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China has Published Its Specific Law for the Protection of Personal Data. What Are the Implications?

Global efforts to ensure data protection have increased dramatically over the years. Governments around the world have been concerned with creating laws and regulations that ensure the security of circulation and processing of information from citizens and users, especially by companies, respecting people’s privacy and operating within the specific laws of the country.

After the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which seeks to guarantee citizens greater control over their own data, governments in several countries also started to invest in their own regulation with the same purpose.

PIPL Construction Route

The most recent regulation was from China, which, after several revisions since October 2020, has officially approved its PIPL (Personal Information Protection Law) in August of this year. The first draft was presented at the National People’s Congress of China on October 13, 2020, and opened for public review on October 21 of the same year.

A month later, the reviewed document was closed for internal assessment. In August 2021, the proposal was approved and is expected to take effect on November 1st.

The Chinese data protection law is similar to the European law, but with a stricter structure, especially for “Big Techs”. The goal is to further strengthen the current protection regime, regulating the collection, processing, and use of Chinese citizens’ data, including rules that avoid the monopoly and over-enrichment of some companies through population data.

The China Consumer Association strongly criticized this type of behavior by companies, saying that the algorithms are becoming a “technical intimidation” to consumers.

How does PIPL impact organizations?

The data is seen by the Chinese government as a basic strategic resource and belonging to the country, and its use by third parties should be kept to a minimum, monitored, and for well-defined purposes. Therefore, with PIPL’s approval, the activities of organizations and individuals working with personal information will be heavily impacted.

European entities fear that Chinese regulations will jeopardize trade between companies in the bloc and China, putting at risk the privacy of their businesses, as it is necessary to be subject to protection demands different from the European LGPB.

For multinationals, the situation is no different, as they consider an uncertain business scenario and an invasive behavior by the Chinese government when auditing companies. In short, this uncertain scenario ends up generating concern for companies due to the following requirements:

  • Users are given more control over their data: Users can request/control the editing, removal, and restriction of the distribution, processing, and use of their data. In addition, prior consent can be changed or canceled by the user.
  • More rigorous requirements for data sharing and transfer: An organization or any other parties involved in data control need to pass assessments related to the legal use of data. 
  • Penalties and fines in cases of data breaches: The value of fines can reach up to 50 million RMB (Yuan Renminbi), the equivalent of 40 million reais or 7 million dollars, deduction of annual revenue percentage, or even termination of business.
  • Mandatory security controls: The processing of personally identifiable, sensitive, or critical information must be subject to strict mandatory security controls and personnel responsible for handling it must receive appropriate training. 
  • Mandatory location of data: The processing of personally identifiable information is limited to the boundaries defined by the China Cybersecurity Administration – CAC. If a company exceeds these limits, it must provide the location of this data.

Key Points of the Chinese Law

The law presents requirements and regulations on the legal form of handling personally identifiable information, which is those that somehow identify the user in electronic media, including critical state security information and sensitive information involving religion, beliefs, ethnicities, financial information, user tracking, and others.

Thus, some key points can be highlighted that must be observed by companies in operations that deal with information of this nature.

User Consent

Before any operation with personal data, companies or interested parties must request the consent of the users, who must be explicitly notified about any matter related to the processing of their data, including the identity and contact information of those responsible for handling it. (Article 24)

Organizational Management

Those responsible for handling the data must adopt security measures that ensure protection against intrusion, leaks, or theft during data collection, distribution, and processing. Some of these measures involve data encryption and proper training of those responsible for operations and/or overseeing operations. (Articles 50, 51, 52)

Individuals’ Rights

Users must have the right to access their own data, being able to modify them, delete them, decide when their information can or cannot be processed, or request an explanation about the processing. (Articles 44, 45, 46, and 48)

Data Transfer Borders

The transfer of data outside China can only be done with the explicit consent of the subjects, who must be notified when their information is transferred outside Chinese territory. When processing crosses borders, an organization undergoes a security assessment, which must be approved to proceed with operations. (Articles 39 and 40)

Data Location

When organizations reach the limit of data volume defined by CAC, they must maintain the storage of the information already collected and generated on the premises of the Chinese territory. Article 40)

What Can We Expect as Next Steps?

The approval of the Law affected various sectors of the economy and raised concerns for Chinese companies and European multinationals, especially the ‘Big Techs’. In this sense, companies that deal with the distribution, collection, and processing of data, as well as the development of software and related activities must work ethically and morally, paying attention to all the requirements established by the law, if they want to ensure the smooth running of their business and a good reputation.

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.

Supernet: What it is and what it is for?

From now on, let us add “Supernet” into our vocabulary. Learn more!

