ones, are still stuck in the evaluation phase when it comes to AI adoption, and safety considerations are a major reason why. As those worries are alleviated, they can ramp up deployments into full production and start to drive new business value. 

Supporting AI safety initiatives

Created to meet goals laid out in President Bident’s Executive Order on AI safety, Dioptra was built to assist organizations in evaluating the strength, security, and trustworthiness of ML models. The tool is part of NIST’s broader efforts to improve the understanding and mitigation of risks associated with the deployment of AI and ML systems.

Dioptra provides a platform for conducting a variety of tests on ML models that can support:

  • Adversarial Robustness Testing: Assesses how ML models perform when subjected to adversarial inputs, which are intentionally crafted to deceive the model.
  • Performance Evaluation: Measures how well ML models generalize to new data, particularly in the presence of noise or perturbations.
  • Fairness Testing: Analyzes ML models to ensure they do not exhibit bias or unfair treatment of certain groups based on attributes like race, gender, or age.
  • Explainability: Provides insights into how ML models make decisions, helping users understand the reasoning behind specific predictions.

Flexibility is central to Dioptra. The tool is designed to be highly extensible, allowing researchers and developers to integrate new types of tests and evaluations as the field of AI security evolves.

The open-source nature of Dioptra is also commendable, as it fosters collaboration within the AI community. AI is a fast-changing and growing field. Dioptra being an open-source and agile platform will allow it to keep pace, especially if it gains popularity in the AI research community. By making the tool available on GitHub, NIST encourages a collective effort to improve AI security.

Next steps for safer AI

Looking ahead, I hope that we will see platforms such as Dioptra provide targeted features across more specialized AI subfields – especially in generative AI, where safety is already a paramount concern. While the US federal government hasn’t introduced any major AI regulations, states are moving forward with their own. For example, California’s SB-1047 introduces major requirements for AI developers to safeguard their models.

To meet the growing regulatory requirements of AI, I expect companies to additionally adopt real-time protections around AI models. For example, real-time protection of genAI systems can be met using LLM Firewalls, a new breed of inline, natural-language systems designed to inspect and protect against attacks present in LLM prompts, retrievals, and responses, mitigating the significant threats from data exposure and prompt injections, as well as acting as a guardrail against risks from prohibited topics and harmful content.

Initiatives like Dioptra are vital in ensuring AI technologies are developed and used ethically, reinforcing the commitment to safeguarding AI systems while promoting innovation. AI Governance is an increasingly important topic for enterprises leveraging AI. Dioptra and other tools that can support AI Governance efforts will allow organizations to deploy AI with more confidence and begin reaping the rewards while mitigating the biggest risks.

 

The post NIST’s Dioptra Platform is a Critical Step Forward in Making AI Safer appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

You wouldn’t brush your teeth once a year — it just wouldn’t be frequent enough to maintain proper care and hygiene of a body part you use every day. Similarly, it’s just not sufficient to perform a security test once a year to see how strong or vulnerable your organization is. Yet that’s been the legacy approach to security testing: bring a pen tester in for a few weeks, simulate attacks on your networks and systems to uncover your vulnerabilities, and write a report with a list of remediation tasks. Repeat the process the following year.

But this approach is no longer sufficient for organizations today. With each new application deployment, change to the environment, or remote device logging on, attack surfaces change daily, making point-in-time testing obsolete nearly immediately. Additionally, the timeline from when an attacker becomes aware of a vulnerability to the time it’s exploited has accelerated — as fast as 2 minutes 7 seconds. Finally, companies may face compliance issues, increased liability, or fines if they don’t integrate continuous testing.

What’s needed instead is a continuous testing approach. Here are five steps you can take today to adopt and implement continuous security testing in your organization.

Step 1: Change your mindset 

The first step to improving your security posture begins with changing your mindset around your approach to security testing. Since static, point-in-time pen testing is no longer sufficient for understanding your security posture all year, you have to go from an assessment mindset to a competency mindset, where you are doing this testing recurrently on a cadence as frequently as possible so there are no surprises. 

Step 2: Understand and inventory your attack surface

Next, you have to know what to protect. As organizations scale by moving to the cloud, deploying applications and updates daily, and expanding their footprint through remote devices, their attack surface only grows. Yet many businesses have no clue what assets they own, what clouds they’re in, or the current state of their environments — fewer than 1% of companies have visibility into 95% or more of their assets. If you can’t get a handle on your attack surface, the testing output will leave you with untested systems and unknown IT risks.

