According to a report recently published by Kaspersky, the number of users who have experienced some type of cyberattack in the first half of 2020 increased by 20,000%.

Also, the company BBOViz points out that Brazil is the second country that suffers the most threats from ransomware in the world, just behind India.

Alarming statistics show that protecting a corporation’s confidential data goes beyond mandatory legislation, as data leaks can generate financial and reputational losses as great as penalties for breaching data protection laws.

There are several reports from large companies that have been affected by some type of malware, significantly impacting their business goals. Braskem, for example, was affected by ransomware that had a major impact on its financial health, reducing its revenue by about 45%.

Another recent case occurred in a Chilean public bank, which suffered a ransomware attack that forced them to keep all their branches closed for a day and part of the branches for two days, strongly impacting their reputation – both in terms of image and finances.

Even though there are many reports of cyberattacks around the world, there have never been so many solutions to protect a corporation from them, such as the implementation of the principle of least privilege.

What is the principle of least privilege?

The principle of least privilege is one of the bases for information security. Its main goal is to grant users access to environments that are required for them to perform their tasks. In other words, with the principle of least privilege, users do not access environments they do not require, avoiding internal threats, data leaks, and hacker infiltration in critical environments of a company.

Risks of not using the principle of least privilege

By allowing users to have privileged access to environments that are not required, several security holes are opened in a company, such as the release of Windows administrator privileges for employees, which allows them to install any malicious software, with or without malicious intent, or for a hacker to break into a machine and install this malicious software, increasing business risks and the attack surface.

In addition, allowing users to have excessive privilege in cloud environments also leaves the company’s data vulnerable to attacks and internal threats.

How to implement the principle of least privilege 

Through the senhasegura solution, you have several security locks that ensure users access only the environments required by them. Besides monitoring the way the user is performing privileged access, the senhasegura solution registers, records, and notifies those responsible for information security about any malicious activity within the privileged session.

Through this simple practice, they significantly minimize the chances of a cybercriminal accessing sensitive company data and extracting information.

Request a free demo of the senhasegura solution and learn how the principle of least privilege will change your company’s cybersecurity situation.

With the increase in phishing attacks all over the world due to the outbreak of COVID-19, companies are reassessing the efficiency of their information security systems, since the home office opens loopholes for a company’s security and such type of malware.

One of the first steps for you to ensure your company is secure is by protecting user identities so that in the event of a cyberattack on your corporation, the databases containing personal, sensitive, and financial information are protected by a PAM solution.

In addition to preventing leaks of personal data, privacy abuse, loss of reputation, and financial disasters, your company complies with data protection laws, such as the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Even though it is a fundamental practice for information security, many companies ignore good practices for PAM and do not protect user identities as they should, opening loopholes for information security.

The importance of protecting your user identities

From the use of a PAM solution, all the company’s critical data is protected, since the access to this data needs one of the privileged credentials, also known as user identities.

The only people who must use these identities are those who need to access the environments to perform their tasks, so the number of people with this type of access is limited.

There are reports of hackers being able to steal these user identities through malware, such as phishing.

Typically, the goal of this type of attack is to target someone at the top of a company, such as directors and coordinators, and collect sensitive information from the corporation, such as the high-privilege credential of these people. 

According to Gartner, 95% of these attacks happen via email, which makes it difficult to detect their installation on a machine or network infrastructure, leaving the entire corporation vulnerable.

How to protect your user identities

Some practices are critical to maintaining the security of corporate user identities, such as managing privileged credentials.

Discovering compromised identities quickly is not an easy task, but using a complete PAM solution that detects suspicious actions within the privileged session quickly is the best way to keep your company secure.

Besides recording all actions taken, your PAM solution must notify you in real-time when any suspicious activity occurs, so that the person responsible for managing this can take appropriate measures, allowing a quick response to incidents and reducing operational costs.

In addition, it is important to check the expiration of the digital certificates of your company’s access environments. Being unaware of the expiration of a certification opens many security holes in a company.

The senhasegura solution ensures these and other measures to protect user identities, eliminating every security hole in your company when it comes to PAM.

Request a demo and find out why senhasegura has the best score (4.9/5) among competitors on Gartner Peer-insights.

Due to COVID-19, the attention of CISOs had to be reinforced to plan an efficient information security strategy, and to help in this task, Gartner has published a very interesting report, which pointed out some security trends and risks for information security in 2020.

According to Peter Firstbrook, VP Analyst at Gartner, “The pandemic and the resulting changes in the business world have accelerated the digitization of business processes, endpoint mobility, and the expansion of cloud computing in most organizations.”

As a result, many companies have revised their remote access policies and migrated to cloud systems, increasing productivity and information security risks. Check out the main trends that Gartner has listed:

XDR

Through XDR (External Data Representation) solutions, the detection of threats becomes faster and more accurate in emails, endpoints, servers, networks, etc.

