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Posts from the ‘Endpoint Security’ Category

Jun 6

How To Build A Business Case For Endpoint Security

How To Build a Business Case for Endpoint Security

Bottom Line:  Endpoint security business cases do much more than just quantify costs and benefits; they uncover gaps in endpoint and cyber protection that need urgent attention to avert a breach.

Bad actors and hackers prefer to attack threat surfaces that are isolated, vulnerable with out-of-date security patches, yet integrated into a corporate network to provide access. For these reasons and more, endpoints are now the popular choice for hacking attempts. Ponemon Institute’s Third Annual Study on the State of Endpoint Security Risk published in January of this year found that 68% of organizations were victims of successful endpoint attacks in 2019 that compromised data assets and IT infrastructure. Since 2017, successful endpoint attacks have spiked by 26 percent. The Ponemon study also found that it takes the typical organization 97 days to test and deploy patches to each endpoint. When the average endpoint is three months behind on updates, it’s understandable why breaches are increasing. In 2019 the average endpoint breach inflicted $8.94M in losses. The following graphic compares the escalating number of breaches and economic losses for the last three years:

How To Build A Business Case For Endpoint Security

Exploring Endpoint Security’s Many Benefits

Think of building a business case for endpoint security as the checkup every company needs to examine and identify and every threat surface that can be improved. Just as all efforts to preserve every person’s health is priceless today, organizations can’t let their guard down when it comes to keeping endpoint security strong.

The economic fallout of COVID-19 is hitting IT budgets hard. That’s why now is the time to build a business case for endpoint security. CIOs and CISOs have to make budget cuts due to revenue shortfalls. One area no one wants to compromise on, however, is allowing endpoint agents to degrade over time. Absolute Software’s  Endpoint Security Trends Report found that the more complex and layered the endpoint protection, the greater the risk of a breach. Overloading every endpoint with multiple agents is counterproductive and leaves endpoints less secure than if fewer agents were installed.  Additionally, Absolute just launched a Remote Work and Distance Learning Insights Center, providing insights into the impact of COVID-19 on IT and security controls. An example of the dashboard shown below:

How To Build A Business Case For Endpoint Security

 

Business Case Benefits Need To Apply To  IT and Operations

Absolute and Ponemon’s studies suggest that autonomous endpoints are the future of endpoint security. Activating security at the endpoint and having an undeletable tether to every device solves many of the challenges every business’s IT and Operations teams face. And with the urgency to make IT and Operations as virtual as possible with budgets impacted by COVID-19’s economic fallout, team leaders in each area are focusing on the following shared challenges. COVID-19’s quarantine requirements make hybrid workforces instantly appear and make the budgets needed to support them vanish at the same time.  The following are the shared benefits for IT and Operations that need to anchor any endpoint security business case:

  • The most urgent need is for greater IT Help Desk efficiency. While this is primarily an IT metric, the lack of real-time availability of resources is slowing down remote Operations teams from getting their work done.
  • Both IT and Operations share asset utilization, loss reduction, and lifecycle optimization ownership in many organizations today. Having a persistent, undeletable tether to every device at the hardware level is proving to be an effective approach IT, and Operations teams are relying on to track and improve these metrics. The Absolute and Ponemon studies suggest that the more resilient the endpoint, the better the asset efficiency and lifecycle optimization. Autonomous endpoints can self-heal and regenerate themselves, further improving shared metric performance for IT and Operations.
  • The more autonomous endpoints an organization has, the quicker Operations and IT can work together to pivot into new business models that require virtual operations. Education, Healthcare, Financial Services, Government, and Professional Services are all moving to hybrid remote workplaces and virtual operations as fast as they can. Using the business case for endpoint security as a roadmap to see where threat surfaces need to be improved for new growth is key.

Endpoint Security Benefits 

The following are the benefits that need to be included in creating a business case for endpoint security:

  • Reduce and eventually eliminate IT Help Desk backlogs by keeping endpoints up-to-date. Reducing the call volume on IT Help Desks can potentially save over $45K a year, assuming a typical call takes 10 minutes and the cumulative time savings in 1,260 hours saved by the IT help desk annually.
  • Reduce Security Operations staff interruptions and emergency security projects that require IT’s time to run analytics reports and analyses. Solving complex endpoint security problems burns thousands of dollars and hours over a year between Security, IT, and Operations. Having a persistent, unbreakable connection to every endpoint provides the device visibility teams need to troubleshoot problems. Assuming the 2,520 hours IT Security teams alone spend on emergency endpoint security problems could be reduced, organizations could save approximately $130K a year. 
  • Autonomous endpoints with an undeletable tether improve compliance, control, and visibility and is a must-have in the new hybrid remote workplace. For endpoint security to scale across every threat surface, having an undeletable tether to every device is a must-have for scalable remote work and hybrid remote work programs in the enterprise. They also contribute to lowering compliance costs and improve every aspect of asset management from keeping applications current to ensuring autonomous endpoints can continue to self-heal.
  • Reducing IT asset loss, knowing asset utilization, and system-level software installed by every device can save a typical organization over $300K a year. Autonomous endpoints that can heal themselves and provide a constant hardware connection deliver the data in real-time to have accurate IT asset management and security data teams need to keep software configurations up to date. It’s invaluable for IT teams to have this level of data, as it averts having endpoint patches conflict with one another and leave an endpoint vulnerable to breach.
  • Accurate asset lifecycle planning based on solid data from every device becomes possible. Having autonomous endpoints based on a hardware connection delivers the data needed to increase the accuracy of asset life cycle planning and resource allocation, giving IT and Operations the visibility they need to the device level. IT and Operations teams look to see how they can extend the lifecycle of every device in the field. Cost savings vary by the number of devices in the field and their specific software configurations. The time savings alone is approximately $140K per year in a mid-size financial services firm.
  • The more autonomous and connected an endpoint is, the more automated audit and compliance reporting can become. A key part of staying in compliance is automating the audit process to save valuable time. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) all require ongoing audits. The time and cost savings of automating audits by organizations vary significantly. It’s a reasonable assumption to budget at least a $67K savings per year in audit preparation costs alone.

