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Credential Management

With the significant increase in the number of malware and ransomware cases worldwide, ensuring the security of your company’s privileged credentials has become a fundamental practice to protect it against insider threats, data leaks, and immeasurable financial losses.

For this purpose, there are several ways to protect yourself, such as implementing Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions. What many people do not know is that implementing any PAM solution in your corporation will not guarantee the protection of your company’s privileged credentials.

Your solution must have several functionalities that secure privileged credentials aligned to a good information security strategy.

To help with this task, we have chosen some essential functionalities that your PAM solution must have in order for you to guarantee the security of your company’s privileged credentials.

How Important is It to Keep Privileged Credentials Secure?

With the digital transformation boosted through the growing adoption of cloud-based models, connected devices, and development strategies, there has also been an explosion of privileged credentials associated with these devices. Gartner estimates the number of IoT and Industrial IoT devices to reach 24 billion this year.

No wonder they are called “keys to the kingdom”, as they allow access to valuable information from the organization and which are often targeted by cybercriminals.

According to Verizon in its Data Breach Investigations Report 2021, 61% of data leaks involved privileged credentials. What’s more, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2020 report, the cost of a cyberattack involving privileged credentials is USD 4.77 million, 23.5% more than the average.

So, properly protecting privileged credentials is essential in the cybersecurity strategies of companies of all sizes and verticals. In addition, the information security teams must protect these “keys” from malicious attackers, granting access in a secure way and properly monitoring the actions performed in the environment through privileged access.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is all about protecting those high-privileged accounts, credentials, and operations. Gartner itself elected PAM for two years in a row as the number one project in Security. And still according to Gartner, managing privileged access risks is virtually impossible without specialized PAM tools.

What Are the Main Types of Privileged Credentials?

Through privileged credentials, significant changes can be made to devices and applications installed on an infrastructure, which in many cases can affect business continuity.

The impact of using them maliciously can cause serious damage, from violations of compliance items, which can lead to heavy penalties, to security incidents – which result in reduced trust by the interested parties and lost revenue.

Discover the main types of privileged credentials that are most common in corporate environments.

Local Administrator Accounts
We are all very familiar with the local administrator account that is automatically created when installing a Windows computer. The account provides complete control over files, folders, services, and local user permissions management. Local administrators can install any software, modify or disable security settings, transfer data, and create any number of new local administrators.

Local accounts with administrator privileges are considered necessary to perform system updates, software and hardware upgrades. They are also useful for gaining local access to machines when the network goes down and when your organization has some technical issues.

Privileged User Accounts
In an IT environment, privileged user accounts are those that are given comparatively more privileges or permissions than a normal user account.

Any malicious activity carried out by a privileged account, either intentionally or by mistake, can be a threat to IT security. To address this, you need a systematic way to determine which users have privileged access and track their activities.

For example, Active Directory has built-in privileged groups for privileged accounts. These groups are: Admins, Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, Schema Admins, DnsAdmins, and Group Policy Creator Owners.

Domain Administrator Accounts
A domain administrator is essentially a user who is authorized to make global policy changes that affect all computers and users connected to that Active Directory organization. They are allowed to go anywhere and do anything, with the limitation that they must remain within that specific account.

Service Accounts
Service accounts (or app accounts) are a digital identity used by an app or services to interact with other apps or the operating system. The service accounts can be a privileged identity in the context of the application.

The main features and functionalities of a service account are:

  • They are used by applications to access databases, run batch tasks or scripts, or provide access to other applications.
  • These privileged identities often have broad access to the underlying enterprise data storage that resides in applications and databases.
  • Passwords for these accounts are often embedded and stored in plain text files, a vulnerability that is replicated across multiple servers to provide greater fault tolerance for applications.
  • This vulnerability poses a significant risk to an organizational entity because applications often host the exact data that advanced persistent threats deem to be an item of interest.

Local service accounts can interact with a variety of operating system components, making it difficult to coordinate password changes. This challenge often means that passwords are rarely changed, which represents a significant security consideration within a company.

What Is the Credential Management Lifecycle?

