The document discusses strategies for preventing and protecting against data breaches. It notes that the number of data breaches reached a record high in 2014, with nearly 1 million new malware threats daily. While complete security is impossible, businesses must adapt through cost-effective security solutions. The document recommends asking what is currently being done to prevent breaches, what limitations exist, and how data/systems protection is validated. It advocates layered prevention and protection strategies, including regular security assessments to identify vulnerabilities, encryption of sensitive data, effective backups that facilitate rapid recovery, and ensuring basic tasks like patch and antivirus management are properly performed.
Assessing and Managing IT Security RisksChris Ross
Data privacy and protection has become the gold standard in IT. Scale Venture Partners and Wisegate share what they learned from over 100 IT professionals questioned about the risks and technology trends driving their security programs. Read about the move towards data centric security and the need for improvement in automated security controls and metrics reporting.
This paper discusses the question of optimizing security decisions in an organization, based on the information provided by the technical security infrastructure.
How close is your organization to being breached | Safe SecurityRahul Tyagi
Traditional methods are certainly limited in
their capabilities and this is easily proven by
the multitude of breaches businesses were a
victim of, across the globe. The 2020 Q3 Data
Breach QuickView Report revealed that the
number of records exposed in 2020 has
increased to 36 billion globally. The report
stated that there were 2,953 publicly
reported breaches in the first three quarters
of 2020 itself! 2020 is already named the
“worst year on record” by the end of Q2 in
terms of the total number of records
exposed. With the growing sophistication of
cyber-attacks and global damages related
to cybercrime reaching $6 trillion by 2021, we
need a solution that simplifies
cybersecurity.
To know more about breach probability visit : www.safe.security
With malware attacks growing more sophisticated, swift, and dangerous by the day — and billions of dollars spent to combat them — surprisingly few organizations have a grip on the problem. Only 20 percent of security professionals surveyed by Information Security Media Group (ISMG) rated their incident response program “very effective.” Nearly two-thirds struggle to detect APTs, limiting their ability to defend today’s most pernicious threats. In addition, more than 60 percent struggle with the speed of detection, and more than 40 percent struggle with the accuracy of detection. Those shortcomings give attackers more time to steal data and embed their malware deeper into targeted systems. For the latest threat intelligence reports, visit https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/threat-intelligence-reports.html.
Assessing and Managing IT Security RisksChris Ross
Data privacy and protection has become the gold standard in IT. Scale Venture Partners and Wisegate share what they learned from over 100 IT professionals questioned about the risks and technology trends driving their security programs. Read about the move towards data centric security and the need for improvement in automated security controls and metrics reporting.
This paper discusses the question of optimizing security decisions in an organization, based on the information provided by the technical security infrastructure.
How close is your organization to being breached | Safe SecurityRahul Tyagi
Traditional methods are certainly limited in
their capabilities and this is easily proven by
the multitude of breaches businesses were a
victim of, across the globe. The 2020 Q3 Data
Breach QuickView Report revealed that the
number of records exposed in 2020 has
increased to 36 billion globally. The report
stated that there were 2,953 publicly
reported breaches in the first three quarters
of 2020 itself! 2020 is already named the
“worst year on record” by the end of Q2 in
terms of the total number of records
exposed. With the growing sophistication of
cyber-attacks and global damages related
to cybercrime reaching $6 trillion by 2021, we
need a solution that simplifies
cybersecurity.
To know more about breach probability visit : www.safe.security
With malware attacks growing more sophisticated, swift, and dangerous by the day — and billions of dollars spent to combat them — surprisingly few organizations have a grip on the problem. Only 20 percent of security professionals surveyed by Information Security Media Group (ISMG) rated their incident response program “very effective.” Nearly two-thirds struggle to detect APTs, limiting their ability to defend today’s most pernicious threats. In addition, more than 60 percent struggle with the speed of detection, and more than 40 percent struggle with the accuracy of detection. Those shortcomings give attackers more time to steal data and embed their malware deeper into targeted systems. For the latest threat intelligence reports, visit https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/threat-intelligence-reports.html.
