This white paper discusses the challenges of account lockout management and the benefits of an automated solution. It notes that account lockouts are necessary for security but result in help desk calls and lost productivity. Managing account lockouts manually is complex and time-consuming. The paper estimates that organizations can save $23,500-$70,500 annually by automating account lockout resolution through a product like NetWrix Account Lockout Examiner. This provides faster resolution and proactive handling of lockouts.
PCI and Remote Vendors: Eliminating the complexity - Free Guide
To meet PCI requirements, CIOs and compliance officers must ensure user accountability.
When it comes to privileged users, the requirements and complexities are all magnified, especially when these privileged users happen to be third-party remote vendors.
This whitepaper highlights the PCI issues relating to remote vendors, and provides a straightforward solution for how to achieve compliancy. Particular attention is placed on:
- Clarity of what your log contains (as per PCI 10.2)
- Securing the audit logs against admin users (as per PCI 10.5)
- Eliminating anonymity (as per PCI 8 and PCI 10.1)
- Verifying awareness of corporate policy (as per PCI 12.5)
IRJET- Enhancement in Netbanking SecurityIRJET Journal
This document discusses enhancing security for online banking. It describes some existing security issues with online banking such as passwords being vulnerable to attacks like phishing. The proposed system aims to provide two-factor authentication for online banking login by adding a secret question step before transactions. This would help filter out unauthorized users at the login phase before they can access transactions. The system would use time-based one-time passwords and secret questions that only the real user can answer to authenticate users in a secure manner. The integration of these components is expected to significantly improve online banking security.
This document provides an information security risk assessment of North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN). It identifies several security issues, including:
1) NLEN is unsure if it meets Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard requirements for handling credit card transactions.
2) NLEN lacks security cameras and has no disaster recovery plan, putting its network and data at risk.
3) The server room door is often unlocked, and servers are not enclosed in a secure cabinet, potentially allowing unauthorized access.
The assessment provides recommendations to address these and other issues, such as implementing policies for locking workstations, unique user logins, and scanning devices before reusing them. Implementing the recommended controls would help protect N
The document discusses five steps that organizations can take to mitigate security risks associated with privileged accounts:
1. Take an inventory of all privileged accounts, users with access, and systems that use them.
2. Ensure privileged passwords are securely stored, such as in an encrypted password safe.
3. Enforce strict processes for regularly changing privileged passwords.
4. Implement individual accountability and provide only necessary privileged access privileges to users.
5. Regularly audit and report on privileged account usage to identify risks and areas for improvement.
For more course tutorials visit
www.newtonhelp.com
CYB 610 Project 1 Information Systems and Identity Management
CYB 610 Project 2 Operating Systems Vulnerabilities (Windows and Linux)
CYB 610 Project 3 Assessing Information System Vulnerabilities and Risk
3rd party information security assessment guidelinePriyanka Aash
This document provides guidelines for organisations and third party assessors on their roles and responsibilities during an information security assessment. It discusses the assessment process in three phases: pre-assessment, during assessment, and post-assessment. For each phase, it outlines key responsibilities for both the organisation and the third party assessor to ensure a successful assessment. Checklists of responsibilities for organisations and assessors are also provided in the appendices for easy reference during the assessment.
This document describes WhiteOPSTM, an identity intelligence solution from Whitebox Security that provides comprehensive monitoring and analytics for SAP systems. It monitors user activity, roles, and compliance and helps answer questions about who has access to what resources, who is not complying with policies, and what risks the business. The main capabilities allow monitoring user identity and activity, analyzing user roles and access, ensuring compliance with segregation of duties policies and other security policies, and assessing risks to the business from security issues.
This document summarizes 8 holes in Windows login controls related to security and regulatory compliance. UserLock is a software that fills these holes by providing controls like concurrent login limits, logon/logoff reporting, session monitoring, remote logoff, time restrictions by group, workstation restrictions by group, forcible logoff after time expires, and displaying previous logon details. It was positively reviewed in PC Mag for providing tight user access control for organizations with mandatory security requirements.
PCI and Remote Vendors: Eliminating the complexity - Free Guide
To meet PCI requirements, CIOs and compliance officers must ensure user accountability.
When it comes to privileged users, the requirements and complexities are all magnified, especially when these privileged users happen to be third-party remote vendors.
This whitepaper highlights the PCI issues relating to remote vendors, and provides a straightforward solution for how to achieve compliancy. Particular attention is placed on:
- Clarity of what your log contains (as per PCI 10.2)
- Securing the audit logs against admin users (as per PCI 10.5)
- Eliminating anonymity (as per PCI 8 and PCI 10.1)
- Verifying awareness of corporate policy (as per PCI 12.5)
IRJET- Enhancement in Netbanking SecurityIRJET Journal
This document discusses enhancing security for online banking. It describes some existing security issues with online banking such as passwords being vulnerable to attacks like phishing. The proposed system aims to provide two-factor authentication for online banking login by adding a secret question step before transactions. This would help filter out unauthorized users at the login phase before they can access transactions. The system would use time-based one-time passwords and secret questions that only the real user can answer to authenticate users in a secure manner. The integration of these components is expected to significantly improve online banking security.
This document provides an information security risk assessment of North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN). It identifies several security issues, including:
1) NLEN is unsure if it meets Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard requirements for handling credit card transactions.
2) NLEN lacks security cameras and has no disaster recovery plan, putting its network and data at risk.
3) The server room door is often unlocked, and servers are not enclosed in a secure cabinet, potentially allowing unauthorized access.