The entire Privileged Access Management process must be considered by those responsible for Information Security in companies, from the discovery of assets, credentials, and digital certificates and access provisioning to the visibility of actions performed in the environment, going through the management of privileges and the access itself, when the privileged actions are actually performed.

Thus, it is possible to consider the Privileged Access Management process in a lifecycle, which we call the privileged access lifecycle.

Before
In order to have a broad and efficient privileged access management, it is necessary to pay special attention to the initial phase of managing privileged credentials.

This phase is responsible for provisioning and guaranteeing access to certified machines and privileged credentials through digital certificates, passwords, SSH keys. Therefore, it is really important.

During
This is the part where privileged access management actually takes place, making it possible to track all user activities in the privileged session in real-time, monitor, and analyze suspicious behaviors from users and machines, etc.

Having a solution that can define and limit the tasks that a privileged session will be allowed to perform is essential for your company’s information security to succeed.

After
After performing the two previous phases, your privileged access management solution must record every action taken in the privileged session. Through this audit, your company ensures that, during the sessions, there are no security breaches, can record all actions performed by users

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

How to Prevent DDoS Attacks in Your Company?

There are several methods by which malicious agents attack websites and destabilize network services and resources.

One of the most commonly used techniques is the DDoS attack, which stands for distributed denial-of-service.

Through this attack, a website ends up becoming inoperable and overloaded with malicious traffic.

However, DDoS attacks can also be made against all types of network resources, such as virtual applications, data centers, corporate servers, APIs, etc.

Traffic overload can cause a variety of problems for your company, from bottlenecks in accessing important data to the unavailability of all digital tools in the corporation.

As a result, it is important to be aware of these attacks and articulate solutions to protect your company.

There are several ways to prevent DDoS attacks on your enterprise servers. In this text, we will explain in more detail what DDoS attacks are and how they can affect your business.

And, above all, how to prevent DDoS attacks in your company.

What Are DDoS Attacks?

Before specifying what DDoS attacks are, we must understand what DoS (denial-of-service) attacks are in general.

A DoS attack is a way of rendering a network resource unusable. The attack is usually carried out with a traffic overload, directing a series of superfluous requests to render the website unusable.

Through these malicious requests, the system ends up being overloaded and unable to process legitimate requests.

In the DDoS attack, the traffic maliciously directed to the resource comes from several sources. By multiplying the source of the attack, the method makes it impossible to avoid overloading by blocking a single source.

DDoS attacks are often used as a criminal mechanism. By rendering the system unusable, hackers can blackmail large organizations.

There are numerous techniques for performing a DDoS attack.

The simplest way to do a DDoS attack is through a specialized attack tool such as Slowloris or Stacheldraht. This type of tool is included in several types of malware and can perform the attack without the knowledge of the system administrator.

The best way to understand a DDoS attack is through the following metaphor: imagine a group of people crowding into a shop entrance, preventing access to legitimate consumers. In this way, the shop itself ends up being inaccessible.

How can DDoS Attacks Affect Your Business?

DDoS attacks are intended to make legitimate use of websites and web resources in general unavailable. Thus, the attacker is able to disrupt the activity of the attacked organization.

The main targets of these attacks are online services that we use frequently and contain sensitive data, such as internet banking, media, educational tools, medical management systems, e-commerce, etc.

The motivations behind attackers are not the same. Different groups have different reasons for carrying out DDoS attacks.

Attacks are sometimes carried out as a form of political activism. When government agencies are the victims, the agents generally seek to cause some type of economic or social instability.

In the case of massive attacks organized by large groups, DDoS can be used as a distraction tactic, directing the attention of authorities and technical teams to smaller attacks.

In other cases, the motivations may be strictly financial. For example, a malicious competitor could order a DDoS attack to make its service more attractive to consumers.

Or, more directly, the attacker can use the DDoS attack to extort a company and gain illicit profits.

In these cases, the malicious agent produces an attack to disable some digital service and charges a ransom to return the system to normality. These are the attacks known as RDDoS (ransom distributed denial-of-service).