A set of computers and/or computer equipment connected to each other, and that can exchange data and information, all of those make up a network. The Internet is the network of networks. We could even think that the Internet is the “Supernet”, but we have to tread carefully when using frequently debated terms in computing… For that reason, today, we bring to the fore the term “Supernet” (or Supernetwork), of course always taking an approach from a monitoring perspective.

* Warning: what I write below is my way of looking at things from a practical and sincere point of view. This article only endorses me and, in any case, this entry should be read taking into account the learning approach, it does not intend to be official in any way. That said, let’s start from the basics, which is not the same as starting from scratch.

Terms: Supernet and Supernetting

If we have a network and we buy a new computer, we say that “we add it to a network.” If we have a supernet, then “we add it to a supernet.” We even have a specific verb for it. It is very common to use the term Supernetting; however the following terms are also valid (but less used):

  • Prefix aggregation
  • Route aggregation
  • Route summarization

If we get even more specific, technically we will find differences but for the purposes of this post we will deal with it the same way… Do you think it is daring on my part? Well, there is more!

Request for comments

Although we can go a lot further back in time, the Internet was born in the United States of America, originally called Arpanet, in the late 1960s. A technological predecessor could be the landline from which many of the concepts are born, used when planning the “network of networks”. In fact, the wiring itself, the colors that identify the pairs, are very similar, at a physical or hardware level. This includes the similarities in switched connections (or circuit switching). But, obviously, the Internet and data transport in a digital way ended up completely absorbing telephony.

But the Internet needed more than the physical and conceptual foundation or sustenance of the great American telephone companies. Moreover, October 1969 is marked as the birth of the Internet since the first connection between two computers was made… And it was simply that, since it was not yet a common computer network.

The Internet was born, in my opinion, when pioneer Dr. Steve D. Crocker published the first issue of Request for Comment (RFC) on April 7, 1969. In Issue 6 (RFC 6), Steve Crocker recounts his conversation with Bob Kahn about code conversion for data exchange. RFC 11 publishes the connection implementation in the FAT operating system (yes, that’s what it was called), and I fervently believe that this, published in August 1969, is what enabled the feat performed in October of that same year.

Based on this knowledge base, the RFCs were born: gathering a group of people in their twenties who moved among different universities sharing knowledge and cementing concepts, something that we now do by email… In fact, RFC 733 (1977) outlines this technology and the standard for the email is published in RFC 822 (year 1982).

RFCs grew decade after decade: in 1992, RFC 1338 “Supernetting: an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy” was published for information purposes. Yes, at first the supernet was just a mere advertisement, not a protocol, and not even a standard.

Just the following year, in 1993, RFC 1518 “breaks” the paradigm of networks by classes. While class A networks allow millions of IP addresses, the next step – class B networks – only allowed 65 thousand IP addresses: between the two of them the “waste” of IP addresses is very high.

For that reason, the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (better known as CIDR) was born, which is an extension of the original IPv4 addressing system that allows more efficient address allocation. The original class-based method used fixed fields for network identifiers, which was wasteful as I said earlier: most organizations that are assigned those addresses (class A and class B networks) never intended to put so many devices on the Internet.

As additional information, this is the origin of CIDR notation, the suffix that accompanies an IP address (there are 32 bits in an IPv4 address, four octets separated by periods) and that allows describing or narrowing down a range of them. For example, for /20 it allows 4096 IP addresses, for /21 2048 IP addresses and so on, as well as all the way around (all powers of base 2, this is important for a supernet as we will see later). All these numbers can be obtained using the IP address calculator included in Pandora FMS. You may also find many of these calculators online, each with its own style, shapes and colors to present the same data.

Flexible like Pandora FMS

CIDR thus changed the fixed fields to variable length fields and this allowed to assign IP addresses better, and in a more refined way. CIDR IP addresses include a number that indicates how the address is divided between networks and hosts.

For example, in the CIDR address 201.249.0.0/19 the /19 indicates that the first 19 bits are used for the identification of the network and the remaining 13 are used for host identification.

The main purpose of a supernet is to decrease the size of the route table of routers. For example, instead of a router having 8 individual routes, it may have a single route aggregated from these 8 individual routes. This saves memory and processing resources on the routing devices, thus requiring less space to store their route table and less processing power to search the route table. It also provides stability in networks because fluctuations can be isolated, that is, in one part of the network they do not spread to all parts of the network.

Supernetting and Pandora FMS

From Pandora FMS version NG 731 IPAM was included (abbreviation of Internet Protocol Address Management) which allows to manage, discover, diagnose and monitor hundreds of IP addresses.

Within this feature, the supernet, subnets and even virtual private networks (VLAN) are included, all integrated, with the option to export data in CSV files. Unlike creating VLANs, we can only create supernets manually using IPAM. For that, you have to configure, with the necessary parameters, each of the supernets that you want to have, and later add networks already managed with IPAM that may belong to a VLAN. Although it is a manual process from version NG 758, it includes the ability to quickly addy our data from files in CSV format.