Task Automation

Through automation tools, tasks that are performed repeatedly are done in a faster, scalable way, without errors and risks to a company’s information security.

It is recommended that this automation be done in repetitive tasks so that professionals focus on functions that demand more time and will have a greater impact on the company’s security.

Artificial Intelligence

Through the use of artificial intelligence in your company’s information security, it is possible to protect digital business systems, combine it with packaged security products to enhance security defense capabilities, and prevent the improper use of artificial intelligence by attackers.

Enterprise-level CSOs

With the significant increase in cyber-physical attacks, hiring CSOs is becoming a trend across companies.

In addition to adding to IT security, these professionals also work in OT security, physical security, supply chain security, product management security, etc. This significantly reduces the risks to information security.

Privacy

From the sanction of data protection laws such as LGPD and GDPR, data privacy has become an obligation to be followed, and this affects the entire corporation, which requires collaboration from all areas, such as IT, HR, legal, management, etc.

Digital Security and Trust

The importance of maintaining consumer security at points of contact has become an advantage for companies.

Having a team focused on the administration of all points of contact makes the exchange of information both secure and complete, regardless of the means of contact chosen by the customer, which reduces the risks to information security.

Zero-trust Network Access Technology

Access to environments through VPNs tends to decrease. Through Zero-trust Network Access (ZTNA), companies have greater control over remote access.

ZTNA only communicates with the ZTNA service provider and can only be accessed through the ZTNA provider’s cloud service, which avoids information security risks.

Managing privileged access to a corporation has become an obligation almost everywhere in the world. Laws such as the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) oblige companies to maintain the integrity and security of the data providers’ personal information.

Also, companies operating in countries that do not have data protection laws yet are subject to great pressure from the market to adopt certifications that guarantee the integrity and security of personal data, such as ISO 27001, NIST’s Cyber Security Framework, and PCI DSS.

One way that companies have found to comply with these standards is by adopting an efficient privileged access management solution, but when implementing this type of solution, companies face a great difficulty in integrating the 3 phases of privileged access management to cover the complete cycle of these accesses.

To help you in this task, we have separated the 3 fundamental phases for you to see if your privileged access management solution performs accesses in a broad and efficient way. Check them out:

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, it is important that your privileged access management solution records 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 and machines, and allow viewing the privileged session recording.

Points that require attention

There is a great difficulty for companies to implement this type of technology, since most suppliers do not offer an integrated support, in which the 3 phases of the management of privileged credentials are interconnected, and that makes the companies end up opting for hiring more than one solution, so that each one performs a different part of the task.

Unlike other solutions, senhasegura offers the market an integrated solution, through which it performs the 3 phases effectively in just one environment, facilitating the management of privileged credentials and keeping your company secure, free from fines and leaks of sensitive data.

Click here and see in detail how the 3 phases of senhasegura’s privileged access management work. 

According to Gartner – an Institute with a focus on researching, executing programs, and consulting and recommending efficient technologies for its customers, such as digital security – there are some fundamental projects for a company to ensure information security in its environment. 

According to senior analyst director at Gartner, Brian Reed, people spend a lot of time analyzing the choices we make about security, wanting to achieve perfect protection that does not exist. For him, companies should look beyond basic protection decisions and also improve the organizational methodology through innovative approaches in order to detect and respond to a possible security incident.

Gartner has recently released some information security projects focused on risk management and detecting flaws in the execution of a company’s activities.

Today, we will simply and clearly show you what they are and how to implement these points to reduce the risk of data leaks, cyberattacks, and abuse of privilege in your company, without decreasing the productivity of your business. Check it out:

Remote Work Protection 

After the outbreak of COVID-19, many companies have rooted the home office in their business models and faced several issues in ensuring data protection efficiently. 

You probably already know how your employees access workplaces remotely, but now it is time to analyze whether the privilege level is right for your employee to perform all of their tasks or if there is any unnecessary privilege granted.

Learn more: Cybersecurity and the Covid-19

Vulnerability Management

Assess what the points of your company are and focus on the most vulnerable. The ideal is that you do not perform this task alone. Employees who use a certain environment daily can help in carrying out this task with a broader view.

Cloud Security Management

It is of utmost importance that cloud applications allow automated protection so as not to lose the dynamics that tasks normally require.

DMARC

Through DMARC email authentication, organizations that use their emails as a source of verification will be more secure against falsification. The system implements another layer of security in the verification of the sender, identifying and preventing a fake domain from having access to an environment, further increasing the efficiency of your information security project.

Importance Classification 

Your information security project must be classified by importance, after all, sensitive data such as reports, forecasts, agreements, and databases must have a greater layer of protection than any other environment.

From these definitions, you can prioritize the areas that should be protected the most.