Another tactic is to just threaten the organization with an attack. To convince the company to pay the ransom, the attacker can make an attack demonstration, a “sneak peek”, proving its disruptive capacity and, in this way, increasing their chances of profit from the fear and panic produced.

Unfortunately, the company does not always have an adequate protection system. Furthermore, contacting law enforcement authorities can be a time-consuming solution and cause even more trouble with invaders.

Most of the time, hackers are not even tracked, as they use cryptocurrency wallets to receive the ransom.

There is a whole lot of calculation to be done in the event of ransomware attacks. In fact, the answer to the simple question “should I or should I not pay the ransom?” can be more complicated than you think. See what factors to consider by clicking here.

The consequences of a DDoS attack can be disastrous. The instability of internal systems, for example, can make the production process more expensive or even totally hindered. On the other hand, the unavailability of websites accessed by the public can make it impossible to attract customers and make sales.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

Cybersecurity Trends for 2022

In recent years, the technological dependence of companies and society has only increased. Companies have increasingly invested in digitizing their processes and providing the best experience for customers, partners, suppliers, and employees. 

The digital transformation process and new technologies such as Cloud, Big Data, Internet of Things, and 5G have brought an increase in cyber threats with them. And the migration to remote work models driven by the Covid-19 pandemic has made people and businesses even more vulnerable to malicious attacks. This makes the cybersecurity issue remain on the rise and the protection of this entire infrastructure is increasingly essential in organizations’ strategies.

Thus, as the end of the year approaches, security leaders are looking for the main information security market trends and the challenges that await them for 2022 to be prepared for this threat scenario. According to a Flexera study, cybersecurity will be the top IT initiative for half of the organizations surveyed. 

Therefore, in times when data is considered the new oil, it is essential that organizations know the market trends and then outline their cybersecurity strategies to protect this very valuable asset and ensure the continuity of their business.

Next, we present 9 information security topics that will be highlighted in 2022, which should be considered by organizational leaders in their cybersecurity strategies.

1. Greater Coverage of Data Protection Laws

With the exponential growth of data volume, news on data leaks will become more and more frequent. Consequently, the demand for data security and privacy is sure to grow. To respond to this trend,  governments tend to increase regulatory pressures through the publication of personal data protection laws. So much so that Gartner estimates the personal information of 75% of the world’s population will be covered by specific data protection laws by 2023. In 2021, China, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil were some of the countries that put specific data protection laws in force. Europe already regulated the transfer of personal data from European Union countries to non-member countries. On the other hand, the United States remains on the list of countries without a specific federal law to guarantee the protection of personal data, depending only on states like California, Colorado, and Virginia to legislate on the subject. 

2. Remote Work Protection

Work environments have undergone the greatest transformation in recent decades. Dining rooms were adapted so that we could share workstations and accommodate a remote workforce. According to research by Tenable and Forrester, 74% of security leaders recognize that the remote work measures implemented as a result of the pandemic have left their infrastructure vulnerable to malicious attacks. And even with the end of the pandemic and the return to face-to-face work, the expectation is that there will be a hybrid work adoption. Also, according to the survey, 70% of organizations plan to have their employees work from home at least one day a week. 

3. Cyber Awareness

It is jargon in the cybersecurity market that “it is impossible to invest in state-of-the-art security solutions without addressing the weakest link in this chain: people”. Furthermore, as security vendors develop new technologies to protect infrastructure, attackers devise methods to bypass them and carry out their malicious actions. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report 2021, 85% of data leaks surveyed involved the human factor, with social engineering accounting for more than a third of those leaks. Phishing was present in 36% of data leaks surveyed by Verizon.

4. Talents Wanted

In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of projects related to digital transformation and connected devices, as well as a migration to cloud-based environments. Additionally, the risk landscape includes cyberwars and attacks such as ransomware, which increasingly affect business continuity. However, security budgets have not kept up with this escalation. To adequately respond to these risks and ensure infrastructure protection, there is an increased demand for cybersecurity professionals. According to an Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) study, 57% of professionals surveyed said that the lack of cybersecurity talents had impacted their organizations in some way, while 10% recognized this impact as significant.