To finish off this post, let’s see what the rules that operate a supernet are.

Supernet Rules

Apart from good practices in network configuration, the established rules must always be followed and enforced to avoid chaos reigning.
The rules for creating supernets are as follows:

  • Networks must be contiguous or sequential.
  • The number of networks to add must be a multiple of two or “base two”.
  • And the rule that is somewhat more complicated: compare the value of the first octet not common from the first block of IP addresses (the smallest) of the list of networks to add against the number of networks to add (see previous point). The value of the first non-common octet must be zero or a multiple of the number of networks to be added.

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 PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Integrate IBM QRadar SIEM with SCADAfence For Complete OT Visibility

CISOs and security teams face an uphill battle when it comes to detecting and mitigating ever more frequent and sophisticated cyber threats, especially in OT environments.

Cyber attackers are learning new tactics, getting more creative, and are becoming more relentless than ever to exploit industrial organizations. As seen in the Oldsmar water system attack and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, adversaries are targeting IT and OT environments to inflict damage on organizations that can affect the daily lives of civilians.

Considering the evolving and ever-expanding threat landscape,security and incident response teams might be feeling lost at times when defending their OT networks. Even more so with the recent increasing convergence of IT and operational technology (OT) threats, industrial organizations are seeking new practices on how to leverage their existing IT security stack to address the new cyber threats that are targeting OT environments.

This is where SCADAfence and IBM QRadar have partnered together to create a joint integration to tackle OT security challenges. Now security teams who are using IBM QRadar can be provided with the required visibility and security for adopting advanced Industrial IoT and OT technologies. This new integration with QRadar allows users to simply integrate alerts from the SCADAfence Platform to their QRadar feed, as well as viewing it in a dedicated SCADAfence dashboard.

QRadar SCADAFence Dashboard

Diagram 01. The SCADAfence & IBM QRadar integration dashboard

Many industrial organizations count on IBM Security QRadar, an intelligent SIEM, to provide actionable threat intelligence to help detect and respond to security incidents that need to be mitigated. SCADAfence’s integration with IBM QRadar allows our joint customers to capitalize further on their current security stack, so they can have complete visibility into their OT networks with real-time alerts, all in one user-friendly dashboard.

Leveraging SCADAfence and IBM QRadar

CISOs and their organization are always looking to enable their IT and security teams to detect and respond to security incident events more efficiently, but they also want to simplify how to address the lack of visibility into the security of OT environments at the same time. At SCADAfence, we believe we can achieve more through collaboration and integrations. Organizations can leverage SCADAfence’s OT security platform and alerting with QRadar’s strengths across all their industrial OT and IIoT environments to provide complete OT visibility and threat detection to respond to security incidents all in one dashboard.

The SCADAfence & IBM QRadar integration alerts dashboard

Diagram 02. The SCADAfence & IBM QRadar integration alerts dashboard

Complete OT Network Visibility 

SCADAfence’s leading OT security platform is configured to minimize any interruption to the normal operation of the customer environment and provides OT insights and produces risk management recommendations that are appropriate to your organization’s needs. This is accomplished by discovering the assets and their roles in the network which provides visibility into their behavior. With a wide range of algorithms and mechanisms, the SCADAfence Platform detects anomalies that can compromise security, safety and reliability.

Multi-Layered Approach to OT Defense

Easily integrate the benefits of the SCADAfence Platform to provide endpoint controls with behavioral indicators of compromise across endpoints and operational networks. This will allow IBM QRadar users to have the visibility to respond across IIoT and OT environments, all within a single dashboard. This integration empowers customers with SCADAfence’s OT security technology while providing the needed visibility into OT equipment.

Automated Asset Inventory 

The SCADAfence Platform allows IBM QRadar customers to automatically discover and continuously manage their entire asset inventory up to date with detailed information on all the devices connected to their OT networks. Regardless of the vendors and controllers deployed in the infrastructure, the platform automatically generates asset inventory without needing any prior knowledge.

Efficient Detection of Incidents

With IBM QRadar and SCADAfence, users can correlate network traffic behavior with host and user behaviors across multiple network areas. Easily surface critical events and detect incidents across machines and networks that would previously go completely undetected. Quickly react and precisely prevent further attack propagation with an automatic correlation of OT manipulation commands with compromised host indications.

Proactive Operational Insights

SCADAfence Platform continuously alerts IBM QRadar users of any abnormal behavior or configuration changes that may have an impact on their operations’ stability before it actually affects their operations. The SCADAfence platform utilizes the most advanced OT security technology to gain the most up-to-date industry insights, which helps provide users with better security alerts and recommendations on how to remediate today’s OT vulnerabilities that may impact your environment.