Step 3: Identify a modern penetration testing solution

When looking for a solution for continuous pen testing, some key areas to investigate include:

  • How do they perform their tests? Learn more about how they conduct their testing, and if possible, look at past tests to see what was detected in which systems.
  • How will you receive alerts? Understand how you’ll receive alerts and information about testing discoveries, and whether it will be through a platform, emails, or other forms of messaging. If a platform, look at how you can gain real-time visibility into what’s being tested and how your team will integrate with that platform.
  • How will they report on their findings? Once you receive the report, you need to know how you can work with that information, like if you can manipulate it or search it, and that you can see what test was done when, by whom, and against which system.
  • What’s the cost (and can you afford it)? Finally, look into the value offered for the price. Paying per vulnerability or per discovery is going to be hard for you to budget for, so investigate fixed pricing options. Additionally, ask if the cost includes unlimited retesting.

Step 4: Look for a hybrid approach 

43% of CISOs believe that generative AI offers an advantage to cyber defenders — an increase from 17% just a year ago — so look for a solution that combines artificial intelligence and automation with a human touch. Automation gives you scalability and allows you to identify and automatically test new attack surfaces. The human portion then dives deep into areas unique to your organization, like infrastructure or applications that no one else has. By using a hybrid approach, you get the best level of comprehensiveness in your testing, but you also get to understand the impact as it relates to your business.

Step 5: Use a combination of tests to ensure full coverage

Continuous testing is the best way to truly understand the state of your security and where you need to take action on remediation. Four types of common testing that can help you more comprehensively understand and improve your security posture include:

External Penetration Testing: External pen testing helps you discover the risks and security vulnerabilities real-world hackers use to compromise and exploit. External pen testing discovers security holes in your websites, assets, services, configurations, and authentication processes. It also finds forgotten and vulnerable applications as well as the more uncommon attack paths.

Internal Penetration Test: Organizations need to protect their most critical assets from insider threats as well, simulating attackers who will move laterally and escalate privileges to gain access to your organization’s infrastructure.

Social Engineering: Employees can pose the greatest risk to your most important assets, too, which is why you also need to test your security posture and controls through different social engineering campaigns, including phishing, vishing, smishing, quid pro quo, pretexting, and watering hole attacks.

Web Application Testing: Test using real-world attack paths across all of your applications to identify risks before a breach occurs.

Decreasing Your Security Risk Today

It’s no longer enough to perform a security test once a year to see how strong your organization is. Instead, shift from point-in-time assessments to building continuous testing capabilities that enable a more offensive and proactive approach to identifying vulnerabilities, so you can keep pace with rapidly evolving threats and technologies.

 

The post How to Prepare Your Organization for the Future with Continuous Security Testing appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Lessons from CrowdStrike on Safeguarding Your Data with Compliance, Continuity and Disaster Recovery Strategies

Where were you when the CrowdStrike outage hit? Many of us were stuck in our tracks when the recent global IT outage, triggered by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, brought critical infrastructure to a standstill and potentially cost Fortune 500 firms  $5.4 billion in losses, according to insurance firm Parametrix.

It was a day that will live in IT infamy.

This disruption revealed the fragility of our interconnected digital world. While the root cause was a technical glitch rather than a cyberattack, it exposed the potential consequences of service disruptions on business operations.

Outages that catch us off guard serve as stark reminders of the importance of robust disaster recovery (DR) strategies. But panic-inducing events like the CrowdStrike one provide an opportunity for companies to reassess and strengthen their data reliability, availability, and resilience.

Continuous DR planning can enable companies to reduce downtime, data loss, and operational disruptions while maintaining business continuity by restoring critical applications and infrastructure, ideally within minutes after an outage. 

The Cost of DR Apathy

Whether outages are caused by human errors or equipment failures, not having a proper DR plan can be expensive, with the financial cost of downtime ranging from $2,800 per hour for on-premises workloads to $3,275 per hour for public cloud workloads, according to a recent IDC Report. Scale up, and the lack of DR action could end up costing as much as $1 million per hour for Fortune 1,000 companies. 