The assessment provides recommendations to address these and other issues, such as implementing policies for locking workstations, unique user logins, and scanning devices before reusing them. Implementing the recommended controls would help protect N
The document discusses five steps that organizations can take to mitigate security risks associated with privileged accounts:
1. Take an inventory of all privileged accounts, users with access, and systems that use them.
2. Ensure privileged passwords are securely stored, such as in an encrypted password safe.
3. Enforce strict processes for regularly changing privileged passwords.
4. Implement individual accountability and provide only necessary privileged access privileges to users.
5. Regularly audit and report on privileged account usage to identify risks and areas for improvement.
For more course tutorials visit
www.newtonhelp.com
CYB 610 Project 1 Information Systems and Identity Management
CYB 610 Project 2 Operating Systems Vulnerabilities (Windows and Linux)
CYB 610 Project 3 Assessing Information System Vulnerabilities and Risk
3rd party information security assessment guidelinePriyanka Aash
This document provides guidelines for organisations and third party assessors on their roles and responsibilities during an information security assessment. It discusses the assessment process in three phases: pre-assessment, during assessment, and post-assessment. For each phase, it outlines key responsibilities for both the organisation and the third party assessor to ensure a successful assessment. Checklists of responsibilities for organisations and assessors are also provided in the appendices for easy reference during the assessment.
This document describes WhiteOPSTM, an identity intelligence solution from Whitebox Security that provides comprehensive monitoring and analytics for SAP systems. It monitors user activity, roles, and compliance and helps answer questions about who has access to what resources, who is not complying with policies, and what risks the business. The main capabilities allow monitoring user identity and activity, analyzing user roles and access, ensuring compliance with segregation of duties policies and other security policies, and assessing risks to the business from security issues.
This document summarizes 8 holes in Windows login controls related to security and regulatory compliance. UserLock is a software that fills these holes by providing controls like concurrent login limits, logon/logoff reporting, session monitoring, remote logoff, time restrictions by group, workstation restrictions by group, forcible logoff after time expires, and displaying previous logon details. It was positively reviewed in PC Mag for providing tight user access control for organizations with mandatory security requirements.
IRJET-An Economical and Secured Approach for Continuous and Transparent User ...IRJET Journal
This document discusses an approach for continuous and transparent user identification for secure web services using biometrics. It proposes a framework called CASHMA (Context-Aware Security by Hierarchical Multilevel Architecture) that uses multi-modal biometrics for continuous authentication. CASHMA authenticates users using biometric traits instead of usernames and passwords, and periodically re-authenticates users during a session to ensure security. The document describes how CASHMA works, including how it issues authentication certificates to validate user identity on an ongoing basis and adaptively sets session timeouts. It concludes that CASHMA enhances security and usability for user sessions through continuous multi-modal biometric authentication and verification.
PortalGuard is a software solution that provides five layers of authentication functionality including two-factor authentication. It can enforce two-factor authentication for accessing cloud applications directly, via VPN using RADIUS, or during self-service password resets. PortalGuard delivers one-time passwords (OTPs) for verification via SMS, email, voice call, printer, or transparent tokens. It has configurable OTP settings and supports standard RADIUS authentication for VPN access. Implementation requires server-side software installation on IIS servers and optional client-side software for additional features.
This document introduces best practices for managing users, identity attributes and entitlements in a typical "corporate" environment:
1. The focus is on organizations with 1,000 to 10,000 internal users, such as employees or contractors. They may be corporations or non-profit organizations such as government, healthcare or military entities.
2. Users in these environments are normally provisioned physical assets, such as a cubicle, desk, chair, phone, PC and building access badge.
3. Users in these environments are also provisioned logical access, such as an Active Directory login account, Exchange mail folder, Windows home directory and a variety of application security entitlements.
The objective of this document is to identify business processes that drive changes to users and entitlements in an organization that fits this description and to offer best practices for each process.
Organizations that are able to adopt best practices processes will benefit both from optimized change management and from reduced total cost associated with automating their processes on an identity and access management (IAM) platform.
Vulnerability management solutions are flawed due to a lack of advanced network endpoint correlation capabilities. This introduces inaccuracies that leave enterprises at high risk. Most solutions only track 3-5 host characteristics for reconciliation over time, but networks experience around 40% "churn", meaning the characteristics change frequently. This limited tracking leads to misleading scan results, an inaccurate security posture view, and vulnerabilities being missed. Advanced reconciliation is needed to properly relate hosts over multiple scans and manage risk levels across time.
This document provides an overview of conducting an audit of an e-business to evaluate its security, performance, and overall health. It outlines key areas to examine, including response time, security practices, network configuration, and development processes. The audit aims to identify any issues and make recommendations for improvement. Sample diagrams and checklists are provided to help structure the audit. The goal is to ensure the e-business is operating securely and meeting customer needs.
Over the years, password management software has evolved from a simple self-service web application to reset forgotten passwords to a complex platform for managing multiple authentication factors and encryption keys.
This document describes the technological evolution and highlights the product capabilities that organizations should consider in order to have a lasting value from their investment.
In part, this document questions the benefits of investing in point solutions with limited functionality and expansion capabilities and in favor of investing in a platform capable of addressing both short- and long-term needs.
Sections:
- In the Beginning: A Simple Problem
- Proliferation of Passwords
- Locked-out Users, Mobile Users and Cached Passwords
- Multi-Factor Authentication: Smart Cards and Tokens
- Public Key Infrastructure and Encrypted Key Files
- Full Disk Encryption
- User Enrollment and Adoption
- Privileged Accounts and Passwords
- The Future
http://hitachi-id.com/
Anatomy of a breach - an e-book by Microsoft in collaboration with the EUUniversity of Essex
1) Hackers gain initial access to networks through techniques like exploiting vulnerabilities, password spraying, or phishing. They then work to gain elevated privileges on internal systems.
2) Once hackers have higher level access, they use that privilege to scan for valuable data and credentials to access other parts of the network. Their goal is widespread access across the network.