5. It is All About Connection

The development of 5G and the Internet of Things has led to a growth in the number of connected devices. These devices have enabled connectivity and have become increasingly essential in the daily lives of people and businesses. According to a Cisco report, the number of connected devices is expected to surpass 29 billion by 2023, resulting in a larger attack surface to be exploited by malicious attackers through vulnerabilities and malicious software. According to Gartner, by 2025, cyberattackers will turn Operational Technology (OT) environments into weapons to cause even human deaths. In this way, attacks on the so-called critical infrastructure, such as the generation and distribution of energy, water, and gas, can have serious impacts not only on organizations but also on governments and society.

6. Mobile Attacks

The spread of smartphones has made our personal and professional life easier, stimulating the development of a series of applications for communication, shopping, finance, and travel. In addition, the shift to remote work has led to increased use of mobile devices by employees, bringing benefits such as faster speed and productivity improvements. In 2020, the percentage of internet traffic through these devices surpassed that of desktop computers and laptops for the first time. Cybercriminals have taken advantage of these facts to increasingly use mobile devices as an attack vector. 

7. (Even) More Ransomware

Each year, we have seen new records in ransomware-related numbers. And in 2021, that was no different. SonicWall recorded a 148% increase in attacks involving ransomware in 2021, reaching the number of 495 million attacks with this type of malicious software, which is expected to exceed 700 million by the end of the year. It is worth remembering that the techniques used in these pieces of software have also become more sophisticated, showing an evolution in cybercriminals’ planning and execution of this type of attack. Moreover, the Ransomware-as-a-Service models have allowed scaling the development of this type of malicious software, allowing criminals without programming knowledge to develop their own ransomware. In September 2021 alone, SonicWall’s malicious software detection tools discovered more than 370,000 new malware variants, with governments and critical infrastructure being a top target.

8. Social Freedom

In recent years, we have seen social media influencing important events in some way, such as Brexit and the Brazilian and American elections via the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And with new occurrences involving Facebook and its employees, we will continue to see increasing pressure on social media to perform proper controls on their users’ posts. These posts include the dissemination of fake news and crimes such as selling illegal items, financial scams, and child pornography. This will undoubtedly influence governments to regulate and establish better-defined controls on how content is published, including the verification of facts posted on social media and facilitating access by authorities to the respective sources. 

9. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Cybersecurity

The elimination of the security perimeter and the migration to distributed work models, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, made devices even more vulnerable to cyber threats. And with the increase in these threats, boosted by the lack of specialized security staff, it is essential to use tools based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to detect cybersecurity risks. Through the use of these technologies, one can analyze and recognize patterns for the prevention and adequate response to these threats. In this way, the cybersecurity process becomes much more proactive and effective.

You can see that 2022 will not be easy in terms of cybersecurity. With the trend of increasing attacks and scarce resources, security teams will have a tough mission to detect and adequately respond to the growing demands in the industry. Now, the question is not whether, but when organizations will suffer a cyberattack. Thus, adequately responding to cyber threats not only must be considered by the security teams but also be part of the business strategies.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

How to Prevent a Data Leak by Internal Users?

Data leaks are extremely harmful to your company and users, therefore, actions to avoid such failures and information collection is crucial for your company to have a respectable image and become a reference in this segment.

How to Prevent a Data Leak by Internal Users?

A good company must have efficient ways of monitoring data, so they know who and when certain information was accessed, creating a network that limits hostile actions and improper copies.

In order to avoid such harmful practices, measures are needed to improve the security structure. For this, senhasegura can help you with those that should be taken to remedy such complications.

Recording and Monitoring

In most cases of information leaks by internal users, improper copies of the information contained in their company’s database are made, but using complex password recording actions and monitoring of who had access to the specific file, it is possible to prevent illegal collection.

Proper Configuration for The Network Environment

Companies all over the world have gone through hostile attacks and one of the gateways is the network environment, as they are easily accessed by individuals who wish to practice illegal activities, but a suitable configuration can solve such problems.

Another way of prevention is to configure the device used so that its internet connection is limited and data is not transferred improperly. In case the individual needs to be online at all times, it is possible to use WEP encryption, although it is considered weak by professionals in the field.