1. How often do you see non-sanctioned cloud services in use?
2. Are we protecting ourselves against insider threats?
3. Do we have a cyber security task force in place?
4. Is our BYOD policy secure?
5. Do you feel limited by your security budget or staff size?
Before the Breach: Using threat intelligence to stop attackers in their tracks- Mark - Fullbright
All information, data, and material contained, presented, or provided on is for educational purposes only.
Company names mentioned herein are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.
It is not to be construed or intended as providing legal advice.
Company names mentioned herein are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners and are for educational purposes only.
17 U.S. Code § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Priming your digital immune system: Cybersecurity in the cognitive eraLuke Farrell
Learn how cognitive security may be a powerful tool in addressing challenges security professionals face.
New capabilities for a
challenging era
Security leaders are working to address three gaps
in their current capabilities
—
in intelligence, speed
and accuracy. Some organizations are beginning to
explore the potential of cognitive security solutions
to address these gaps and get ahead of their risks
and threats. There are high expectations for this
technology. Fifty-seven percent of the security
leaders we surveyed believe that it can significantly
slow the ef forts of cybercriminals. The 22 percent of
respondents who we call “Primed” have started their
journey into the cognitive era of cybersecurity
—
they
believe they have the familiarity, the maturity and the
resources they need. To begin the journey, it is
important to explore your weaknesses, determine
how you want to augment your capabilities with
cognitive solutions and think about building education
and investment plans for your stakeholders.
Perception Gaps in Cyber Resilience: What Are Your Blind Spots?Sarah Nirschl
Protecting enterprise systems against cyber threats is a strategic priority, yet only 42% of executives are confident they could recover without impacting their business from a cyber event. Find out the hidden risks of shadow IT, cloud and cyber insurance.
SANS 2013 Report on Critical Security Controls Survey: Moving From Awareness ...FireEye, Inc.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. In an effort to address security risks in enterprise IT systems and the critical data in them, numerous security standards and requirement frameworks have emerged over the years. But most of these efforts have had the opposite effect — diverting organizations’ limited resources away from actual cyber defense toward reports and compliance.
Recognizing this serious problem, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in 2008 launched Critical Security Controls (CSCs), a prioritized list of controls likely to have the greatest impact in protecting organizations from evolving real-world threats. This SANS Institute survey of nearly 700 IT professionals across a range of industries examines how well the CSCs are known in government and industry and how they are being used.
For the latest threat intelligence reports, visit https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/threat-intelligence-reports.html.
Businesses of all sizes are targeted by hackers to gain access to proprietary and customer data, threatening your ability to operate or even remain open for business.
Learn how to protect your business from threats and position it for growth.
How to measure your cybersecurity performanceAbhishek Sood
In order for organizations to stay competitive, they must always be improving. This too is true for their cybersecurity.
Being able to properly harvest and digest cybersecurity benchmarking information is critical for today’s CIOs. If you realize that your cybersecurity is not at the level it should be, evaluating it properly can help you raise appropriate resources to fix the issues.
Discover how to get the full picture of your organization's security performance compared to your peers. Learn why benchmarking is so critical for today's CIOs and how to clearly communicate benchmarking data to your board.
Material de apoyo Un replanteamiento masivo de la seguridad.Universidad Cenfotec
Material de apoyo en la presentación: Un replanteamiento masivo de la seguridad.
Mejores prácticas para el aseguramiento de identidades
Charla por Centrify, del Ing. Alvaro Ucrós en desayuno organizado por UCenfotec
1. How often do you see non-sanctioned cloud services in use?
2. Are we protecting ourselves against insider threats?
3. Do we have a cyber security task force in place?
4. Is our BYOD policy secure?
5. Do you feel limited by your security budget or staff size?
Before the Breach: Using threat intelligence to stop attackers in their tracks- Mark - Fullbright
All information, data, and material contained, presented, or provided on is for educational purposes only.
Company names mentioned herein are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.
It is not to be construed or intended as providing legal advice.
Company names mentioned herein are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners and are for educational purposes only.
17 U.S. Code § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Priming your digital immune system: Cybersecurity in the cognitive eraLuke Farrell
Learn how cognitive security may be a powerful tool in addressing challenges security professionals face.
