Cyberattacks are increasingly sophisticated, making traditional digital security tools insufficient to protect organizations from malicious actors.

In 2015, Gartner defined a category of solutions called User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA).
Its big advantage is monitoring suspicious behaviors of human users and devices in corporate networks through algorithms and machine learning, determining if there are threats and issuing alerts to security teams.

In this article, we explain more about this subject, which is extremely important for the security of your company. To facilitate your reading, we divided our text into the following topics:

• What Is User and Entity Behavior Analytics?
• How Does UEBA Work?
• What Are Its Three Pillars?
• What Are the Benefits of UEBA?
• Disadvantages of User and Entity Behavior Analytics
• Best Practices for User and Entity Behavior Analytics
• What Is the Difference Between SIEM and UEBA?
• UEBA X NTA
• What Is UBA and What Is It For?
• What Is the Difference Between UBA and UEBA?
• senhasegura UEBA Solution
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

What Is User and Entity Behavior Analytics?

User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) is a digital security feature that uses algorithms and machine learning to identify abnormal behaviors in users, routers, servers, and endpoints of a network.

In practice, this technology allows alerting IT administrators about anomalies and automatically disconnecting users with unusual behavior from the network, as it monitors human and machine behavior.

With this, it helps detect people and equipment that could compromise an organization’s system, strengthening its digital security and sovereignty.

How Does UEBA Work?

To ensure the effectiveness of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, it is necessary to implement this feature in the organization’s infrastructure, which can be targeted by malicious attackers.

Moreover, many corporations ask their employees to install this solution on their home routers to avoid risks. This is because the professional may have to access the corporate network using their own router, generating security vulnerabilities.

It is very simple to understand how UEBA works. Let’s imagine an unauthorized user steals an employee’s credentials and accesses the network. This does not make them capable of imitating this employee’s usual behavior.

Therefore, UEBA issues alerts, which reveal suspicious behavior to IT administrators. A UEBA solution has three essential elements. They are analytics, integration, and presentation.

Analytics collects and organizes data about the behavior of human users and entities to determine what should be considered normal. Through this system, profiles are created of how each user behaves when accessing the network. Thus, one can develop models that allow the identification of suspicious behavior.

With the growth and evolution of corporations, it becomes necessary to integrate UEBA into other security systems. Through proper integration, UEBA solutions compare information collected from different sources, which optimizes the system.

Finally, the presentation involves how User and Entity Behavior Analytics responds to abnormal behaviors. It depends on what is defined by the company.

Some UEBA systems are configured to simply create an alert, suggesting an investigation for IT administrators. Others are configured to perform additional actions, such as disconnecting an employee with abnormal behavior.

What Are Its Three Pillars?

According to Gartner, a UEBA solution has three pillars:

• Use cases;
• Data sources; and
• Analytical methods.

Use cases refer to the behavior of human or machine users reported by User and Entity Behavior Analytics, which monitors, identifies, and alerts about anomalies. Unlike systems that perform specialized analysis, UEBA technology needs to be relevant to different use cases.

When we talk about data sources, we refer to repositories of information that feed into UEBA, since User and Entity Behavior Analytics does not collect data directly from IT environments.

Analytical methods are what enable UEBA to identify abnormal behavior. They include threat signatures, statistical models, rules, and machine learning.

What Are the Benefits of UEBA?

Traditional security solutions have proven ineffective at protecting corporations from sophisticated cyberattacks, which has boosted the rise of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, as it allows one to identify even the smallest of unusual behaviors.
Its main benefits include:

Broad Approach to Cyberattacks

In addition to monitoring the behavior of human users, UEBA monitors devices such as endpoints, servers, and routers, which are often targeted by malicious attackers.

Thus, User and Entity Behavior Analytics detects a wide variety of cyberattacks, including insider threats, compromised accounts, brute force attacks, and DDoS.

Operational Efficiency

With the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, UEBA solutions can replace the workforce of IT employees, which represents a benefit for corporations and security teams.

Nevertheless, User and Entity Behavior Analytics does not generate a drastic reduction in IT staff, especially in larger organizations, due to the complexity of security requirements, which require skilled people to configure systems and guide employees.

These professionals may also be responsible for investigating abnormal behaviors if the company decides to investigate them before taking measures.

In addition, IT analysts can develop other projects, working strategically for business growth.

Cost Reduction

With the reduction of the IT team, an organization consequently reduces costs. Also, by detecting abnormal behavior and preventing cyberattacks, companies prevent losses by stopping activities.
They also avoid having their customers’ and employees’ data exposed, which could result in fines due to data protection laws.

Risk Reduction

With professionals connected to corporate networks, including in a home environment, vulnerabilities caused by cyber threats increase gradually, making protection solutions in silos insufficient.

For IT teams, it is impossible to manually monitor all devices in use. Hence the perks of UEBA solutions.
It is worth mentioning that UEBA resources are not limited to ensuring information security. They also enable compliance with security standards for regulated industries, avoiding problems that could lead to lawsuits and fines for companies, as previously mentioned.

Disadvantages of User and Entity Behavior Analytics

The UEBA solutions also have some negative aspects. The first one is its high price, which can make this technology inaccessible to small and medium-sized businesses.