That’s why it’s so critical to plan for the worst. Strategizing with partners can foster a level of transparency and communication that is invaluable for cross-enterprise collaboration. A trusted and reliable hybrid cloud data partner can turn adversity into opportunity, strengthening customer relationships by providing expert guidance on achieving stabilization.

Yet despite high-profile cautionary tales and increasing business continuity regulations such as those stipulated by GDPR, many customers have yet to test their DR plans – and some lack them entirely. 

This lack of preparedness is pervasive, and the proof is in the data. Notably, Hitachi Vantara’s Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics report found that:

  • Nearly a quarter (22%) of those surveyed admitted important data isn’t being backed up, while an additional 18% cited being unable to access data in the past two years because it was corrupted. 
  • A robust majority of IT decision-makers (68%) have concerns over whether their organization’s data infrastructure is resilient enough to recover all their data from any ransomware attack.
  • Employees continue to be the weakest security link for many organizations. Only 29% are extremely confident their employees are following their security policies.

These wake-up call statistics should be a clarion call for proactive leaders. Organizations need to seek a resilient data storage and infrastructure partner that will collaborate closely to establish robust DR strategies, incorporating essential components like replication, data backup, and remote sites and testing – ultimately ensuring compliance and resilience against potential disruptions, including ransomware attacks and outages. IT leaders including CIOs should also perform an in-depth analysis of their systems and IT infrastructure to prepare for the inevitable. 

While there are endless variations of data or cloud infrastructure calamities, these five vital strategies will help your organization establish resilient DR plans and ensure uninterrupted operations:

Take Stock of Vulnerabilities

Begin with the basics by performing an in-depth evaluation of your IT infrastructure and operational weak points. Pinpoint critical systems, data interdependencies and potential failures. This crucial analysis will form the foundation for developing custom DR plans that align with your organization’s risk tolerance and regulatory obligations.

Draft Plans to Dodge Disruption 

Draft comprehensive DR plans that outline explicit protocols for managing disruptions. Plot procedures for data backup, recovery and restoration. Regularly assess these plans through rigorous testing to gauge their effectiveness and uncover areas for improvement. Real-world simulations and scenario-based drills are indispensable for ensuring readiness when crises occur.

Rinse and Repeat Redundancy 

Utilize advanced technologies like data replication and distributed computing to build redundancy across diverse geographical locations. This approach not only bolsters data accessibility but also minimizes the impact of localized disruptions, including power outages or hardware malfunctions.

Anticipate and Address Regulatory Changes 

Take preemptive measures to stay ahead of evolving regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, ensuring compliance. Align your DR strategies with regulatory mandates to protect sensitive data and maintain operational resilience. Engage legal and compliance specialists to navigate intricate regulatory requirements effectively.

Pursue a Preparedness Mindset 

Cultivate a work environment where every team member recognizes their role in preserving business continuity. Offer continuous training and awareness programs to enhance staff readiness in responding to emergencies. Encourage transparent communication channels and cross-departmental collaboration to enable rapid and coordinated responses during critical situations.

Data infrastructure providers can transform disruptive incidents into opportunities by navigating the pitfalls of risk and employing expertise to guide customers to resilience. By helping organizations overcome regulatory hurdles and better prepare for uncertainties, strategic planning empowers sustainable success and builds partnership trust that stands the test of time and whatever disasters come our way.

The post The Day the IT World Stood Still appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Due to its wide acceptance, SAP has become a favorite target for hackers. With the ubiquity of SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, their extensive data banks, and the ever-expanding digital interfaces of the business world, hackers have become experts in SAP systems, making security more complex and crucial for uninterrupted operations.    

SAP interfaces can be vulnerable. Interfaces integrate processes and transmit data between multiple SAP internal or external systems; hackers can access them if they need to be more adequately secured. Some SAP systems are more secure than others, depending on the interface complexity, the type of data being exchanged, and the level of integration with other business systems. However, the steps for securing SAP differ depending on the system and standard SAP interfaces, such as:

  • IDoc (Intermediate Document) Interface is often used to transfer transactional data with external parties, such as customers or partners.
  • BAPI (Business Application Programming Interface) is the primary means SAP interacts with customer code and third-party applications. 
  • RFC (Remote Function Call) Interface is the standard interface between two SAP systems or between an external system and a company’s SAP platform, allowing for custom development.
  • Interfaces File is the repository of connection information for Adaptive Server Enterprises and Open Server applications; it contains the requisite information for a system to connect to those servers.
  • Web Services interfaces like the Single Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) enable SAP users to build or utilize Web services.