New capabilities for a
challenging era
Security leaders are working to address three gaps
in their current capabilities
—
in intelligence, speed
and accuracy. Some organizations are beginning to
explore the potential of cognitive security solutions
to address these gaps and get ahead of their risks
and threats. There are high expectations for this
technology. Fifty-seven percent of the security
leaders we surveyed believe that it can significantly
slow the ef forts of cybercriminals. The 22 percent of
respondents who we call “Primed” have started their
journey into the cognitive era of cybersecurity
—
they
believe they have the familiarity, the maturity and the
resources they need. To begin the journey, it is
important to explore your weaknesses, determine
how you want to augment your capabilities with
cognitive solutions and think about building education
and investment plans for your stakeholders.
Perception Gaps in Cyber Resilience: What Are Your Blind Spots?Sarah Nirschl
Protecting enterprise systems against cyber threats is a strategic priority, yet only 42% of executives are confident they could recover without impacting their business from a cyber event. Find out the hidden risks of shadow IT, cloud and cyber insurance.
SANS 2013 Report on Critical Security Controls Survey: Moving From Awareness ...FireEye, Inc.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. In an effort to address security risks in enterprise IT systems and the critical data in them, numerous security standards and requirement frameworks have emerged over the years. But most of these efforts have had the opposite effect — diverting organizations’ limited resources away from actual cyber defense toward reports and compliance.
Recognizing this serious problem, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in 2008 launched Critical Security Controls (CSCs), a prioritized list of controls likely to have the greatest impact in protecting organizations from evolving real-world threats. This SANS Institute survey of nearly 700 IT professionals across a range of industries examines how well the CSCs are known in government and industry and how they are being used.
For the latest threat intelligence reports, visit https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/threat-intelligence-reports.html.
Businesses of all sizes are targeted by hackers to gain access to proprietary and customer data, threatening your ability to operate or even remain open for business.
Learn how to protect your business from threats and position it for growth.
How to measure your cybersecurity performanceAbhishek Sood
In order for organizations to stay competitive, they must always be improving. This too is true for their cybersecurity.
Being able to properly harvest and digest cybersecurity benchmarking information is critical for today’s CIOs. If you realize that your cybersecurity is not at the level it should be, evaluating it properly can help you raise appropriate resources to fix the issues.
Discover how to get the full picture of your organization's security performance compared to your peers. Learn why benchmarking is so critical for today's CIOs and how to clearly communicate benchmarking data to your board.
Material de apoyo Un replanteamiento masivo de la seguridad.Universidad Cenfotec
Material de apoyo en la presentación: Un replanteamiento masivo de la seguridad.
Mejores prácticas para el aseguramiento de identidades
Charla por Centrify, del Ing. Alvaro Ucrós en desayuno organizado por UCenfotec
Our Zipline Canopy Tour features our highest and longest zips! Soar more than 300 ft above the forest floor and conquer ziplines over a quarter of a mile long!
Cybersecurity risk assessments help organizations identify.pdfTheWalkerGroup1
Cybersecurity risk assessments help organizations identify, manage and mitigate all forms of cyber risk. It is a critical component of any comprehensive data protection strategy.
Five principles for improving your cyber securityWGroup
Corporate assets have been shifting from physical assets to virtual assets over the past 20 years. This trend has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the vulnerability of intangible assets, leading to a greater general awareness of corporate cyber security risks. The alteration or destruction of a company’s data can result in harm to reputation, loss of public confidence, disruption to infrastructure, and legal sanctions. The security risk can adversely impact a company’s stock price and competitive position in the marketplace. In this document, WGroup cites 5 principles that will help improve a business's cyber security. The 5 principles are risk identification, risk management, legal implications, technical expertise, and expectations.
To implement data-centric security, while simultaneously empowering your business to compete and win in today’s nano-second world, you need to understand your data flows and your business needs from your data. Begin by answering some important questions:
•
What does your organization need from your data in order to extract the maximum business value and gain a competitive advantage?
•
What opportunities might be leveraged by improving the security posture of the data?
•
What risks exist based upon your current security posture? What would the impact of a data breach be on the organization? Be specific!
•
Have you clearly defined which data (both structured and unstructured) residing across your extended enterprise is most important to your business? Where is it?
•
What people, processes and technology are currently employed to protect your business sensitive information?
•
Who in your organization requires access to data and for what specific purposes?
•
What time constraints exist upon the organization that might affect the technical infrastructure?
•
What must you do to comply with the myriad government and industry regulations relevant to your business?