Another disadvantage of User and Entity Behavior Analytics is the slow deployment. Although many vendors claim this system can be deployed in a short time, Gartner customers say that in simple use cases, it can take three to six months, and in complex situations, it can take up to 18 months.

In addition, the view UEBA offers over network behaviors is restricted as its logs are enabled on a small part of a corporation’s network.

It is also important to keep in mind UEBA needs third-party logs to work. Failures in the generation of these logs impact its function.

Best Practices for User and Entity Behavior Analytics

User and Entity Behavior Analytics is designed to identify abnormal behaviors of humans and machines.
However, this solution should not be used in isolation but associated with other monitoring systems, in order to improve the digital security of an organization. Other best practices for companies using UEBA resources are:

• Avoiding false alerts and overloading of generated data, taking advantage of big data resources, and using machine learning and statistical analysis;
• Creating security policies taking into account insider and external threats;
  Ensuring that only information security professionals receive alerts from UEBA; and
• Not underestimating the risks posed by unprivileged user accounts, as hackers can increase privileges to gain access to sensitive systems.

What Is the Difference Between SIEM and UEBA?

Like UEBA, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features tools that make it possible to improve information security through normal patterns and suspicious behaviors.

The notable difference is that User and Entity Behavior Analytics uses data from human and machine user behavior to define what is normal.

Because SIEM is rule-based, malicious actors can circumvent these guidelines to attack a corporation. Also, SIEM detects threats that happen in real-time, but it is inefficient to prevent sophisticated attacks performed over months or years.

UEBA, on the other hand, is not based on rules, but on risk-scoring techniques and algorithms, which make it possible to detect abnormal behavior over a much longer period.

UEBA X NTA

Like UEBA, Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions are based on machine learning, advanced analytics, and security rules, and monitor user behavior on corporate networks. Moreover, it detects suspicious actions and threats.

However, this technology has other advantages. One is to allow companies to visualize everything that happens on their network, including in the context of a cyberattack. NTA also makes it possible to create network profiles and devices, with easy deployment.

We emphasize these two solutions should be used in a complementary way, since NTA alone does not track local events, nor detect advanced security problems.

What Is UBA and What Is It For?

User Behavior Analytics (UBA) is a technology that allows one to identify unusual or abnormal behaviors, detect intrusions, and minimize their consequences.

Through UBA solutions, one can discover an invasion promoted by cybercriminals or find out if an employee is misusing the data to which they have access.

The focus of User Behavior Analytics is on user analytics, their accounts, and identity, not machine behavior.

What Is the Difference Between UBA and UEBA?

The difference between UBA and UEBA is that, in the first case, we refer to a solution that monitors human users to detect any anomalies in their behavior.

The extra “e” in UEBA extends monitoring to machine entities such as routers, servers, endpoints, and devices in general.

The acronym was updated in 2017 by Gartner to show that in addition to tracking human users, it is essential to identify threats related to devices and applications.

senhasegura UEBA Solution

senhasegura has a UEBA solution embedded in its PAM security platform, which allows one to monitor the behavior of human and machine users automatically.

This technology features a self-learning mechanism to identify and respond to changes in users’ behavior patterns and access profiles.

Some of the main characteristics are:

• Analysis of user session based on behavioral history;
• Identification of accesses and check of suspects by a series of criteria;
• Identification of unusual behavior with abnormality alerts for SIEM/SYSLOG;
• Detailed dashboards with a visual representation of incidents and threats, which allow a security team to act quickly;
• Algorithms are continuously adjusted to user behavior.

Its benefits include:

• Restriction of privilege abuse;
• Fast detection of attacks and compromised accounts;
• Control over the user’s administrative actions;
• Automatic response to suspected credential theft.

About senhasegura

We, from senhasegura, are part of the group of information security companies MT4 Tecnologia, founded in 2001, and we aim to provide digital sovereignty to our customers through the control of privileged actions and data.

With this, we prevent data leaks and theft, as we manage privileged permissions before, during, and after access through machine automation. We work to:

Optimizing the performance of companies, avoiding interruption of operations;
Performing automatic audits on the use of permissions;
Auditing privileged changes to detect abuse of privilege automatically;
Providing advanced solutions with the PAM Security Platform;
Reducing cyber threats; and
Bringing the organizations that hire us into compliance with audit requirements and standards such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Conclusion

In this article, you saw that:

• User and Entity Behavior Analytics uses algorithms and machine learning to identify abnormal behaviors in users, whether they are humans or machine entities;
• This solution allows alerting IT administrators about anomalies and automatically disconnecting users with unusual network behavior;
• To ensure the effectiveness of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, it is necessary to install this feature on the organization’s and employees’ devices;
• A UEBA solution has three essential elements. They are analytics, integration, and presentation;
• According to Gartner, a UEBA solution also has three pillars: the use cases, the data sources, and the analytical methods;
• The benefits of UEBA include: a broad approach to cyberattacks, reduction of human labor, cost reduction, and risk reduction;
• Among its negative aspects, the high price and slow deployment stand out;
• The creation of security policies that take into account insider and external threats is among the best practices in the use of UEBA solutions;
• It is also recommended to consider the risks presented by users without privileges;
  SIEM differs from UEBA because it is rule-based and detects only threats that occur in real-time.
  NTA allows organizations to view all the activities that occur on their network, including in the context of a cyberattack, and enables the creation of network profiles and devices, with easy deployment;
• The difference between UBA and UEBA is that the first provides for the monitoring of human users and, in the second case, it is extended to machines.