Securing Interfaces

Because these SAP interfaces are crucial to business activity, securing them is vital to operations. The following are five procedures for securing SAP interfaces from malicious activities:

1. Use Only Secured Protocols: Encrypted protocols such as AES and HTTPS keep messages secure as they are transmitted from one system to another; if they are intercepted mid-transmission, the encryption makes the information useless. 

2. Strengthen Authentication Procedures: One-time passwords (OTPs) and two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA and MFA) are simple and effective ways to secure a system and its interfaces, as they make it more difficult for someone to break. Authentications, such as keys tied to a physical drive or biometric procedures, are further security measures that should be adopted.

3. Build In Role-Based Access Controls: Role-based permissions can keep people from accessing sensitive information not required for their job. With role-based permissions, you can ensure that employees have access to only the areas that have been expressly granted to them. Many employees only need access to one interface, and allowing them access to any interface opens a company to a significant risk. 

4. Monitor The Activity Of Your SAP Users: Regular monitoring and logging use and access to SAP systems will help pinpoint abnormal activities. Malicious activity could still happen even if the right person has been given permission. Therefore, monitoring and logging are essential.

5. Keep Your SAP System Current: Stay alert for updates and patches. SAP releases updates and patches on the second Tuesday of each month. Once alerted, companies should implement them soon after they’re available. In addition, new vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered; when patches are released, hackers look for any company that hasn’t implemented them to harden their systems.

There are many attack vectors within SAP systems, and they are constantly changing. The three significant areas to mind for best security measures are: 

  1. Access Process
  2. Perpetual Activity Monitoring
  3. Vigilant Patching

However, securing your SAP interfaces will require more than a manual process. You want a solution that will automate the security process with holistic dashboard monitoring displays and the ability to categorize the most critical patches for immediate execution. Utilizing these solutions will give you an up-to-date defense that can help prevent hackers from accessing your SAP system.

The post Securing SAP Systems: Essential Strategies to Protect Against Hackers appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

It’s the same story we’ve heard a thousand times: In today’s digital landscape, risk is constantly rising. Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated, and the cost of data breaches is escalating. According to the IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, the average cost of a data breach has reached USD 4.88 million. As such, effective risk management is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. A robust risk management program helps organizations proactively identify, assess, and control threats and vulnerabilities that could negatively impact their operations. A critical component of any successful risk management program is a modern asset inventory. 

An asset inventory provides a clear, detailed view of all assets within an organization’s IT environment, enabling better risk identification and control. This article explores how an asset inventory is essential to the five steps of an effective risk management process.

Step 1: Identify risks comprehensively by leveraging asset discovery

The first step in managing risk is risk identification, which involves understanding: 

  • potential threats and threat actors
  • the vulnerabilities that they exploit and that exist in your network

It is a fundamental truth that you can’t protect what you don’t know you have. Likewise, you can’t find vulnerabilities in systems that you don’t know you have. This is where asset discovery comes into play and why it is so important. Asset discovery is a key capability of an asset inventory solution. It automatically identifies and catalogs all assets within an organization’s IT environment. 

Consolidating information from existing asset management systems is not asset discovery. While consolidating data into one dashboard can help give you a unified view of your data, it only shows you the part of your infrastructure that you already know exists. Likewise, using expensive consultants to evaluate your network or survey your staff for data to populate an asset inventory is not a substitute for a sophisticated asset discovery tool. 

An effective asset inventory solution uses specialized asset discovery tools to locate and document assets, especially those that are not part of an existing inventory, such as unauthorized devices, shadow IT resources, or assets that aren’t actively managed or documented. By ensuring all assets are accounted for, an organization can effectively identify the risks associated with these assets, forming a solid foundation for your risk management program.

Step 2: More accurately assess risk by understanding impact on your business 

Once existing risks have been identified, the next step is to assess the level of risk for each. This involves evaluating the likelihood that a threat will exploit a given vulnerability and the impact on your network and associated consequences for the business if you are hit by one of those threats. An asset inventory plays a crucial role in this process by understanding which business functions specific assets enable and how they are interconnected with and interdependent on other critical assets.