Finally, ask yourself what a successful data-centric protection program should look like in your organization. What’s most appropriate for your organization?
The answers to these and other related questions would provide you with a clearer picture of your enterprise’s “data attack surface,” which in turn will provide you with a well-documented risk profile. By answering these questions and thinking holistically about where your data is, how it’s being used and by whom, you’ll be well positioned to design and implement a robust, business-enabling data-centric protection plan that is tailored to the unique requirements of your organization.
Running Head SECURITY AWARENESSSecurity Awareness .docxtoltonkendal
Running Head: SECURITY AWARENESS
Security Awareness 2
Final Project Security Awareness
Terri Y. Hudson
Southern New Hampshire University – IT 552
December 20, 2016
Agency-wide security awareness Program Proposal
Introduction
For the organization to comply with the current PCT DSS requirement version 12,6, a security awareness program must be in place. The CISCO of the organization has an immediate requirement of creating an agency-wide security awareness program. As a means of implementing security awareness program the organization has conducted a security gap analysis which is one of the component of security awareness program which showed the 10 security findings. As one of the means of conducting the program, I will submit awareness program proposal.
Objective
This SOW (Statement of Work) is being done on behalf of the senior information officer. He has requested for the creation of an agency-wide security awareness program by handing over the security gap analysis which was done prior to this process. Hence the major aim of this document is to set a security awareness program which shows ten major key security findings. The document will also include a risk assessment of the current security awareness practices, processes and practices. By having this document, the organization will be able to have a well-organized maintenance plan. It is also important in maintaining and establishing an information-security awareness program (United States, 2000).
Background
The mission of the organization is to provide efficient IT services with the best security program in place with an aim of protecting organizations assets.
1. Technical infrastructure
The organization is engaged in short-term effort aiming at modernizing its information-processing infrastructure. These efforts have incorporated software enhancements, installation of firewalls and high end network systems for an improved communication. The senior information officer is the one who is responsible top oversee modernization effort. He has of late completed conducting a security awareness program and deployment of the organization’s LAN (Local area Network). The hardware being used is of CISCO products.
2. Computing Environment
The organization’s desktop computers are of Windows 2007/ 98 and 95. The servers are of Pentium with over 1 GB RAM. The current NOS (Network operating system) are window based.
3. Security Posture of the Organization
The organization has a basic network structure with only one router which acts as a firewall. It has several working stations and switches to this working stations. In addition the organization has installed Kasperky’s antivirus in of their desktop machines with a motive of reducing external threats. The data server is highly secured with Kaspersky’s antivirus. The organization physical sec ...
Mobile Security: 5 Steps to Mobile Risk ManagementDMIMarketing
Hundreds of companies, and the most demanding Federal agencies rely on DMI for Mobile Security services and solutions. And with more than 500,000 devices under management, we know how to do it right.
Now we’ve distilled 9 years of Mobile Security best practices into a white paper you can download. The paper lays out a smart, sensible approach to managing mobile risk without unnecessary cost and business disruption.
Please be our guest and check out the white paper. You’ll learn:
How to identify and protect against the threats that matter the most
What to do about “the hottest new technologies”
How to get the most protection for the least cost and disruption
The key differences and similarities between Mobile and traditional cybersecurity
- See more at: http://dminc.com/solutions/enterprise-mobility-services/mobilesecuritywp/#sthash.yTptNZRw.dpuf
Risk management is one of the main concepts that have been used by most of the organisations to protect their assets and data. One such example would be INSURANCE. Most of the insurance like Life, Health, and Auto etc have been formulated to help people protect their assets against losses. Risk management has also extended its roots to physical devices, such as locks and doors to protect homes and automobiles, password protected vaults to protect money and jewels, police, fire, security to protect against other physical risks. Dr. C. Umarani | Shriniketh D "Risk Management" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-1 , December 2020, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd37916.pdf Paper URL : https://www.ijtsrd.com/computer-science/computer-security/37916/risk-management/dr-c-umarani
What CIOs Need To Tell Their Boards About Cyber SecurityKaryl Scott
Companies are under increasing risks of breaches, theft of intellectual property and erosion of customer trust. CIOs and CISOs need to be able to explain to executive management what's being done to shore up their company's security strategy and defenses.
NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS’ NEED TO ADDRESS SECURITY FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT C...IJNSA Journal
The need for information security within small to mid-size companies is increasing. The risks of information security breach, data loss, and disaster are growing. The impact of IT outages and issues on the company are unacceptable to any size business and their clients. There are many ways to address the security for IT departments. The need to address risks of attacks as well as disasters is important to the IT security policies and procedures. The IT departments of small to medium companies have to address these security concerns within their budgets and other limited resources.Security planning, design, and employee training that is needed requires input and agreement from all levels of the company and management. This paper will discuss security needs and methods to implement them into a corporate infrastructure.
To better understand how organizations manage the planning and securing of their digital assets, McAfee, Inc. retained Evalueserve to conduct an independent assessment of how organizations manage their security policies and processes, and what threats are perceived to pose the greatest
risk to their business. This global study of Enterprise-class organizations highlights how IT decision makers view the challenges of securing information assets in a highly regulated and increasingly complex global business environment. It is also forward-looking, revealing companies’ IT security priorities around processes, practices and technology for 2012 and beyond.
Replies Required for below Posting 1 user security awarene.docxsodhi3
Replies Required for below :
Posting 1 : user security awareness is the most important element of an organization as we know a single email can result in a multi-million dollar loss through a breach in very short time. that is the primary reason many large organizations have a specific division who deal with the security whose prime task is it identify and prevent security breaches and most interestingly companies like Facebook have one million dollar price reward for ethically breaching their security which helps them identify more ways and prevent them before they occur. speaking of which user security deals with various levels of users as mentioned below.
1. New employees
2. Company executives
3. Traveling Employees
4. IT Employees
5. For all employees
Security awareness should be covered focusing the four above mentioned categories using real-world examples like classroom training, and circulating latest updates in security patches and also articles or suggestions as well as visual examples about security awareness. Training employees by pasting most important security preventions every employee must consider in order to prevent security breach and pasting lastest updates about security measurements in common areas across office space and conduct brainstorm sessions with individual senior staff members to understand their needs and how to apply security awareness across teams.
and second thing is to secure customers who are the core revenue generating people to an organization and its organization's duty to secure customers. The customer is the benefit of any organization. At the present time, where online security turns into an essential, the association must view client's profitable data that movements between the server and the site. By building security culture, the association can spur clients, contractual workers, representatives. A fulfilled client dependably functions as a mouth exposure and will fill in as an advantage of the organization. The association can guarantee their clients that the amount they think about their web assurance. The association ought to likewise distribute a note of wellbeing safety measure on the site for clients while collaborating with the web world.
Posting 2:
Security is a key human thought that has ended up being harder to portray and approve in the Information Age. In rough social requests, security was compelled to ensuring the prosperity of the get-together's people and guaranteeing physical resources. As society has grown more mind-boggling, the centrality of sharing and securing the fundamental resource of data has extended. Before the extension of present-day trades, data security was confined to controlling physical access to oral or created correspondences. The essentials of data security drove social requests to make innovative techniques for guaranteeing their data.
Changes in security systems can be direct. Society needs to execute any new security innovation as a get-together, whic ...
Improve Information Security Practices in the Small EnterpriseGeorge Goodall
Over 80% of small-medium sized business consider themselves non-targets for cyber-attacks. However, 60% of all targeted attacks are towards small-medium sized organizations. The capabilities of hackers have risen dramatically in the last two years. Organizations of all sizes need a security plan. Security by obscurity is no longer a viable option. Adopt a proven strategy to protect vital corporate assets.
Small IT businesses may not have the time and resources to formulate a strategy and see that employees diligently follow it. However, IT consulting companies can make that happen with their white label IT services.
Attacks on the enterprise are getting increasingly sophisticated. Current solutions available do not seem to be adequate given the innovativeness, precision and persistence of these attacks in different forms and of different dimensions. Organisations thus want to increase the sophistication of their employees and also of the solutions to be deployed given this backdrop.
2. 2 | P a g e
The number of U.S. data breaches tracked in 2014 hit a record high of 7831, according to a recent
report released by the Identity Theft Resource Center. An article in CNN Money estimated nearly
one million malware threats are released every day2. Malware in general is more malicious than
years past, with ransomware being just a small example of our challenges in IT. Although Gartner
stated that organizations will increasingly recognize that it is not possible to provide a 100 percent
secured environment3, businesses must develop strategies to prevent and protect from data
breaches.