Education for Implementing a Security System

Although it seems banal, it is always important to explain to the internal user that, just having access to the data contained in a file makes them responsible for handling the information responsibly.

Along with basic network security training, the employee must be aware of the legal measures that may fall on them in case inappropriate actions are taken with confidential data, and even with these actions, monitoring and recording are of paramount importance.

The Access Privilege

With the aid of monitoring, certain information can be further protected through the right of access. This action is intended to determine who should or should not access information contained in a given file.

With it, only one group will be able to have access to the data, making the verification of suspicious actions in the system faster in order to determine possible failures in the security of information.

Constant Changes to Passwords

Every time a certain individual has suspicious actions and ends up being dismissed from the company, the access passwords must be changed so that they do not end up remotely accessing the network.

This practice should become commonplace, as access logins can often be known by unscrupulous people and the constant change of passwords helps keep your company data secure.

Protect Yourself from External Devices

Information can often be improperly archived on mobile devices such as USB sticks or SSDs, but through simple processes such as blocking USB ports and wireless, it can make data protection more effective.

These devices are not of paramount importance for your company’s daily activities, therefore, it is possible to forbid the use of the aforementioned options, and with this, all data transfer will be done over the network, where they can be monitored and blocked as needed by the company.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

Malware: Learn How to Identify the Threat Quickly

But along with the efficiency ofIn a completely digital world, it is normal for all sensitive data of a person or company to circulate and be stored on computers or mobile devices. Whether through websites, folders or applications.

 control and information disclosure, risks also came along. In different corners of the Internet, there are hidden threats that can steal personal data and cause a tremendous headache to any user.

Among these most common threats in everyday virtual life, we can highlight malware, short for malicious software.

What is Malware?

Malware is a type of computer program designed to infect a person’s device and harm them in many ways. It has various means of infecting computers and mobile devices, and it can also take many forms.

Spyware, viruses, worms, and Trojans are among these threats. Viruses are perhaps the most well-known type of malware and so are called because they are able to replicate various forms of themselves and spread across the network.

Each of them has a different “function”. Spyware, for example, copy and transmit personal information such as credit card numbers. Therefore, being well disguised in any corner of the Internet, the user must know how to identify them to protect themselves in every way.

Looking for more protection for your network? Then visit our website and request a demo of our services!

How to Identify Malware

Malware can manifest itself in many different ways on devices. Paying attention to these signs is important to be able to neutralize any threat right away.

  • Reduced operating system speed, when browsing the internet or using local applications;
  • System shutdown, crash, or Blue Screen;
  • System and antivirus update failures;
  • Sudden appearance of new toolbars, extensions, or plugins;
  • Mysterious loss of disk space;
  • Change of browser homepage without permission or links that lead to unwanted destinations on the Internet;
  • Excessive ads in pop-up windows on the screen of devices;
  • The high usage of system resources and the computer’s fan working at a fast pace.

Nevertheless, even if everything is working normally on the devices, it does not mean everything is fine. A more powerful malware can hide on the computer and perform illegal activities without awakening any system alerts, managing to steal passwords or sensitive files.

How is The User Infected with Malware?

There are many ways in which a user can be tricked, infected by malware, and put their system and data at risk. The two most common ways it can access your system are on the Internet and through email.

Anything downloaded from the Internet to a device that does not have a quality anti-malware security application can pose risks to the user. The most common ways by which this can happen are:

  • Browsing on compromised websites;
  • Downloading infected music files;
  • Installing new toolbars from an unknown provider;
  • Clicking on game demos;
  • Configuring software from a risky source;
  • Opening suspicious email attachments.

But some can also hide in legitimate apps, especially when downloaded from websites or via messages, rather than through an app store.

Therefore, it is recommended to always use reliable sources of mobile apps or install apps from reputable providers, always downloading directly from the provider and never from other websites.

Even if a user installs something from a reputable source, failing to pay attention to requests for permission to install other program packages at the same time could end up installing unwanted software.

But there are much simpler ways to come across malware. Just visiting a malicious website, for example, or viewing a page and/or an infected ad, a malware download can take place.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

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