Business functions, the core activities that keep your organization running smoothly and generating revenue, should be the focus. Understanding the dependencies between assets and critical functions allows for a more accurate risk assessment. For example, instead of categorizing assets into generic IT groupings like “Windows servers,” it’s more effective to align asset management with specific business functions like “logistics and shipping.” This allows you to accurately understand the impact on the business if, for example, a server went down due to an attack or other disruption. 

An asset inventory also enhances third-party risk management. Many organizations rely on third-party vendors and services, which introduce external dependencies and potential risks. A complete asset inventory helps you see and understand these connections, allowing you to make more informed risk management decisions.

Step 3: Prioritize risk based on business function criticality and asset resilience

Effective risk management requires a strategic approach to prioritizing risks. An asset inventory facilitates this by enabling organizations to prioritize risks based on an asset’s resilience and criticality. Resilience considers factors such as how difficult an asset is to access (isolation), how easy it is to compromise (hardness), and how well the network would function if the asset goes down (redundancy).

Criticality assesses an asset’s importance to the organization’s critical functions. Critical business functions are the core business activities that, if they stopped working, your business would cease to operate, and potentially cease to exist if they were down long enough. Identifying and protecting critical business functions is essential for risk management.

Assets with high criticality and low resilience scores should be prioritized when planning risk mitigation. By aligning risk response measures with business priorities, organizations can maximize their cybersecurity budgets and minimize potential risks, ensuring that resources are invested where they have the most impact.

Step 4: Mitigate risks using asset inventory insights

Risk mitigation is about taking action to reduce the impact of identified risks. An asset inventory enables organizations to allocate mitigation resources effectively by focusing their efforts on assets that pose the highest risk. 

Technical mitigation measures might include implementing a zero-trust architecture, robust firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and encryption protocols to protect critical assets and prevent unauthorized access. Regular security updates and patches should also be applied to safeguard systems against known vulnerabilities.

Non-technical mitigation measures focus on the people and processes within the organization. This includes training employees on cybersecurity best practices, developing incident response plans, and conducting regular security audits and assessments to identify any gaps or weaknesses in the security infrastructure.

Step 5: Ongoing monitoring, reviewing, and updating

Organizations’ IT environments are not static; they evolve as new capabilities are added and old ones are retired. This organic growth can introduce new risks or change the risk landscape. A constantly updated asset inventory is essential to keep risk response and controls current in a continually shifting environment.

Redjack has found that an organization’s infrastructure changes by an average of 5-15% a month. This underscores the necessity for an automated system to maintain your awareness of your infrastructure. An automated asset inventory ensures that newly discovered devices are added and outdated or decommissioned assets are removed, preventing gaps or inaccuracies in the inventory. This ensures that your risk management program is based on the current state of your IT landscape, reducing the risk of relying on outdated or incomplete asset information.

Summary: The importance of an asset inventory to risk management

A comprehensive asset inventory is more than just a list of hardware and software—it’s a powerful tool for enhancing your risk management program. By enabling effective risk identification, assessment, prioritization, mitigation, and monitoring, an asset inventory helps organizations stay ahead of threats and vulnerabilities, ensuring they can protect their most critical assets and maintain business continuity. In an era where risk is constantly on the rise, leveraging a complete asset inventory is essential for any organization committed to safeguarding its operations and reputation.

 

The post How an Asset Inventory Improves The Five Essential Steps of a Risk Management Program appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

A Comprehensive Guide

As with many other fields in technology, cybersecurity is in a constant state of evolution. One often overlooked area is the field of GRC. Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is a protective structure that aligns IT with an organization’s goals while managing and mitigating risks to the organization.

When GRC is combined with a plan and a good strategy, improvements can usually be observed in decision-making, IT investments, and department fragmentation. Building a comprehensive program will also ensure the organization complies with constantly evolving regulations, reducing the likelihood of cyber threats and regulatory penalties.

Let’s explore how modern Cybersecurity programs are affected by GRC. I’ll also offer practical implementation steps and insights into how your organization can stay protected.

I want to break down what forms the foundation of any robust cybersecurity program: Governance, Risk, and Compliance.