In a nutshell, the security landscape has significantly changed over the last several years and
businesses must adapt by incorporating cost effective solutions to fight the ever-growing threats.
To complicate the issue, many IT departments have faced reductions of force and often have had
budget constraints that limit their ability to stay ahead of the curve.
DSM has assessed a great number of environments and regardless
of the size of the organization and number of IT people on staff,
every assessment yields a great number of vulnerabilities.
Moreover, DSM has noted weaknesses during many of our
assessments that indicate gaps in an organization’s ability to
recover data in the event of a breach. Backups were the traditional
way to protect from data loss; however, it is no longer sufficient as
a standalone solution. In short, businesses must layer prevention
and protection strategies.
Prevention Strategies
In simplistic terms, a prevention strategy should stop threats before they occur. The question
business leaders should ask is, “how secure are my systems and data?” If a survey was sent to a
dozen IT departments, most likely the results would indicate a broad number of strategies being
deployed followed immediately by statements indicating that staffing and budgeting are limiting
their ability to prevent malicious attacks.
Many business leaders are not technical and must rely upon their technical staff to provide
guidance. Often internal IT departments lack the knowledge and/or expertise in deploying
technologies or processes to help mitigate against a breach. Accordingly, DSM recommends
asking these simple questions:
(1) What are we doing today to prevent a data breach?
(2) What limitations are we facing?
(3) What is the process to validate our data and systems are protected?
1 Identity Theft Resource Center Breach Report Hits Record High in 2014
2 Nearly 1 million new malware threats released every day
3 Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015
Backups were the
traditional way to protect
from data loss; however, it
is no longer sufficient as a
standalone solution. In
short, business must layer
prevention and protection
strategies.
3. 3 | P a g e
The answers to these questions will help define the magnitude of information security as a true
business threat. Then the organization will be ready to determine the overall readiness and health
of IT.
The most common practice of identifying issues and establishing budgets is leveraging a third
party assessment. Before embarking on an assessment, the business needs to ensure it is willing
to put the effort to remediate and mitigate against identified risks. Moreover, the firm providing
the assessment must gain your confidence by showing it has a methodology that maps to your
business needs. Accordingly, DSM developed an assessment methodology that breaks down our
findings into four categories.
1) Security
2) Management
3) Availability
4) Recovery
This approach produces a comprehensive review of an environment beyond traditional security.
In fact, it provides a review of an organization’s ability to recover and outlines improvements for
systems management, IT automation and high availability to applications and data. This proven
methodology provides health checks of critical systems and applications in conjunction with
assessing the security and overall recoverability of an environment. Additionally, DSM provides
budgets to remediate and strengthen the underlying technologies your business depends upon.
Assessment Woes
While IT Assessments are a proven approach to identifying weaknesses, not everyone is
comfortable with a third party reviewing their environment. Depending upon the situation, some
technical people may embrace an assessment while others tend to avoid them. DSM has
performed a great number IT assessments which have yielded many different views from the
various IT teams. One observation is that many organizations have
a strong confidence in their solutions. In some instances we have
experienced resistance to an outsider assessing their security
posture due to insecurities. Regardless of the maturity of an
organization or the age of the systems that are deployed, auditors
most always uncover issues that would have gone unnoticed until
an event surfaced the weakness. Simply said, everyone can
improve process or techniques to secure infrastructure and data.
The real question everyone should ask is, “If a data breach
occurred, how would it impact our business?” SafeNet stated Data
breaches have a significant impact on whether a customer will
interact with an organization again4. Additionally, IBM and
Ponemon Institute indicated that the total average cost for data
breaches paid by United States companies increased from $5.4 million to $5.9 million5 in 2014.
Is it worth the risk or should organizations have a preventative strategy? We believe an
assessment is only one layer of protection but it will remain a necessity to ensure organizations
are following industry best practices.
4 Global Survey Reveals Impact of Data Breaches on Customer Loyalty
5 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study: United States
Data breaches have a
significant impact on
whether a customer
will interact with an
organization again.