3) With control over many systems, hackers implant backdoors to maintain long-term access and control networks from a central command point while evading detection. Companies need comprehensive defenses, data awareness, and protection policies to detect and respond to network intrusions.
This document discusses the importance of user management and compliance on IBM i systems. It notes that internal users pose the greatest security risk and outlines best practices for audit, reporting, enforcing access controls, and monitoring users. The document also describes how the Safestone software addresses these practices through features for auditing, password management, access monitoring, and defense against malware.
This document analyzes single sign-on (SSO) authentication for web applications, specifically using Google as a service provider. It discusses problems with traditional username and password authentication across multiple systems and how SSO solves this by allowing a user to log in once to access all authorized resources. The document then provides details on how SSO authentication works for Google applications using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). It describes the steps a user takes to log into a Google application through a partner-operated SSO service, including SAML requests and responses being passed between the partner SSO, user's browser, and Google.
Managing credentials on-premise and in the cloud.
With over 12 million users worldwide, Hitachi ID Password Manager is the leading credential management solution. It lowers IT support cost and improves user service by eliminating problems and diverting resolution to self-service.
Password Manager includes password synchronization, single sign-on and self-service password reset.
http://hitachi-id.com/password-manager/
This document discusses various authentication techniques for web applications and their security issues. It provides an overview of traditional techniques like HTTP Basic authentication and digest authentication. It also covers Windows integrated authentication, structure-based authentication and CAPTCHAs. The document conducts a literature review of previous work analyzing authentication methods and security challenges. It then discusses the JSON web token authentication scheme as an improvement over older techniques that addresses issues like scalability and third party access.
The Essentials | Privileged Access ManagementRyan Gallavin
SSH is nearly ubiquitous in today’s enterprises, and is the predominant tool for managing unix and linux servers, and the applications and data that they host. Poor practices around the deployment and management of the SSH infrastructure could easily leave your enterprise vulnerable to a breach. Are you in control?
This document summarizes a research paper on M-Pass, a proposed user authentication protocol that aims to prevent password stealing and reuse attacks. M-Pass leverages cell phones and SMS to authenticate users on untrusted devices without requiring them to enter passwords. It involves a registration phase where users register with a website and encrypt a password with their phone number. For login, users provide their username and long-term phone password, and the website generates a one-time password using a secret credential. The protocol aims to eliminate the need to remember multiple passwords by using the phone for authentication across websites. Evaluation shows registration and login times average around 4 and 3.5 minutes respectively. The researchers conclude M-Pass can prevent password stealing and reuse
Course Session Outline - Internal control in Information SystemTheodore Le
The document discusses various aspects of information security including threats, risks, and controls. It begins by outlining common security threats like hackers, computer viruses, and errors that can disrupt organizations. It then examines potential impacts of security incidents like loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. Examples are given around different levels of damage from a hacker attacking a credit card company. The rest of the document covers internal controls for information systems, including components like control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring. Specific control techniques are introduced like general controls, application controls, fault tolerance, and intrusion detection systems. The document concludes with discussing setting up group projects to further explore these security topics.
The document discusses the risks of uncontrolled privileged access and advocates for implementing strong authentication using smart cards for privileged users. Privileged accounts currently rely on weak password authentication which can enable accidental or intentional data breaches. Smart cards provide multi-factor authentication that is more secure and easy for administrators to use. The document outlines how smart cards can be deployed and managed to control privileged access across an enterprise network.
Combat Passwords on Post-Its with Multi-Factor Authentication for IBM iPrecisely
Stories of data breaches caused by stolen or guessed passwords have increased scrutiny around login practices. Requiring even more complex passwords is not recommended as users struggle to remember them – and write them down.
Multi-factor authentication has become best practice for strengthening login security and is now required by regulations such as the latest PCI Data Security Standard, the New York Department of Financial Services’ Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) and more. Watch this webinar to learn how multi-factor authentication can be implemented for IBM i users to strengthen security and meet compliance requirements.
You’ll learn:
• What true multi-factor authentication really is
• Authentication options and tradeoffs
• Tips on implementing multi-factor authentication for IBM i
The document contains tables showing the growth of bacteria populations over time under different scenarios. In each scenario, the bacteria multiply at regular time intervals:
- In the first scenario, the bacteria doubles every hour, resulting in populations of 10, 20, 40, 80 at times 0, 1, 2, 3 hours.
- In the second, the bacteria increases by a factor of 1.4142135 every half hour, matching the first scenario's results at whole hour intervals.
- In the third scenario, the bacteria doubles every quarter hour, again matching the first scenario's whole hour results.
The algebraic rules shown confirm that all three scenarios produce identical bacterial population results at whole hour time intervals, demonstrating
The document discusses using social media for libraries, noting that over 850 million people use social media as a news source and search tool. It suggests libraries can use social media as a marketing, outreach, and feedback tool to engage users and raise the library's profile. As examples, it provides links to the award-winning social media accounts for Swansea Libraries in Wales and Orkney Library in Scotland.
Effective leadership development can drive business success by:
1) Building leadership capability at all levels through programs that develop skills in self-awareness, best practices, and applying learning in the workplace.
2) Case studies show that leadership programs leading to promotions, innovation, and engagement have provided returns through growth and retention.
3) While impact may be longer term by changing behaviors, leadership development is an essential investment for visionary leaders to outperform competitors through new ideas.
The document contains various charts and graphs showing data related to music preferences, factory production and scrap rates, education levels and income, monthly expenses, grain and fast food sales, city populations, Red Cross expenses over time, a running workout program, relationship between study time and exam grades, and average monthly temperatures in Chico, California. The charts present numerical and statistical data across various topics providing an overview of trends, comparisons, and relationships within the data.