On the last March 7th, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a new emergency amendment requiring regulated airlines and airports to increase their capacity to face cyber attacks. The measure was taken less than a week after the United States government announced its national cyber security strategy, following similar requirements directed at freight and passenger rail carriers.

According to the issued statement, TSA’s priority is to protect the United States transportation system, working collaboratively with stakeholders and offering safe, secure, and efficient travel. This was necessary due to hackers who have attacked the aviation industry using different invasion methods.

In July 2022, American Airlines was a victim of a phishing attack, granting unauthorized access to its IT environment. In addition, various airports in the United States were targeted by DDoS attacks in October of the same year.

For this reason, regulated entities affected by the TSA must promote the following actions:

• Develop network segmentation policies and controls, ensuring that operational technology systems continue to function securely in case of a compromise of IT;
• Create access control measures, protecting critical systems from unauthorized access;
• Implement continuous monitoring and detection policies and procedures to identify and respond to cyber security threats and anomalies; and
• Reduce the risks of exploitation of uncorrected systems by applying security patches and updates on operating systems, applications, drivers, and firmware through a risk-based methodology.

Previously imposed requirements for aircraft operators and airports include establishing a cyber security point of contact, developing and adopting a cyber security incident response plan, conducting a cyber security vulnerability assessment, and reporting significant cyber security incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the new amendment issued by the TSA is their latest effort to ensure that transportation operators improve their ability to address cyber threats. In this article, we covered its goals and importance.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the world ended 2020 with 300 billion passwords to protect. And the trend shows this number will increase dramatically. Email accounts (personal and professional), banking services, corporate systems, devices, and applications are some examples that require authentication through passwords. And with the increase in the number of data leaks, it is easy to find compromised credentials on forums on the dark web being sold for pennies.

And yes, we know that it is not easy to manage so many passwords. Even the most tech-savvy can struggle to manage and protect credentials in so many different environments. In times of personal data protection legislation, such as LGPD and GDPR, ensuring the protection of such data has become more than a security requirement – it is a business must.

Despite all the risks associated with their use, many users and companies use passwords that are easy to guess, such as numbers or sequential letters (123456 or abcdef). SolarWinds itself, the victim of a serious attack on its supply chain, was using the password solarwinds123 in its infrastructure. Certainly, your email password or mine is stronger than the one used by this American technology company.

So, on this World Password Day, here are some tips that should be considered by users to keep their data protected:

1. Use long and complex passwords. This prevents hackers from using techniques to guess them. However, just using complex passwords may not be enough to protect them from hackers.
2. Many devices are configured with default passwords. Change them immediately.
3. Avoid reusing your passwords on different accounts. Also, constantly check if you have already been the victim of a data leak through senhasegura Hunter. If so, change your passwords immediately.
4. Configure your passwords to be changed frequently. The ideal is at least every 3 months.
5. Do not write down, store in an easily accessible place, or share your passwords with others, thus avoiding unauthorized access.
6. Consider password management solutions, or even privileged access management (PAM), to manage the use of systems and devices.
7. Use Multiple-Factor Authentication (MFA) mechanisms to add a layer of security to your accounts.
8. Set up means of retrieving access, such as including phone numbers or emails.

Passwords are one of the oldest security mechanisms in the computing world and are also one of the main attackvectors by hackers. And in the “new normal” era, with increasing threats resulting from the covid-19 pandemic, it is vital that users be alert and properly protect their digital identities. In this way, we can avoid cyberattacks that can cause considerable damage not only to people, but also to companies. And on this World Password Day, remember: security starts with you!

On January 28, we celebrate the International Day for the Protection of Personal Data, or Data Privacy Day. This date leads us to reflect on the importance of laws that safeguard the correct processing of private information in the most diverse countries.

Data Privacy Day began with an educational action by the Council of Europe, which began celebrating the date in 2007, and two years later, in 2009, the United States followed.

The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to make people aware of best practices for protecting their personal data in the online environment, especially on social media.

Nowadays, the day is celebrated in 47 member states of the European Union, the United States, and countries such as Canada, Israel, and Brazil.

We prepared this article to address topics related to Data Privacy Day. To facilitate your understanding, we divided our text into the following topics:

• Data Protection Day: Background
• How Data Protection Laws Work
• About GDPR
• LGPD: Brazilian Data Protection Law
• How to Protect Personal Data
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

Data Protection Day: Background

In April 2006, the Council of Europe chose January 28 to celebrate Data Protection Day. The date was stipulated in reference to Convention 108, established on January 28, 1981, which addresses the automated processing of personal data.

This document was signed by all member states of the Council in the period, to ensure the fundamental right to privacy, including good data processing practices.

Currently, it is celebrated to make people aware of its importance, taking into account that, every day, organizations collect and process more information, which needs to be monitored so that the rights of data subjects are not put at risk.

How Data Protection Laws Work

Data protection laws establish personal information protection policies, determining how corporations should treat the data of their customers, employees, and business partners.
In practice, it is necessary for individuals, companies, and governmental organizations to apply certain rules related to how they handle this information, such as collection, processing, and storage, to ensure compliance with current legislation.
Moreover, companies wishing to conduct business with another country must respect the data protection laws present in both nations.