4. 4 | P a g e
Protection Strategies
DSM believes in the statement, it is not a matter of “IF’ it is “WHEN” as it relates to security
breaches. Accordingly, DSM recommends that organizations mature in the area of protection
strategies. Simplified, a protection strategy is a layered approach to protect data from being
compromised and in the event of an emergency the data or systems can easily be recovered. At a
high level, organizations must go beyond traditional backups to ensure they are protecting critical
and confidential data. Confidential data should be encrypted to minimize the threat of leakage
and organizations must consider technologies that streamline the recovery approach for
corrupted or loss data.
How Effective are My System Backups?
The good news is technology is constantly improving; however, many organizations have made
significant investments in backup technologies that may not be effective. IT assessments have
identified that many organizations are performing traditional backups, nevertheless they are
lacking a comprehensive recovery strategy to recover data beyond a
backup. Accordingly, there are gaps between business requirements
and the technical ability to provide instant access to data after an
outage. Disaster Recovery has been focused mostly on the fire or the
hurricane but must expand into the real threat of today which is data
compromise or leakage.
Today’s businesses require the ability to recover data from minutes
ago versus last night’s backup. An easy calculation for recovery times
is if it takes one (1) hour to backup data, it will typically take two (2)
hours to recover it with traditional backups. Hence, how can we
shorten our recovery time in the event of a virus such as
CryptoLocker? Beyond security awareness training to reduce the end
user’s mistake, businesses must leverage technologies that provide
automated snapshots of files or volumes.
DSM recommends reviewing your data protection solution to ensure it has adequate retention
and archive for compliance and that it has the ability to replicate the data offsite. In addition, it
should tightly integrate into virtual infrastructure while giving the ability to instantly recovery
both physical and virtual systems.
Performing IT Basics
One interesting finding that all assessments have disclosed is most organizations are not doing
the IT basics. IT staff reduction in conjunction with speed that technology
changes has yielded an interesting issue. IT departments tend to spend
more energy with projects in parallel with troubleshooting the tireless day-
to-day technical issues as opposed to keeping up with the daily
management tasks. Results show that patch management for Microsoft
and third party applications is not managed well in most every
environment. While most have automated tools, many are not fully
configured or lack processes to validate systems and applications are
updated. Moreover, some audits reveal that Anti-Virus can be sparsely
implemented.
The reality is the day-to-day tasks which are essential to protecting the environment are somewhat
boring which exasperates the situation. Based upon our experience, it appears that many IT teams
would rather learn the new upcoming technology rather than focusing on the daily management
tasks.
Today’s businesses
require the ability to
recover data from
minutes ago versus
last night’s backup. An
easy calculation for
recovery times is if it
takes one (1) hour to
backup data, it will
typically take two (2)
hours to recover it with
traditional backups.
5. 5 | P a g e
Another driving factor for poor patch and AV management is that these lower-level tasks are often
delegated to junior IT staff without the appropriate controls to validate. As a result, critical tasks
which are essential to protection and recovery are often overlooked due to the backlog of Critical
and Important tasks that fill up the ticketing queue for those who have ticketing systems. For the
lesser sophisticated staff that does not leverage a ticketing system, these crucial tasks are lost.
Delegating low-level tasks does not mean you are minimizing the criticality or delegating the
responsibility; it simply means controls such as reporting must be in place to validate on a routine
basis.
Conclusion
In summary, the security landscape has significantly changed over the last several years
and businesses must invest in strategies not only to prevent a malicious attack
while protecting data but also have the enhanced recovery abilities. In
the past many businesses would elect to repurpose budgets allocated to
security towards higher prioritized projects. Risks today expand beyond
an inconvenience to downtime and possible data corruptions that places
customers and revenue lines at risk.
Data protection has to extend beyond standard backups to enterprise-
class systems that enable offsite replication and instant recovery. In
addition, solutions have to expand beyond backups to provide high
availability to essential data.
The lower skilled tasks do not lessen the level of urgency to ensure backups
and patches are pushed out on a routine basis. Accordingly, management
must deploy appropriate controls to validate these tasks are completed.
DSM recognizes that budgets can limit an organizations ability to have a foolproof system,
nevertheless, DSM has leveraged a layered approach that delivers these services at an affordable
cost.
For more information about Information Security and how we can help you, please contact us at
863-802-8888 or security@dsm.net.