A person holding a stick to a scale Description automatically generated

  • Governance: Governance is a set of policies, procedures, and rules or frameworks an organization uses to achieve its business goals. A security professional’s mission is to implement strategies to secure information and systems while keeping the business goals in mind. Some of the results of good governance include openness in communication, effective dispute management, strategic resource allocation, and, most importantly, integrity and responsibility.
  • Risk Management: An organization can face various risks, including financial, legal, and security risks. Risk management means identifying, assessing, and mitigating them. Some benefits of implementing a sound risk management plan include anticipating internal and external threats and implementing measures to mitigate them before they can cause any harm.
  • Compliance: Ensure that laws, rules, and regulations are followed. An organization must have compliance to avoid penalties or legal consequences.

The Importance of a GRC Program in Strengthening Cybersecurity

Now that we have explored the definitions of Governance, Risk, and Compliance, let’s examine their advantages.

GRC is crucial in cybersecurity, helping organizations reduce risk and prevent data breaches. Different industries have varying compliance needs, often requiring multiple frameworks to meet business demands. GRC ensures proper security controls, audits, and standards for third-party sharing.

To mention some of the benefits precisely, we can say that a well-implemented GRC program can provide the following:

  • Business Continuity: A clear incident response plan supports swift recovery from attacks, minimizing downtime and data loss, while GRC identifies critical assets for prioritized recovery, ensuring resilience.
  • Reduced Cyberattacks: Proactive management, including patching vulnerabilities and training employees, lowers the risk of successful attacks, with regular updates further reducing threats.
  • Enhanced Decision-Making: GRC provides organizations with comprehensive data insights and analytics, enabling informed decision-making on risk management and security strategies ensuring consistency with organizational objectives and compliance standards.
  • More robust Security and Risk Visibility: A structured risk management approach enhances protection and provides greater visibility into potential threats. This enables organizations to identify, assess, and mitigate risks more effectively, ensuring continuous improvement in security measures.

In 2020, cyber experts worldwide read the news about the SolarWinds cyberattack. SolarWinds, a major IT management company, suffered a significant data breach when attackers infiltrated its supply chain, compromising its Orion software.

This breach occurred partly due to a lack of a well-implemented and maintained GRC program that could have helped identify vulnerabilities in their supply chain and third-party relationships.

GRC is not just about meeting regulatory requirements; it’s about taking proactive measures to build a resilient, adaptable privacy and security program.

Steps to Implementing an Effective GRC Program

Implementing a sound GRC program involves several key steps.

Step 1—Establish a GRC Framework: Some of the most popular frameworks are ISO 27001, NIST, and COBIT; it will all depend on your organization’s needs. These frameworks provide structured guidelines for governance, risk management, and compliance.

Step 2—Identify Key Risks: A risk assessment is critical to a valid risk management process. By completing one, you will identify vulnerabilities and threats within your organization. This could involve reviewing your network architecture, assessing your software vulnerabilities, and considering human error risks.

Step 3—Build a Compliance Roadmap: Map out all applicable regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, FedRAMP, and HIPAA, that your organization must follow. Establish a roadmap highlighting key actions, such as enforcing data security measures, conducting periodic audits, and educating your workforce on compliance protocols.

Step 4—Leverage GRC Tools: Automating risk management and compliance is possible with GRC solutions like Archer, LogicGate, LogicManger, and MetricStream. They enable you to centralize data, monitor compliance efforts, and streamline risk assessments for improved GRC management. 

Step 5—Ongoing Monitoring and Enhancement: GRC is not a one-off initiative. Once your system is established, you must consistently monitor risk, update compliance protocols, and adapt governance approaches. Regular audits and assessments will help ensure your GRC program remains effective in the face of changing risks.

By adopting these steps, you can help your organization build a customized GRC program that suits your unique needs and covers critical areas of concern.

A person climbing up the stairs to a light bulb Description automatically generated

Significant Challenges in Rolling Out a GRC Program

Deploying a GRC program can be challenging. Here are some of the most frequent obstacles and how to tackle them:

Challenge 1—Leadership Buy-in: Implementing GRC can be challenging, especially getting management’s support. To overcome this, emphasize the measurable benefits, such as lowering the risk of breaches, avoiding regulatory penalties, and improving business reputation.

Challenge 2—Integrating with Existing Systems: Organizations often face difficulties integrating GRC tools with their privacy and security systems. To overcome this, select tools compatible with your tech stack and assure strong communication between all groups, especially privacy and compliance.

Challenge 3—Compliance Fatigue: It is common for teams to become overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in implementing a program such as GRC. Prevent burnout by automating repetitive processes and providing ongoing training to keep teams engaged with GRC initiatives.