About GDPR

European standards regulating the use of personal information in electronic environments are contained in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires the responsible use of personal information.

Its mass spread is still recent. For this reason, not all countries in Europe have adhered to the GDPR.
On the other hand, countries that conduct commercial transactions with European nations should pay attention to the requirements of the Regulation, which addresses criteria such as consent of owners, notification of data breach to authorities, and users’ rights, including:

• Being notified about the collection and use of their personal information;
• Requesting a copy and details on how the collection is performed, what data is being collected, and who has access to it;
• Requiring rectification of incomplete or incorrect data;
• Demanding that their data be deleted within 30 days;
• Restricting their personal information;
• Ensuring the transfer of personal data securely;
• Opposing the way data is used (except for information used by legal authorities).

LGPD: Brazilian Data Protection Law

The General Data Protection Law (LGPD) is Brazilian legislation that has the function of protecting the personal information of citizens living in Brazil. It details what personal data is and what information should be prioritized when protecting it.
According to the LGPD, even companies based outside the country must respect the rules established by the legislation.

How to Protect Personal Data

It is possible to have control over your data through good practices that reinforce its security.
Here are some of them:

• Keep your devices’ software up-to-date to prevent threats that could damage your devices and compromise your personal data;
• Verify that web pages are reliable before inserting your data, making sure that addresses start with http:// or https:// and that the lock icon or security certificate is present;
• Avoid exposing personal information on social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, and set up your privacy in posts;
• Do a general scan to know what data is being shared and, if necessary, disable options;
• Do not enter sensitive data on public Wi-Fi networks;
• Use strong passwords. For this, you can combine uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. It is also important to avoid obvious things like names, phone numbers, and dates of birth.

About senhasegura

We, from senhasegura, are part of MT4 Tecnologia, a group of companies focusing on information security, founded in 2001 and operating in more than 50 countries.

Our commitment is to provide digital sovereignty and security to our clients, grant control over privileged actions and information, and prevent data breaches and leaks.

For this, we follow the lifecycle of privileged access management through machine automation, before, during, and after accesses. In short, our initiatives aim to:

• Avoid interruption of companies’ activities, which may impair their performance and profitability;
• Provide advanced PAM solutions;
• Automatically audit privileged changes in order to identify privilege abuses;
• Automatically audit the use of privileges;
• Reduce cyber threats; and
• Bring organizations into compliance with audit criteria and standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Conclusion

In this article, we have shown the importance of Data Protection Day and laws related to the preservation of personal information, in addition to some measures that can be adopted to protect sensitive data.
Was our content relevant to you? Then share it with someone also interested in the topic.

The IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report brought a lot of information that shows the importance of choosing a good cybersecurity project for your organization.

According to information extracted from this document which included interviews with more than 3,600 people working in companies that had their data violated, it was possible to find alarming conclusions.

First, 83% of the organizations surveyed suffered some kind of breach between March 2021 and March 2022. Also, 60% of these attacks increased prices for customers.

It has also been identified that 79% of critical infrastructure organizations have not implemented a zero-trust plan to prevent cyber threats, and 19% of violations occur due to a compromised business partner.

Faced with so many digital security gaps, it can be difficult to know where to start deploying a cybersecurity project. Therefore, we address this issue here. To facilitate your reading, we divided our text into topics. These are:

• About Cybersecurity
• Importance of Cybersecurity
• Cybersecurity Project: What Is It, and What Is Its Importance?
• What Are the Five Types of Cybersecurity?
• People, Processes, and Technologies: Crucial Elements for the Success of Every Cybersecurity Project
• Guidelines for Prioritizing Cybersecurity Projects within a Company
• Key Cyber Threats Faced by Companies
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

About Cybersecurity

When we talk about cybersecurity, we refer to a set of technologies, procedures, and methods used to prevent attacks on devices, programs, data, and networks, avoiding the activity of hackers and ensuring the privacy of a company’s data, which must be protected from insider and external threats and natural disasters.

However, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, digital transformation has brought several vulnerabilities, such as those related to remote work. As a result, there was a significant increase in data leaks, phishing emails, and account invasions.

Importance of Cybersecurity

Currently, processes in companies are migrating to the online world due to digital transformation, which can “facilitate” the loss of information of great importance to a business.

Thus, organizations need to invest in cybersecurity in order to ensure their operations and prevent threats, such as malware, viruses, and phishing.

One should also be aware that malicious attackers have been improving their techniques over time, so it is increasingly challenging to maintain data security and avoid compromised business.

Another novelty is data protection laws, which have been holding organizations accountable for the exposure of sensitive information from their customers, employees, and business partners, generating million-dollar sanctions.

In practice, these legislations have several requirements to be respected in order to avoid accidental or intentional data loss.

That is, investing in a good cybersecurity project is the recommended measure to avoid inconvenience, financial losses, loss of credibility, and closure of companies.

Cybersecurity Project: What Is It, and What Is Its Importance?

Cybersecurity projects are aimed at promoting digital security within any company. Its importance lies in the possibility of avoiding cyber threats, such as hacker invasions. It also contributes to the fact that errors -whether deliberate or not, of employees or third parties – have fewer impacts on the organization and reduce the possibility of losses, such as: loss of data, credibility, millionaire sanctions imposed by data protection laws, which can even cause the end of a business. And in small companies, this is even more crucial: according to a Cisco study, 60% of organizations affected by a cyberattack shut down operations within 6 months of the incident.