IRJET-An Economical and Secured Approach for Continuous and Transparent User ...IRJET Journal
This document discusses an approach for continuous and transparent user identification for secure web services using biometrics. It proposes a framework called CASHMA (Context-Aware Security by Hierarchical Multilevel Architecture) that uses multi-modal biometrics for continuous authentication. CASHMA authenticates users using biometric traits instead of usernames and passwords, and periodically re-authenticates users during a session to ensure security. The document describes how CASHMA works, including how it issues authentication certificates to validate user identity on an ongoing basis and adaptively sets session timeouts. It concludes that CASHMA enhances security and usability for user sessions through continuous multi-modal biometric authentication and verification.
PortalGuard is a software solution that provides five layers of authentication functionality including two-factor authentication. It can enforce two-factor authentication for accessing cloud applications directly, via VPN using RADIUS, or during self-service password resets. PortalGuard delivers one-time passwords (OTPs) for verification via SMS, email, voice call, printer, or transparent tokens. It has configurable OTP settings and supports standard RADIUS authentication for VPN access. Implementation requires server-side software installation on IIS servers and optional client-side software for additional features.
This document introduces best practices for managing users, identity attributes and entitlements in a typical "corporate" environment:
1. The focus is on organizations with 1,000 to 10,000 internal users, such as employees or contractors. They may be corporations or non-profit organizations such as government, healthcare or military entities.
2. Users in these environments are normally provisioned physical assets, such as a cubicle, desk, chair, phone, PC and building access badge.
3. Users in these environments are also provisioned logical access, such as an Active Directory login account, Exchange mail folder, Windows home directory and a variety of application security entitlements.
The objective of this document is to identify business processes that drive changes to users and entitlements in an organization that fits this description and to offer best practices for each process.
Organizations that are able to adopt best practices processes will benefit both from optimized change management and from reduced total cost associated with automating their processes on an identity and access management (IAM) platform.
Vulnerability management solutions are flawed due to a lack of advanced network endpoint correlation capabilities. This introduces inaccuracies that leave enterprises at high risk. Most solutions only track 3-5 host characteristics for reconciliation over time, but networks experience around 40% "churn", meaning the characteristics change frequently. This limited tracking leads to misleading scan results, an inaccurate security posture view, and vulnerabilities being missed. Advanced reconciliation is needed to properly relate hosts over multiple scans and manage risk levels across time.
This document provides an overview of conducting an audit of an e-business to evaluate its security, performance, and overall health. It outlines key areas to examine, including response time, security practices, network configuration, and development processes. The audit aims to identify any issues and make recommendations for improvement. Sample diagrams and checklists are provided to help structure the audit. The goal is to ensure the e-business is operating securely and meeting customer needs.
Over the years, password management software has evolved from a simple self-service web application to reset forgotten passwords to a complex platform for managing multiple authentication factors and encryption keys.
This document describes the technological evolution and highlights the product capabilities that organizations should consider in order to have a lasting value from their investment.
In part, this document questions the benefits of investing in point solutions with limited functionality and expansion capabilities and in favor of investing in a platform capable of addressing both short- and long-term needs.
Sections:
- In the Beginning: A Simple Problem
- Proliferation of Passwords
- Locked-out Users, Mobile Users and Cached Passwords
- Multi-Factor Authentication: Smart Cards and Tokens
- Public Key Infrastructure and Encrypted Key Files
- Full Disk Encryption
- User Enrollment and Adoption
- Privileged Accounts and Passwords
- The Future
http://hitachi-id.com/
Anatomy of a breach - an e-book by Microsoft in collaboration with the EUUniversity of Essex
1) Hackers gain initial access to networks through techniques like exploiting vulnerabilities, password spraying, or phishing. They then work to gain elevated privileges on internal systems.
2) Once hackers have higher level access, they use that privilege to scan for valuable data and credentials to access other parts of the network. Their goal is widespread access across the network.
3) With control over many systems, hackers implant backdoors to maintain long-term access and control networks from a central command point while evading detection. Companies need comprehensive defenses, data awareness, and protection policies to detect and respond to network intrusions.
This document discusses the importance of user management and compliance on IBM i systems. It notes that internal users pose the greatest security risk and outlines best practices for audit, reporting, enforcing access controls, and monitoring users. The document also describes how the Safestone software addresses these practices through features for auditing, password management, access monitoring, and defense against malware.
This document analyzes single sign-on (SSO) authentication for web applications, specifically using Google as a service provider. It discusses problems with traditional username and password authentication across multiple systems and how SSO solves this by allowing a user to log in once to access all authorized resources. The document then provides details on how SSO authentication works for Google applications using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). It describes the steps a user takes to log into a Google application through a partner-operated SSO service, including SAML requests and responses being passed between the partner SSO, user's browser, and Google.
Managing credentials on-premise and in the cloud.
With over 12 million users worldwide, Hitachi ID Password Manager is the leading credential management solution. It lowers IT support cost and improves user service by eliminating problems and diverting resolution to self-service.
Password Manager includes password synchronization, single sign-on and self-service password reset.
http://hitachi-id.com/password-manager/
This document discusses various authentication techniques for web applications and their security issues. It provides an overview of traditional techniques like HTTP Basic authentication and digest authentication. It also covers Windows integrated authentication, structure-based authentication and CAPTCHAs. The document conducts a literature review of previous work analyzing authentication methods and security challenges. It then discusses the JSON web token authentication scheme as an improvement over older techniques that addresses issues like scalability and third party access.
The Essentials | Privileged Access ManagementRyan Gallavin
SSH is nearly ubiquitous in today’s enterprises, and is the predominant tool for managing unix and linux servers, and the applications and data that they host. Poor practices around the deployment and management of the SSH infrastructure could easily leave your enterprise vulnerable to a breach. Are you in control?