Proactively addressing these challenges will lead to a smoother GRC implementation and long-term success.

Any modern cybersecurity program should have Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), which is crucial for ensuring long-term privacy and security stability. If your organization still needs to adopt a GRC strategy, now is the time to act.

 

The post The Role of Governance, Risk, and Compliance in Modern Cybersecurity Programs appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Despite the vulnerabilities of proximity technology, many organizations have yet to take steps to transition to more secure credentialing systems. As a result, businesses across industries may unknowingly be putting themselves at heightened risk of costly data breaches and cyber attacks. 

Credential technology like proximity cards and readers are widely used for granting access to buildings or facilities. However, the use of proximity cards extends to other critical areas, such as business applications and employee workstations, leaving sensitive information susceptible to interception by unauthorized users. 

While navigating the transition from legacy technology can seem daunting, no business can afford the risks posed by leaving critical gaps in their cybersecurity posture unaddressed. 

A measured approach to upgrading unencrypted or vulnerable credential technology enables businesses to effectively mitigate instances of unauthorized access while establishing robust credentialing systems for continued protection and efficiency going forward. 

The risks of proximity technology

Hackers are constantly evolving tactics to access sensitive data. But over the past 10 years, stolen credentials have remained a factor in nearly a third (31%) of all data breaches. 

So, why do hackers continue to rely on this attack strategy?

One reason is that proximity (125 kHz) cards are particularly susceptible to tampering due to their low frequency and lack of encryption. As a result, bad actors can easily clone a card and gain access to secure areas, systems and information.

Instead, it’s best to opt for secure credentials that operate on near-field communication (NFC) technology, such as contactless smart cards and mobile credentials to prevent issues related to tampering. These solutions use advanced encryption technology to protect credentialing data both at rest and in transmission, rendering it unusable to any hackers attempting to reproduce cards and gain unauthorized access. 

In some cases, organizations express concern about the cost and operational disruption associated with upgrading their credentialing infrastructure. But consider the alternative: The average cost of a data breach in 2024 surged to $4.88 million, up from an already staggering $4.45 million in 2023. 

The potential repercussions — both financial and reputational — of a major breach are far too significant to ignore. And with the right plan in place, initiatives to upgrade to more secure credentials can be tailored to your business’s needs, both now and in the future.

3 strategies for facilitating a seamless upgrade to secure credentials

Cost, disruption and complexity of implementation are legitimate concerns. However, there are several steps you can take to navigate these issues and ensure a smooth transition. 

1.Conduct a thorough risk assessment. Before starting any upgrades, review your systems to pinpoint the most critical vulnerabilities. 

If you are leveraging proximity technology for multiple functions — like single sign-on, secure printing, and time and attendance — begin with the area that poses the biggest threat in the event of a breach. 

In this scenario, single sign-on would likely take priority due to the potential for data theft or compliance violations if unauthorized individuals gain access to networks, business applications, or sensitive information.

By identifying use cases that require more immediate attention, you can address pressing risks first, while still taking a step-by-step approach to implement robust controls across your organization. 

2.Consider ease of integration and user experience. As with any organizational decision, it’s important to consider how changes will affect your existing systems and the employee experience.

For instance, certain systems may enable the addition of mobile credentials with minimal friction, making this an ideal addition to your existing security ecosystem. Another factor to assess is the level of support you can expect to receive, both at the vendor level and the manufacturer level. Expert guidance is especially critical if your implementation spans multiple facilities and use cases.

Additionally, consider piloting the use of new authentication methods with a smaller focus group prior to a broader rollout. As employees provide feedback, you’ll have the opportunity to troubleshoot on a smaller scale to prepare for smoother integration for your entire organization. 

3.Look for opportunities to future-proof your systems. Going forward, mobile credentials will become increasingly common, both for their security capabilities and enhanced convenience. 

While a physical badge can easily be left behind at home, most employees carry their phones with them at all times. And with the rise of features like digital wallets, people are more accustomed than ever to seamless transactions directly from personal devices. 

Digital employee badges stored in a smartphone’s digital wallets can be used to access endpoints across your organization, from doors to printers and shared workstations. 

Additionally, mobile credentials are not subject to the same level of wear and tear as physical credentials, reducing the need for IT departments to reprovision a card whenever a badge is lost. It also simplifies new employee onboarding because mobile credentials allow IT teams to grant (and retract) permissions remotely. 