What Are the Five Types of Cybersecurity?

There are five types of cybersecurity. These are:

• Critical Infrastructure Security;
• Application Security;
• Network Security;
• Cloud Security; and
• Internet of Things (IoT) Security.

Check out each of them in detail below:

Critical Infrastructure Security

What Is It?
When talking about critical infrastructure security, we refer to the area that contemplates the security of systems, networks, and assets in industries that are essential to ensure the security of a country’s economy, health, and public services. These sectors include the chemical, communications, utilities, energy, and financial industries.

What Are the Challenges?
A major challenge for critical infrastructure is the security issues its systems present versus the limited protection features.

Application Security

What Is It?
Application security is essential as these programs have increasingly become targets for hackers. It consists of practices adopted to make them more secure, which occurs during their development and then after their implementation.

What Are the Challenges?
Ensuring application security requires tracking all the tools developed for these applications. It is also important to be aware of the future needs of a company, which may require software aimed at a more complex infrastructure.

Network Security

What Is It?
Network security is a term that refers to hardware and software solutions, as well as procedures aimed at protecting the network and data against cyberattacks. In practice, this concept includes network analysis, application security, access control, and antivirus software, among other factors.

What Are the Challenges?
The main challenge of network security is to maintain protection in increasingly complex structures, with a large volume of cyber threats and several functionalities used in corporations, which also represent new problems.

Cloud Security

What Is It?
As companies suffer the impact of digital transformation, they become more dependent on cloud solutions and need to adopt measures that ensure digital security in this context.

This is because outsourced providers may even be responsible for infrastructure management, but the accountability for any exposed data remains with the organization as well.

What Are the Challenges?
The challenges of companies adopting cloud solutions are related to the ability to meet security criteria in a dynamic environment, which can generate a lack of visibility in accessing and using data.

Internet of Things (IoT) Security

What Is It?
Internet of things security is associated with protecting devices connected directly to the cloud in gadgets, such as surveillance cameras. Its function is to protect designed devices, without taking into account aspects of cybersecurity and data protection.

What Are the Challenges?
The greatest challenge associated with the internet of things security refers to human activity. In practice, with the increased connectivity of these devices, it is necessary to instruct users on the change of default passwords and the need for updates, for example.

On the other hand, many users do not see these devices as targets of attacks and end up ignoring best security practices during their development and use.

People, Processes, and Technologies: Crucial Elements for the Success of Every Cybersecurity Project

An efficient cybersecurity project does not only involve the five types of digital security covered in the previous topic. It is also important to take other essential elements into account. They are: people, processes, and technology.

Here’s what you need to know about these aspects:

People

When it comes to cybersecurity projects, investing in cutting-edge technology is not enough. It is essential to train users to respect security protocols and ensure the protection of company data.

In practice, your employees increase security risks in a variety of ways.
Among them, we can highlight:

Clicking on URLs and Opening Suspicious Emails

It is necessary to make your employees aware of the risks involved in this practice and encourage the exclusion of emails from fake addresses to protect sensitive data.

Keeping the Same Password for a Long Period

To ensure the security of your company, employees’ passwords must be changed regularly. In addition, strong combinations should be used, and it is not recommended to reuse the same password in different services.

Due to the difficulty in memorizing so many passwords, we also recommend the use of a password vault, which will only require the memorization of a single code.

Personal Browsing

Many people use the devices of their companies for personal purposes, such as accessing social media, shopping, or paying bills. The big problem is that this behavior facilitates the work of malicious agents who want to collect information. Therefore, ask your employees to use their own devices, not corporate ones, for personal browsing.

Lack of Backups

Many people still fail to perform backups when finishing their tasks. Nevertheless, it is of paramount importance to back up the system files. So, employees should understand they need the help of the IT team with these functions.

Unattended Devices

Leaving devices on desks unattended and without blocking them is a fairly common practice, which can also cause damage to the security of a company. For this reason, it is essential to make employees aware of the importance of preserving data contained in these devices and maintaining their control.

Processes

Information security professionals use numerous processes to protect sensitive data. In practice, they need to identify and combat cyber threats, protecting information and responding to incidents.
Besides being implemented, these processes must be documented to save time and financial resources, and preserve customer confidence in cases of cyberattacks.

To counter cybersecurity-related risks, we recommend using the Cybersecurity Framework, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, after former U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2014.

Technology

After the deployment of security processes, it is indispensable to assess the tools available to avoid cyber threats.

For this, you must consider two types of technology: those that will help you prevent and combat attacks, such as antivirus, DNS filtering, and malware protection; and those that need protection, including computers, routers, and the cloud.

Previously, we could rely on security perimeters. Now, migration to cloud environments, remote work, and policies like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) have made it easier for hackers to work.

Guidelines for Prioritizing Cybersecurity Projects within a Company

A cybersecurity project is essential to not overwhelm IT staff with unnecessary work and to ensure the company’s ability to deal with a cyberattack.

However, to create and run your cybersecurity project, you must take some action. They are as follows:

Understanding Your Company’s Goals

Each organization has its strategic goals, which should guide the creation of the cybersecurity project. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the company’s vision and its business and cybersecurity strategies.