This document summarizes a research paper on M-Pass, a proposed user authentication protocol that aims to prevent password stealing and reuse attacks. M-Pass leverages cell phones and SMS to authenticate users on untrusted devices without requiring them to enter passwords. It involves a registration phase where users register with a website and encrypt a password with their phone number. For login, users provide their username and long-term phone password, and the website generates a one-time password using a secret credential. The protocol aims to eliminate the need to remember multiple passwords by using the phone for authentication across websites. Evaluation shows registration and login times average around 4 and 3.5 minutes respectively. The researchers conclude M-Pass can prevent password stealing and reuse
Course Session Outline - Internal control in Information SystemTheodore Le
The document discusses various aspects of information security including threats, risks, and controls. It begins by outlining common security threats like hackers, computer viruses, and errors that can disrupt organizations. It then examines potential impacts of security incidents like loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. Examples are given around different levels of damage from a hacker attacking a credit card company. The rest of the document covers internal controls for information systems, including components like control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring. Specific control techniques are introduced like general controls, application controls, fault tolerance, and intrusion detection systems. The document concludes with discussing setting up group projects to further explore these security topics.
The document discusses the risks of uncontrolled privileged access and advocates for implementing strong authentication using smart cards for privileged users. Privileged accounts currently rely on weak password authentication which can enable accidental or intentional data breaches. Smart cards provide multi-factor authentication that is more secure and easy for administrators to use. The document outlines how smart cards can be deployed and managed to control privileged access across an enterprise network.
Combat Passwords on Post-Its with Multi-Factor Authentication for IBM iPrecisely
Stories of data breaches caused by stolen or guessed passwords have increased scrutiny around login practices. Requiring even more complex passwords is not recommended as users struggle to remember them – and write them down.
Multi-factor authentication has become best practice for strengthening login security and is now required by regulations such as the latest PCI Data Security Standard, the New York Department of Financial Services’ Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) and more. Watch this webinar to learn how multi-factor authentication can be implemented for IBM i users to strengthen security and meet compliance requirements.
You’ll learn:
• What true multi-factor authentication really is
• Authentication options and tradeoffs
• Tips on implementing multi-factor authentication for IBM i
The document contains tables showing the growth of bacteria populations over time under different scenarios. In each scenario, the bacteria multiply at regular time intervals:
- In the first scenario, the bacteria doubles every hour, resulting in populations of 10, 20, 40, 80 at times 0, 1, 2, 3 hours.
- In the second, the bacteria increases by a factor of 1.4142135 every half hour, matching the first scenario's results at whole hour intervals.
- In the third scenario, the bacteria doubles every quarter hour, again matching the first scenario's whole hour results.
The algebraic rules shown confirm that all three scenarios produce identical bacterial population results at whole hour time intervals, demonstrating
The document discusses using social media for libraries, noting that over 850 million people use social media as a news source and search tool. It suggests libraries can use social media as a marketing, outreach, and feedback tool to engage users and raise the library's profile. As examples, it provides links to the award-winning social media accounts for Swansea Libraries in Wales and Orkney Library in Scotland.
Effective leadership development can drive business success by:
1) Building leadership capability at all levels through programs that develop skills in self-awareness, best practices, and applying learning in the workplace.
2) Case studies show that leadership programs leading to promotions, innovation, and engagement have provided returns through growth and retention.
3) While impact may be longer term by changing behaviors, leadership development is an essential investment for visionary leaders to outperform competitors through new ideas.
The document contains various charts and graphs showing data related to music preferences, factory production and scrap rates, education levels and income, monthly expenses, grain and fast food sales, city populations, Red Cross expenses over time, a running workout program, relationship between study time and exam grades, and average monthly temperatures in Chico, California. The charts present numerical and statistical data across various topics providing an overview of trends, comparisons, and relationships within the data.
Sellick Partnership is a recruitment agency that focuses on placing temporary, contract, and permanent legal staff across the UK. They pride themselves on their highly consultative approach and have built strong relationships with 88% of clients returning repeatedly. The agency works to exceed expectations by recognizing individual goals and placing candidates across public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in various legal roles. Testimonials praise their understanding of the legal market and ability to find good matches for clients' needs.
The document discusses the benefits of exercise for mental health. Regular physical activity can help reduce anxiety and depression and improve mood and cognitive function. Exercise causes chemical changes in the brain that may help protect against mental illness and improve symptoms.
Exchange is the primary data store and means of communication for all levels within the organization. The ability to audit and report in detail Exchange change events that take place on a daily basis helps maintain security and sustain compliance. Implementing an effective auditing strategy for MS Exchange is a necessity to secure and maintain this critical business asset. This whitepaper outlines not only the reasons for having an Exchange auditing procedure in place but also those must-have qualities of any successful MS Exchange auditing effort.
The document provides an update on the 2012 housing and lending markets. It finds that while the US economy continues to improve and jobs growth remains positive, the recovery is slowing. Housing inventory and home prices are flattening out, and the recovery momentum has weakened, suggesting it will take continued time for the market to fully rebound. Overall, the analysis concludes the housing bottom may be forming but the recovery remains weak.
This document outlines a course map for mathematics courses, including prerequisites, developmental courses, college-level introductory courses, precalculus sequences, advanced courses, special placements, honors courses, and online homework systems. It provides information on placement into courses based on Combined CPT and SAT math scores and Regents exam scores. It also lists faculty web pages and resources available in the virtual learning commons.
The document discusses which type of animal would make the best pet: a shark, Pokemon, or dinosaur. A shark is an unusual choice for a pet since it lives in water and could be dangerous. Pokemon are fictional creatures from video games and anime shows, so they are not real animals that could be pets. Dinosaurs went extinct long ago, so having one as a pet is not possible either.