Beyond security, shifting to mobile credentials can help you keep pace with evolving technology and improve overall efficiencies. As you make the transition, selecting a reader that supports the most common secure physical and mobile credentials will streamline the process and ensure compatibility with both current and future credential types. 

Whether you work in healthcare, banking, manufacturing, education or another industry, the need for robust security is universal. With highly secure mobile credential and smart card options available, proximity technology is long overdue for retirement. 

Enhancing your credentialing and reader system now will ensure your organization can effectively safeguard its sensitive information and avoid unnecessary damages as cyberthreats continue to evolve.

 

The post Organizations Can’t Afford to Ignore the Security Risks of Proximity Technology appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

The evolution of network security mirrors the broader technological landscape: a journey from simplicity to complexity, from reactive to proactive defense. In the early days of computing, networks were relatively small, isolated entities. The prevailing security model, often called the “castle and moat” approach, centered on establishing a strong perimeter defense.  Users and devices were trusted once inside the network. This flat network model was relatively easy to manage but presented significant vulnerabilities.

As organizations expanded their digital footprint, the limitations of the flat network became increasingly apparent. The rise of hybrid work, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) blurred the traditional network perimeter. The concept of a secure, internal environment eroded as employees accessed corporate resources from diverse locations and devices. Simultaneously, cyber threats grew in sophistication and frequency, exploiting network vulnerabilities to steal data, disrupt operations, and inflict financial damage.

The realization that the perimeter-based security model was no longer adequate gave birth to the Zero Trust architecture. This paradigm represents a fundamental shift in security philosophy, built on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” In essence, Zero Trust assumes that every user, device, and application is potentially hostile, regardless of location.

The core tenets of Zero Trust are:

  • Explicit Verification: Every access request, whether internal or external, must be authenticated and authorized before granting access.
  • Least Privilege: Users and devices should only be granted the minimum level of access necessary to perform their functions.
  • Continuous Monitoring: Network traffic, user behavior, and device integrity must be continuously monitored for anomalies and threats.
  • Micro-segmentation: The network should be divided into smaller segments, limiting the potential impact of a breach.
  • Data-Centric Security: Focus on protecting data itself, rather than relying solely on network perimeters.

Implementing a Zero Trust framework involves a comprehensive overhaul of security infrastructure and processes. Key components include:

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM): A robust IAM system is essential for verifying user identities and enforcing access controls. It should incorporate multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strong password policies to enhance security.
  • Network Segmentation: Dividing the network into smaller, isolated segments limits the lateral movement of threats. Micro-segmentation can be achieved through software-defined networking (SDN) technologies.
  • Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): This technology provides secure remote access to applications without requiring a traditional VPN. ZTNA ensures that only authorized users can access specific applications based on continuously verifying their identity and device posture.
  • Endpoint Protection: Devices, including laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, must be protected with antivirus, anti-malware, and intrusion prevention software. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions can help identify and respond to advanced threats.
  • Cloud Security: If the organization utilizes cloud services, robust cloud security measures must be in place, including data encryption, access controls, and regular security audits.

Transitioning to a Zero Trust architecture is a gradual process that requires careful planning and execution. It involves technological changes and a cultural shift within the organization. Employees must be trained on security best practices and foster a security-aware culture.

While Zero Trust offers significant advantages in terms of security, it has challenges. The complexity of implementing and managing a Zero Trust environment can be daunting. Additionally, the increased reliance on technology can introduce new vulnerabilities if not properly managed.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of Zero Trust far outweigh the drawbacks. By adopting a Zero-trust approach, organizations can significantly reduce their risk of cyberattacks, protect sensitive data, and build resilience against emerging threats. Zero Trust will become increasingly essential for safeguarding digital assets as the threat landscape evolves.

The Road Ahead

The shift from flat networks to Zero Trust is a journey, not a destination. As technology advances and threats become more sophisticated, organizations must continually adapt their security strategies. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can potentially enhance Zero Trust capabilities by automating threat detection and response.

Ultimately, the success of a Zero Trust implementation depends on a combination of technology, processes, and people. Organizations can build a strong foundation for a secure digital future by investing in the right tools, establishing robust policies, and fostering a security-conscious culture.

The post From Open Networks to Zero Trust: A Paradigm Shift appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.