This information will provide a basis for the development of the project and will be a guide to gradually know if it is, in fact, efficient.

To understand the strategic goals of the company, read documents related to the subject and talk to top management to know their priorities.

Discovering the Reason Behind the Project

Cybersecurity projects can be motivated by several reasons, although all of them need to prevent and combat cyber incidents in common.

In practice, the project can be an awareness and training campaign on cybersecurity, the implementation or updating of a security system, compliance with new laws and regulations, etc.

Understanding what the project’s motivation is will certainly contribute to establishing priorities, directly impacting the company’s operations.

Determining the Value of the Project

Here, when we talk about value, we are referring to the importance of a cybersecurity project for an organization. That is, it is convenient to analyze how it will impact stakeholders and what its real importance is to the business. A project that adds great value must necessarily be prioritized.

Analyzing the Urgency

It is important to assess the urgency of the cybersecurity project to determine whether it should be prioritized or can wait. But remember that priorities can and should be modified as changes occur.

Detailing the Aspects that Affect the Project’s Success

A successful cybersecurity project depends on a number of factors, including budgets, deadlines, and return on investment (ROI), among other things.

On the other hand, it is often impossible to execute a project due to unfavorable circumstances. Therefore, it is advisable to know what can affect the project’s success in advance.

Ranking the Cybersecurity Project According to the Priority

With the information on goals, objectives, and possibilities of success in hand, it is time to establish an order of priorities through an overall classification, which can be score-based.

Defining How Many Projects Can Be Executed at a Time

Probably, the organization will not be able to assume all priority projects at once. Thus, the solution is to work on them in a phased manner, creating a queue of plans to execute.

Another recommendation is to run the fastest ones first and then the ones that require more time and effort.

Sharing Findings with Top Management

Before starting the cybersecurity project, it is essential to meet with leaders and share the information gathered. This is because the findings can serve as insights to change the order of priorities of the projects, requiring top management to be on board.

Working Flexibly

Working with cybersecurity projects requires flexibility, after all, priorities can be modified according to context. By the way, this occurred in most companies after the beginning of Covid-19, which accelerated the mass adoption of remote work and brought new demands to security teams.

Key Cyber Threats Faced by Companies

The following are the main cyber threats that should be considered by a cybersecurity project:

• Ransomware;
• Phishing;
• Attacks on Mobile Devices;
• Attacks Using QR Codes;
• Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks; and
• LotL and AVT Attacks.

See the detailed explanation of each of them below:

Ransomware

This type of cybercrime works like this: the attacker blocks a network or system and asks for millionaire amounts in exchange for the release of information, which may not be returned, but sold to other criminals. Due to the lack of efficient cybersecurity mechanisms in companies, this tactic is very common.

Phishing

Another common crime in the virtual environment is phishing, which consists of sending counterfeit emails, and pretending to be a legitimate organization. With this, malicious agents convince their victims to share personal information or take action to their benefit.

There are also some types of very sophisticated phishing attacks, such as very realistic audio recordings produced through artificial intelligence.

Attacks on Mobile Devices

With many people working remotely, the use of personal devices for corporate purposes and the use of corporate devices for personal purposes tend to occur more frequently.
This increases security vulnerabilities, especially in the face of malware attacks on devices.

Attacks Using QR Codes

Currently, cybercriminals use QR Codes to deploy malware applications, infecting their victims’ phones and stealing their bank details.
For this reason, it is advisable to check the code provided by the company before accessing it.

Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks

This type of attack occurs when the hacker overloads a machine with traffic, disrupting its normal operation and making a service unavailable to users. In practice, the attack is performed through a single computer.

LotL and AVT Attacks

Less known, Living off the Land (LotL) attacks do not need to create malicious files to access a company’s systems because they use gateways that already exist.
Advanced Volatile Threat (AVT) attacks allow access to an organization’s data as quickly as possible.

About senhasegura

We, from senhasegura, are part of MT4 Tecnologia, a group of companies specializing in digital security, founded in 2001 and operating in more than 50 countries.

Our main objective is to ensure digital sovereignty and security for our clients, granting control over privileged actions and data and avoiding theft and leaks of information.

For this, we follow the lifecycle of privileged access management through machine automation, before, during, and after accesses.

These are also our commitments:

• Avoid interruptions in the activities of companies, which may impair their performance;
• Automatically audit the use of privileges;
• Automatically audit privileged changes to identify privilege abuses;
• Provide advanced PAM solutions;
• Reduce cyber risks;
• Bring organizations into compliance with audit criteria and standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS,
• ISO 27001, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Conclusion

In this article, you saw that:

• Cybersecurity is a set of technologies, procedures, and methods used to prevent cyberattacks;
• Digital transformation has brought new vulnerabilities to IT structures;
• Companies should invest in cybersecurity to prevent threats, such as malware, viruses, and phishing;
• Data protection laws hold organizations accountable for the exposure of sensitive information of their customers, employees, and business partners;
• Cybersecurity projects are aimed at promoting digital security within any company;
• There are five types of cybersecurity: critical infrastructure security, application security, network security, cloud security, and Internet of Things (IoT) security;
• People, processes, and technology stand out among the crucial elements for the success of a cybersecurity project;
• To define the priorities of cybersecurity projects within a company, one needs to understand the organization’s objectives, find out the reason for each project, determine its value, assess its urgency, detail aspects that interfere with its success, rank projects in order of priority, define how many projects it is possible to execute at a time, share the findings with top management, and work flexibly;
• The main threats faced by companies are ransomware, phishing, mobile device attacks, attacks using QR Codes, denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and LotL and AVT attacks.