This document summarizes a study that evaluated the yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) as a potential source of protein for human consumption. The study involved growing yellow mealworms of different sizes in a medium of wheat flour and brewer's yeast. Results showed that younger larvae grew slowly initially while older larvae lost weight, but after an adjustment period, younger larvae increased in weight while older larvae entered the pupal stage. Larvae harvested at 100-110 mg provided the most efficient production. Nutritional analysis found the mealworms to contain high levels of protein and fat similar to other protein sources. The study concluded that yellow mealworms show promise as an alternative protein source for humans.
Summarizes the problems users experience when managing too many passwords. It describes the various approaches available to organizations to reduce the password burden on users and to improve the security of their authentication systems.
Netreo whitepaper 5 ways to avoid it management becoming shelfwarePeter Reynolds
This document provides 5 ways to keep IT management software from becoming shelfware or unused after purchase. The top reasons software becomes shelfware are: 1) Too many unnecessary alerts that are ignored; 2) Having to access information from multiple sources; 3) Complex interfaces that are difficult to use; 4) High maintenance and administration needs; 5) Purchasing more licenses than needed. The document recommends focusing on minimizing unnecessary alerts, providing a single dashboard, simplifying the interface, reducing administration through automation, and subscription-based purchasing to avoid shelfware.
Identity management is the combination of business process and technology used to manage data on IT systems and applications about users. Managed data includes user objects, identity attributes, security entitlements and authentication factors.
This document defines the components of identity management, starting with the underlying business challenges of managing user identities and entitlements across multiple systems and applications. Identity management functions are defined in the context of these challenges.
Self-service functionality can assist with password resets, recoveries and account unlocks. By using multiple security questions and answers functionality PortalGuard is able to perform all resets directly from the end-user's machine if desired. This also includes Offline Mode, which allows the forgotten password to be shown to roaming users in clear text when they are offline, so as to continue work without returning to the office.
Tutorial: http://pg.portalguard.com/self-service_password_reset_tutorial 1
Centralized Self-service Password Reset: From the Web and Windows DesktopPortalGuard
For companies of all sizes, the task of supporting users can prove to be taxing on the IT staff, especially the Help Desk and Administrators. Most studies show the cost of pass-word resets can range from $25 to $75 per incident and make up around 30 percent or more of Help Desk calls. This provides ample reason and demand for password reset and recovery tools which empower the user. By allowing users to self-service their own ac-count and password management needs, organizations can effectively offer 24/7 access and maintain productivity.
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5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Consider Strong Authentication!Caroline Johnson
User authentication is a process that allows a website, application, or device to verify the identity of its users. The main purpose of user authentication is to ensure that no third-party or unknown user has access to your account.
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The Role of Password Management in Achieving CompliancePortalGuard
Password management solutions have had a dramatic impact on organiza-tions; from eliminating password-related Help Desk calls to simplifying end-user access, password management has gone beyond tightening security to delivering improvements to the bottom line. Now, with the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other regulations, password management has proven to be a strategic component for successful compliance.
http://www.portalguard.com
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The document discusses key questions and considerations around IT governance. It covers topics such as computer systems, processes and users, service providers, computing procedures, productivity, computing and communications system planning, internal audits, and maintaining a secure environment. The document provides questions to assess each area and determine if improvements are needed. It also advertises that paid documents covering IT governance procedures are available from the legal consultants.
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5 Reasons to Always Keep an Eye on Privileged Business AccountsAnayaGrewal
In today’s digital world, monitoring privileged accounts is paramount to ensuring your business isn’t exposed to cyberattacks. Fortunately, there are many software development tracking options available to give you visibility into your organization’s most important accounts and activities.
With tools like privileged activity monitoring and privileged user monitoring, you can identify when an account has been used or accessed by someone not authorized for that access. And that information can ultimately save your company from a serious breach and/or compliance issue down the road.
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Identity management can be error-prone, time and resource-consuming and can lead to security and compliance issues due to the lack of control in native tools.
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UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 6DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 6. In this session, we will cover Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI.
UiPath Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI webinar offers an in-depth exploration of leveraging cutting-edge technologies for test automation within the UiPath platform. Attendees will delve into the integration of generative AI, a test automation solution, with Open AI advanced natural language processing capabilities.
Throughout the session, participants will discover how this synergy empowers testers to automate repetitive tasks, enhance testing accuracy, and expedite the software testing life cycle. Topics covered include the seamless integration process, practical use cases, and the benefits of harnessing AI-driven automation for UiPath testing initiatives. By attending this webinar, testers, and automation professionals can gain valuable insights into harnessing the power of AI to optimize their test automation workflows within the UiPath ecosystem, ultimately driving efficiency and quality in software development processes.
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into integrating generative AI.
2. Understanding how this integration enhances test automation within the UiPath platform
3. Practical demonstrations
4. Exploration of real-world use cases illustrating the benefits of AI-driven test automation for UiPath
Topics covered:
What is generative AI
Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI.
UiPath integration with generative AI
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
3. The Business Case for Account Lockout Management
CONTENTS
CONTENTS 1
INTRODUCTION 2
BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF ACCOUNT LOCKOUTS 3
THE CHALLENGE OF ACCOUNT LOCKOUT MANAGEMENT 4
THE COST OF ACCOUNT LOCKOUT 5
AUTOMATED SOLUTION APPROACH 6
CALCULATING RETURN ON INVESTMENT 7
CONCLUSION 8
ABOUT NETWRIX CORPORATION 9
NOTES 10
1 of 10
4. White Paper
INTRODUCTION
How many help desk calls you get from users asking to reset their passwords? How
much you spend on administrative staff just to handle account lockout issues? Loss of
productivity, lots of frustrated users, huge administrative burden are just some of
inevitable implications of implementing a strong password policy which is business
critical to succeed today. You‘re not alone – recent research shows, in most
organizations, more than 30% of helpdesk activity caused by account lockout issues. So,
should you just give up to user complaints or there is a better way to keep up strong
security requirements and effectively resolve account lockouts at the same time? Of
course you can simplify password policies and reduce costs associated with your
helpdesk, allowing easy to remember, non-secure passwords which never expire. But
obviously, such practices make enterprise more vulnerable and introduce some other
undesired effects.