The SCADAfence & IBM QRadar integration log activity dashboard

Diagram 03. The SCADAfence & IBM QRadar integration log activity dashboard

Discover the instant value of OT security in your QRadar environment. Mutual customers with an active subscription to SCADAfence can go to the IBM Security App Exchange and download SCADAfence Platform integration for IBM QRadar.

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 SCADAfence
SCADAfence helps companies with large-scale operational technology (OT) networks embrace the benefits of industrial IoT by reducing cyber risks and mitigating operational threats. Our non-intrusive platform provides full coverage of large-scale networks, offering best-in-class detection accuracy, asset discovery and user experience. The platform seamlessly integrates OT security within existing security operations, bridging the IT/OT convergence gap. SCADAfence secures OT networks in manufacturing, building management and critical infrastructure industries. We deliver security and visibility for some of world’s most complex OT networks, including Europe’s largest manufacturing facility. With SCADAfence, companies can operate securely, reliably and efficiently as they go through the digital transformation journey.

Why Hospital Cyber Protection Is a Hard Nut to Crack

There is a simple reason why hospitals are the frequent targets of cybercriminals. Hospital networks contain patients’ and research data that is highly valued on the black market. And their infrastructure specifics make protecting it difficult.

In 2020, all 16 Czech key hospitals covered that year by the Cybersecurity Act reported a cyber incident. But also smaller healthcare facilities were being attacked and protecting them was no less complicated.

There are a few complications that make hospital cybersecurity challenging: the complex architecture of hospital networks, the frequent obsolescence of operating systems and also the insufficient number of qualified security personnel.

In addition, legislative requirements place high demands on security, including:

  • GDPR
  • Your National eHealth Center’s methodological guidelines (if you have one)
  • International standards that summarize security recommendations for the use of healthcare systems and best practices (ENISA – Cyber security and resilience for Smart Hospitals, MDISS – Medical Device Innovation, Safety & Security Consortium)

Last, but not least, every organization usually has its own internal security regulations. These are based on risk analyses or the internal recommendations and requirements of the hospital’s governing board for the operation of IT in the hospital.

The Most Common Targets of Attackers

In the first stages, attackers aim usually at hospital employees’ login credentials, through which attackers try to gain access to VPNs, internal or health information systems. All these systems contain high-value data through which the attacker can hold the hospital to ransom.

Another source of income for attackers is research data that can be effectively monetized, but patient data is an especially big gain. The price for this information (data about a person and their health status) is from tens to hundreds of dollars per record on the black market. By contrast, mere contact details (for example, from a hacked e-shop) are only worth units of dollars.

And, of course, there are attacks whose primary goal is to take a hospital out of operation. In the case of compromised information systems, hospitals are unable to retrieve medical records or determine the availability of drugs and supplies. In the worst case scenario, the attack affects the operational infrastructure.

In short: the hospital cannot provide the healthcare function essential for its patients.

The Specifics of Internal Hospital Networks

Hospital internal networks have a specific and rather complicated architecture. They are the combination of not only IT elements but also include the operational technology of specialized medical departments as well as devices such as air conditioning, heating or blind controls.

There are many different types of IT networks in hospitals, for example:

  • Medical networks, in which doctors and nurses access medical records, inventories and other medical information
  • Patient networks, which are used by patients and visitors to the hospital
  • Private physician networks, which lease connectivity from the hospital and also have access to the internal network of information systems

All of this is often complicated by the frequent use of outdated systems and insufficient staff capacity to ensure the organization’s cybersecurity.

We should view these characteristics as specifics that cannot be immediately addressed but need to be kept in mind when securing health facilities. For example, some modalities (diagnostic equipment such as X-ray machines, ultrasound, etc.) were purchased by hospitals 10 to 15 years ago and their level of security corresponds to their age. Often, the manufacturer does not even provide necessary updates, so there are devices with an un-updated operating system in the network. We have seen devices running on Windows XP. Even DOS and old versions of Linux are not rare as without these operating systems, it is not possible to use these devices.

Our experience, coming from dozens of hospitals in the European Union and Asia, has shown us that there are many hospitals with a high level of cyber protection. Unfortunately, there are also those with a large number of security shortcomings that need to be solved. Fortunately, GREYCORTEX Mendel can help them all.

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 GREYCORTEX
GREYCORTEX uses advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining methods to help organizations make their IT operations secure and reliable.

MENDEL, GREYCORTEX’s network traffic analysis solution, helps corporations, governments, and the critical infrastructure sector protect their futures by detecting cyber threats to sensitive data, networks, trade secrets, and reputations, which other network security products miss.

MENDEL is based on 10 years of extensive academic research and is designed using the same technology which was successful in four US-based NIST Challenges.