Remote work and the adoption of cloud computing surfaced the concept of identity as a perimeter.
In this sense, although it is not new, identity security first gained urgency as malicious attackers began to use machine identity management and access to achieve their goals.

Currently, hackers have been successful in targeting Active Directory and identity infrastructure to move laterally on networks with vulnerabilities.

It is worth mentioning that the use of multifactor authentication (MFA) is growing, but it is still necessary to configure, maintain, and monitor the identity infrastructure properly.

In this article, we will explain everything about this subject. To facilitate your reading, we divided our text into topics. These are:

• What is Machine Identity?
• Importance of Machine Identity Management
• Challenges in Machine Identity Management
• Seven Best Practices in Machine Identity Management
• Other Best Practices
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

What is Machine Identity?

Just as people use usernames and passwords to protect their identities, machines have their unique identifications protected by these credentials, as well as keys and certificates.

Without proper machine identity management, it becomes impossible to guarantee the confidentiality of data obtained by authorized devices and to prevent this information from being transferred to unauthorized machines.

In practice, a machine with a compromised identity can damage the company’s digital security. This is because hackers can use them to gain privileged access to data and resources from the organization’s networks.

Moreover, by stealing or forging a machine identity, an attacker is able to impersonate a legitimate machine and obtain sensitive data.

To account for the volume, variety, and speed of changes in machine identity, one needs to strategically manage a complex and rapidly changing data set.

Through appropriate policies and controls, machine identity management contributes to optimizing a corporation’s cybersecurity, reducing risks, and ensuring compliance with security requirements.

Importance of Machine Identity Management

Proper machine identity management is critical to preventing compromised credentials, keys, and certificates from being used to invade infrastructure, giving access to sensitive data, or being used to create fraudulent tunnels and hide malicious actions.

It also allows one to track the exponential growth in the number of machines to keep their identities secure and track the evolution of cloud services, which can expose machine identities to hacker action.

With the correct machine identity management, it is also possible to protect mobile devices, sensors, and robots, which can communicate and store sensitive information using encryption.

In addition, we live in a context where machines have increasingly intelligent functions, replacing people in activities that require logical reasoning and thinking, and machine identity management allows us to interact securely with this type of equipment.

Challenges in Machine Identity Management

In the previous topic, we showed the importance of machine identity management in data protection. However, we know efficient machine identity management can be quite challenging.

One of the reasons is the increase in IT and OT devices, which also increases the number of credentials, certificates, and keys.

Also, traditional practices are insufficient to meet the demands of machine identity management, which can cause cyberattacks and interruption of activities.
In this sense, the most common challenges are:

Visibility

With a large number of machine identities, it becomes difficult to keep track of existing credentials and know where they are. With this, hidden certificates can expire without anyone noticing, causing an interruption in activities.

Besides being difficult to locate all certificates on a company’s network, some of them are on devices outside the network perimeter, which can go unnoticed by audit processes.

Compliance

To ensure compliance with security requirements, it is essential to regulate the issuance, validity, security levels, and access. Thus, the lack of proper machine identity management, which contemplates TLS/SSL certificates and SSH keys, opens gaps for the action of malicious agents.

Storage

It is very common for certificates and keys to be stored in spreadsheets and distributed by email, however, as the number of machine identities increases, their control in spreadsheets is susceptible to errors.

Manual Management

Manual machine identity management is also a mistake, as it makes the process slow and error-prone.

In practice, applications and devices do not go online quickly after manually registering and provisioning certificates. In addition, manual renewal, revocation, and auditing may cause interruptions in activities.

Seven Best Practices in Machine Identity Management

Here are some practices you need to adopt in your organization’s machine identity management:

Identify This Type of Identity in the Infrastructure

Two hundred and sixty-seven thousand: this is the average number of internal certificates that an IT organization has, according to the Ponemon Institute. Many of these certificates are old, with the possibility of being encoded or hidden among other identities.

To get a sense of it, in a survey by Vanson Bourne, 61% of companies admitted they do not have full knowledge of their keys and certificates for devices. Of these, 96% claimed to suffer consequences such as violations, interruption of systems, and financial losses.

To ensure proper machine identity management, you need visibility into the devices your company uses. Therefore, it is essential to verify this type of identity in the infrastructure.

The good news is that you can count on the support of senhasegura for this: we were considered by Gartner as best in class for the discovery and integration of privileged credentials.

Periodically Rotate Machine Identities

Another indispensable measure is to rotate machine identities periodically to prevent their misuse by malicious users.

This is because when keys and certificates remain the same for a long time, they can be targeted by hackers, who use known API calls with a real certificate to gain access to critical resources and data.

To avoid this problem, organizations must have authorization from source machines, cloud connections, portable devices, application servers, and API interactions. Moreover, certificates should be updated frequently.

Implement Privileged Access Management solutions

To perform proper machine identity management, we also recommend the use of Privileged Access Management (PAM) tools. This type of solution prevents cyberattacks as it grants each user only the access necessary to perform their tasks.