This white paper covers the account lockout management process and introduces new
cost-effective workflows of account lockout resolution, describing significant ROI
enterprises can achieve through the use of automated management solutions.
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5. The Business Case for Account Lockout Management
BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF ACCOUNT
LOCKOUTS
Account lockout is the process of automatically disabling (―locking‖) a user account based
on certain criteria such as too many failed logon attempts. The purpose behind account
lockout is to prevent attackers from brute-force attempts to guess a user's password -
too many bad guesses and you're locked out.
On the one hand, account lockout provides a good base for implementing secure
password policies as it makes quite impossible for an attacker to perform password
guessing (also known as brute-force) attacks against user account passwords. Typical
value for Account Lockout Policy (suggested by Microsoft in their Account Lockout Best
Practices white paper1) automatically locks user accounts after 10 invalid logon attempts,
preventing further logons for 30 minutes. Then after 30 minutes elapse, the attacker
gets another 10 attempts, but obviously it will take thousands of years to successfully
crack the password. Combined with Password Policy, namely ‗Maximum Password Age‘
setting, which forces users to change password periodically (e.g. every 30 days), this
creates virtually bullet-proof password security.
On the other hand, imagine the situation when user returns from long vacation and tries
to remember his or her password, doing a number of guesses, and exceeds given
number of attempts. Or the user can just mistype password 10 times at once simply
because he hasn‘t had his coffee yet. This makes account locked out and follows with a
call to helpdesk, consuming expensive business resources, both in terms of the time
spent resolving this issue and the loss of employee productivity. Password expiration
brings another challenge – once password is changed, it gets updated in Active
Directory, but nowhere else. What does it mean? Ideally, users change their passwords
in the beginning of business day, during first logon. But in practice passwords expire at
any time and the old password still remains in use in many places by active user
sessions, batch processes, mapped network drives and others. Most complicated
scenarios occurs when critical system services and scheduled tasks continue to use stale
credentials constantly making their account locked out without giving any visual
indication – the applications start behaving unpredictably and services will eventually fail.
1
White paper is available at the following URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8c8e0d90-
a13b-4977-a4fc-3e2b67e3748e&DisplayLang=en
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6. White Paper
THE CHALLENGE OF ACCOUNT LOCKOUT
MANAGEMENT
Needless to say, account lockout is a must have feature for all modern networks and
failing to implement that you are putting your entire organization‘s security at big risk.
But how to deal with all complications related to account lockout issues?
Let‘s first divide common reasons for account lockouts into major categories and then
describe typical workflows. Categories are:
1) Human factor - user mistyped or forgot his or her password.
2) Machine factor - system services, background applications and similar objects that
use stale credentials.
3) External factor - brute-force attacks attempting to break your network security.
4) Other reasons - e.g. failure of Active Directory replication.
Human Factor
Mistyped or forgotten password is the most common scenario, which happens all the
time and creates many helpdesk tickets, however is quite straightforward to resolve:
helpdesk person obtains account name from user, asks some verification questions (e.g.
mother‘s maiden name or place of birth) and first tries to unlock the account, in case the
user can still remember the password. If the user can‘t remember, helpdesk person sets
new temporary password, user logs on and prompted for new password by the system.
Tricky part here is a secret question/answer pair – special database shall be maintained
which associates user accounts and their secrets. If you don‘t implement verification
procedure, you lose security, since potentially anyone can contact helpdesk, request
password reset and easily logon to the network, gaining access to confidential business
data. User verification is also a part of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance with regards to
secure organization environment.
Machine Factor
As stated above, such issues arise when services and applications continue to use old
password after it was changed because of password expiration policy requirements. New
password must be applied to every place where account is referred, failing to do this
results in account lockout, since programs accessing protected resources request
authentication on domain controllers using old credentials and domain controllers enforce
lockout policy. Other ways account can get locked out include:
- Stale logon credentials cached by Windows.
- Scheduled tasks setup under stale credentials.
- Network shares mapped under stale credentials.
- Disconnected terminal service sessions that use stale credentials.
- Users logging into multiple computers at once and changing password on one of
them.
Resolution of account lockout in this scenario is much more complex and usually involves
routine checking of every possible object which might be causing account lockout. Server
administrators must update all references manually (e.g. set new password for service
accounts and scheduled tasks, remap network drives, reset terminal sessions etc) and
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7. The Business Case for Account Lockout Management
then unlock the account in question. Note this way may require multiple iterations to fix
all possible references.
External Factor
Brute-force attacks can pursue two possible targets: password cracking and logon
prevention. In the first case, the attacker performs sequential password guessing,
usually dictionary-based, which works for weak passwords, such as common cat and dog
names, year of birth and some other typical words which people tend to use for
passwords. In the latter case the attacker doesn‘t care for the user‘s password, but
rather interested in preventing the user from logging on to the network or disrupting
operation of some business-critical service, to create denial of service (DoS) condition.
These examples may seem somewhat contrived since they assume an attacker has
physical access to the network, however new wireless technologies can provide perfect
base for this.
Typical responses to such attacks include firewall-based blocking of IP addresses, MAC
addresses and SSIDs of wireless devices.
Other Reasons
Active Directory is a fail-safe distributed environment which involves usage of multiple
authentication points (domain controllers). Along with many benefits this architecture
introduces some weak points related to domain data replication and critical point here is
account passwords. Whenever password is changed after expiration, it must replicated to
all domain controllers within organization, otherwise authentication will work
inconsistently – some DCs will use new passwords while others continue to use old ones.
First thing to consider is latency - replication is not instant, especially when it comes to
multiple AD sites. Another thing is possible replication failures – network links break from
time to time, domain controllers become temporarily unavailable and many other
reasons can prevent replication to occur timely and properly.
THE COST OF ACCOUNT LOCKOUT
Even the most efficient organization can spend too much on account lockout
management. Typically almost one third of time is spent by IT departments for resolution
of account lockouts and password issues. The time spent by IT personnel is only the top
of the iceberg, as soon as lost user productivity and service downtime are taken into
consideration.
It can be difficult to calculate exact cost of a single account lockout resolution, since it
depends on organization and types of accounts affected. For user accounts, assuming
that every incident takes 1 hour in average, both for IT person (time needed for
investigation and unlocking) and user itself (lost productivity), the cost can be $50-$100
per incident. The most expensive part is service accounts – the cost of their lockout can
vary from few hundreds to many thousands of dollars, depending on number of users
affected by service downtime. But even in the best case, given the lowest numbers
possible, it becomes evident that automated account lockout management solutions can
quickly bring significant benefits and dramatically reduce associated costs.
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8. White Paper
AUTOMATED SOLUTION APPROACH
Is there any way of minimizing expenses associated with account lockout management?
The answer to this question is automation - specialized software solution capable of
doing most routine work related to account lockouts - detection, identification of reason
and resolution. Combined with improved helpdesk workflow, this can reduce
implementation costs dramatically. Primary goal of such solutions is to simplify common
tasks performed by helpdesk personnel and decrease average time required to resolve
account lockouts.
Typical non-automated resolution workflow usually looks like this:
1. User receives 'account locked out' error and calls helpdesk.
2. Helpdesk verifies user, unlocks the account, and optionally resets password.
Unlock and reset operations must be done on domain controller closest to the
user, otherwise the account could be locked out once again.
3. If the problem persists, user calls helpdesk once again and asks for further
investigation.
4. Helpdesk person performs routine lookup of possible sources of account
references, which might be causing the account to become locked and asks user to
fix them.
5. After checking all account references, helpdesk person unlocks the account.
6. If the problem persists anyway, steps 4 and 5 repeated until all causes are fixed.
For example, if task scheduled to run weekly uses stale credentials, it will cause
account to become locked out each week until updated with new password.
Improved automated workflow would look like this:
1. Helpdesk personnel are automatically notified when account is being locked out,
even before user picks up the phone.
2. Software performs routine scan of account references and reports this information
to responsible helpdesk person.
3. User calls helpdesk and, after verification, helpdesk person either provides a list of
account references which need to be fixed and/or performs reset password/unlock
operation (solution automatically does this on closest domain controller to avoid
replication issues).
Apparently, improved workflow includes fewer steps, takes less time to complete and has
one important advantage – account lockouts are handled pro-actively – helpdesk team
start resolving them even before frustrated user gives a call. Total number of lockouts
decreases significantly, since all possible lockout reasons get eliminated at once, without
any further reoccurrences.
Additional benefit of specialized solution will be simplicity of user interface with minimal
learning curve, to avoid hiring expensive high-skilled IT personnel or educate helpdesk
personnel to use complex administrative tools like Active Directory Users and Computers
and many other programs required to perform this task. They will use only one tool, easy
to use and narrowed down to the problem area. Good solution should also allow web-
based helpdesk access, which is a simple to deploy and very cost-effective approach.
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9. The Business Case for Account Lockout Management
CALCULATING RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Let‘s estimate ROI for automated account lockout management solution based on most
optimistic numbers for 1000-user company as an example.
ASSUMPTIONS
Number of regular users 1000
Number of IS/IT employees 4
Average IS/IT employee salary / hour $25
Average number of account lockouts for each user per year 4
Time needed to resolve account lockout without automated 20
solution (in minutes)
Time needed to resolve account lockout by means of 5
automated solution (in minutes)
Cost of automated solution (per admin user) $300
COSTS
Annual cost w/o automation $33’000
Annual cost with automation $8'300
Software investment $1’200
ROI ANALYSIS
1 Year ROI / Savings $23’500
3 Year ROI / Savings $70’500
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10. White Paper
CONCLUSION
On the one hand, account lockout policy is a must have requirement for most
organizations, on the other hand account lockout resolution is a very challenging task,
which consumes many IT resources and introduces additional costs. The benefit for
implementing an automated account lockout resolution is significant. Improved
management workflow combined with specialized software solution reduces costs, brings
security enhancements and ensures compliance.
NetWrix Corporation offers the Account Lockout Examiner to address major account
lockout challenges, including ones described in this white paper. Please visit
www.netwrix.com to learn how this product can meet requirements of your organization
and request your free evaluation.
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11. The Business Case for Account Lockout Management
ABOUT NETWRIX Corporation
Established in 2006, NetWrix Corporation provides innovative and cost-effective solutions
that simplify and automate systems management and compliance. With in-depth
knowledge and experience in managing IT environments of all sizes, the company
delivers solutions to meet complicated business requirements while fulfilling the highest
expectations of IT professionals. NetWrix Corporation is a privately held company
headquartered in Paramus, New Jersey.
Contacting NetWrix
Toll-free Phone: 888.638.9749
Web site: www.netwrix.com
Address: 140 E. Ridgewood Ave
Suite 415 South Tower
Paramus, NJ 07652
Contacting NetWrix Support
Technical support is available to customers who have a trial version of a NetWrix product
or who have purchased a commercial version and have a valid maintenance contract.
Contact NetWrix Support at http://www.netwrix.com/support.
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