We, from senhasegura, are leaders in this market and can help you protect the machine identities of your organization.

Implement Automation in the Environment Through RPA and PTA

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) consists of the use of technological tools to automate operational and transactional tasks, such as sending e-mails, checking financial data, preparing receipts, and managing payrolls.

Privileged Task Automation (PTA) automates an organization’s workflow tasks, ensuring they are completed at any time without stopping operations. These two mechanisms contribute to preventing violations motivated by human errors.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to manage the identities of software robots, starting with the definition of the best policies on how to integrate them.

Reduce Risk with Zero Trust Plans

To provide more security to machine identity management, it is advisable to adopt the concept of zero trust in equipment. That is, it is not enough for corporate users to be frequently authenticated, it is necessary to extend this standard to devices.

The problem is that, despite already adopting this people-focused work model, many companies still consider device authentication a challenge.

Include the Cloud in the Machine Identity Management Plan

With the digital transformation accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies started operating in the remote work model, using cloud solutions.

Therefore, when we talk about machine identity management, it is necessary to think of solutions that contemplate cloud environments.

Ideally, one should apply an approach that centralizes functions and enables them to manage multiple cloud deployments.

Adopt Machine Identity Management Solutions

Companies need to have teams specifically responsible for machine identity management, preventing certificates and keys from remaining unmanaged.

And to optimize this work, it is advisable to adopt automated machine identity management solutions that manage the entire certificate lifecycle.

Automated solutions are very effective and allow scalability in organizations, following the implementation of new technologies. However, machine identities should not be implied but expressly assigned.

Other Best Practices

Here are some other best practices for you, who need to deal with machine identity management.

Ensure Visibility

For no machine to be left unmanaged, it is indispensable to make a scan of all certificates and keys. This search should include devices that are outside the network perimeter. In addition, it is important to know the location, CA, and expiration date of each certificate.

Count on Centralized Management

Centralizing machine identity management is a way to simplify its implementation across environments, devices, and workloads. It is also possible to group certificates, taking into account their type, level of criticality, and expiration date.

Proper machine identity management protects communication and prevents the action of malicious attackers.

Use Self-Service

It is possible to use self-service for the provision, renewal, and revocation of certificates, making machine identity management more efficient. In this sense, to keep identities well protected and limit the actions of teams, you just need to implement role-based access controls and privileges.

Store Certificates and Keys in Secure Locations

Digital certificates and SSH keys should be stored in centralized and secure locations, preferably on encrypted devices. Moreover, access to these devices should be limited to privileged users with the use of strong passwords and RBAC.

These measures ensure the security of the machine identity, even if the network is compromised.

Key Rotation

Many companies are vulnerable to the action of malicious former employees, who have access to old certificates, keys, and encrypted algorithms. To avoid this problem, we strongly recommend changing old keys to new ones.

Automation

As we have already suggested, automation is the solution to most cybersecurity issues. In the case of machine identity management, automating this process ensures keys and certificates are always up to date and allows you to avoid problems such as interruption of activities.

Perform Audits Frequently

Performing frequent audits on machine identities is important because this process allows one to detect and eliminate issues such as weak passwords, unauthorized or expiring certificates, and old and unused keys.

For this, you can use an audit solution provided by third parties. Thus, it is possible to avoid interruption of activities, prevent violations, and optimize machine identity management.

About senhasegura

We, from senhasegura, are part of the group of information security companies MT4 Tecnologia, founded in 2001, and we aim to provide digital sovereignty to our customers through the control of privileged actions and data.

With this, we prevent data leaks and theft, as we manage privileged permissions before, during, and after access through machine automation. We work to:

• Optimizing the performance of companies, avoiding interruption of operations;
• Performing automatic audits on the use of permissions;
• Auditing privileged changes to detect abuse of privilege automatically;
• Providing advanced solutions with the PAM Security Platform;
• Reducing cyber threats; and
  Bringing the organizations that hire us into compliance with audit requirements and standards such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Conclusion

In this article, you saw that:

• Machines have their unique identities protected by keys and certificates;
• The increase in IT and OT machines generates a significant growth in the number of certificates and keys;
• Without proper machine identity management, it becomes impossible to guarantee the confidentiality of data obtained by authorized machines and to prevent this information from being transferred to unauthorized ones;
• Malicious actors can use compromised machine identities to gain privileged access to data and resources from the organization’s networks;
• Machine identity management contributes to optimizing the cybersecurity of a corporation;
• It also allows one to keep up with the exponential growth in the number of machines and protect mobile devices, sensors, and robots;
• The main challenges in machine identity management are: visibility, compliance, storage, and manual management;
• Some of the best practices for this management are: recognizing machine identities, rotating these identities periodically, implementing Privileged Access Management solutions, implementing automation in the environment, reducing risks through the Zero Trust concept, including cloud solutions in machine identity management, and adopting automated machine identity management solutions;
• It is also essential to ensure the visibility of devices, rely on centralized management, use self-service, store certificates and keys in secure places, and perform audits frequently;
  senhasegura was considered by Gartner as best in class for discovery and integration of privileged credentials;
• In addition, the company provides a PAM solution, which avoids cyberattacks through the Principle of Least Privilege.

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