Evaluating Endpoint Security Costs

The following are the endpoint security costs that need to be included in the business case:

  • Annual, often multi-year endpoint security licensing costs. Endpoint security providers vary significantly in their pricing models, costs, and fees. Autonomous endpoint security platforms can range in licensing costs from $750K to over $1,2M, depending on the size of the organization and the number of devices.
  • Change management, implementation, and integration costs increase with the complexity of IT security, Operations, and IT Service Management (ITSM) integration. Expect to see an average price of between $40K to over $100K to integrate endpoint security platforms with existing ITSM and security information and event management (SIEM) systems.

Creating A Compelling Business Case For Endpoint Security

The best endpoint security business cases provide a 360-degree view of costs, benefits, and why taking action now is needed.

Knowing the initial software and services costs to acquire and integrate endpoint security across your organization, training and change management costs, and ongoing support costs are essential. Many include the following equation in their business cases to provide an ROI estimate. The Return on Investment (ROI) for endpoint security initiative is calculated as follows:

ROI on Endpoint Security (ES) = (ES Initiative Benefits – ES Initiative Costs)/ES Initiative Costs x 100.

A financial services company recently calculated their annual benefits of ES initiative will be $475,000, and the costs, $65,000, will yield a net return of $6.30 for every $1 invested.

Additional factors to keep in mind when building a business case for endpoint security:

  • The penalties for non-compliance to industry-specific laws can be quite steep, with repeated offenses leading to $1M or more in fines and long-term loss of customer trust and revenue. Building a business case for endpoint security needs to factor in the potential non-compliance fees, and penalties companies face for not having autonomous endpoint security. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other laws require audit reporting based on accurate endpoint security data.
  • Endpoint Security ROI estimates fluctuate, and it’s best to get started with a pilot to capture live data with budgets available at the end of a quarter. Typically organizations will allocate the remaining amounts of IT security budgets at the end of a quarter to endpoint security initiatives.
  • Succinctly define the benefits and costs and gain C-level support to streamline the funding process. It’s often the CISOs who are the most driven to achieve greater endpoint security the quickest they can. Today with every business having their entire workforces virtual, there’s added urgency to get endpoint security accomplished.
  • Define and measure endpoint security initiatives’ progress using a digitally-enabled dashboard that can be shared across any device, anytime. Enabling everyone supporting and involved in endpoint security initiatives needs to know what success looks like. Having a digitally-enabled dashboard that clearly shows each goal or objective and the company’s progress toward them is critical to success.

Conclusion

The hard economic reset COVID-19 created has put many IT budgets into freefall at a time when CIOs and CISOs need more funding to protect proliferating hybrid remote workforces. Endpoint security business cases need to factor in how they can create an undeletable resilient defense for every device across their global fleets. And just as every nation on the planet isn’t letting its guard down against the COVID-19 virus, every IT and cybersecurity team can’t let theirs down either when it comes to protecting every endpoint.

Autonomous endpoints that can self-heal and regenerate operating systems and configurations are the future of endpoint security management. The race to be an entirely virtual enterprise is on, and the most autonomous endpoints can be, the more cost-effective and valuable they are. The best business cases bridge the gap between IT and Operations needs. CIOs need endpoint security solutions to be low-cost, low maintenance, reliable yet agile. Operations want an endpoint solution that has a low cost of support, minimal if any impact of IT Service Help Desks, and always-on monitoring. Building a business case for endpoint security gives IT and Operations the insights they need to protect the constantly changing parameters of their businesses.

 

Mar 26

How Absolute Protects Patient Data At Apria Healthcare

How Absolute Protects Patient Data At Apria Healthcare

Bottom Line: Healthcare providers need to adopt more persistent, resilient endpoint cybersecurity to thwart cybercriminals who are escalating their efforts to steal healthcare records. Motivated by up to $1,000 being offered on the Dark Web for healthcare records, cybercriminals are prioritizing healthcare breaches for financial gain.

Endpoint Resilience Is the Cornerstone of Apria Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Strategy

Healthcare providers are a favorite target for cybercriminals, and their popularity is growing. In the first eight weeks of 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services received 66 reports of breaches affecting 500 patient records or more at healthcare providers and health plans. The Health & Human Services Breach Portal, which contains a list of all cases under investigation today, reflects the severity of healthcare providers’ cybersecurity crisis and the urgent need for a strong, resilient system to protect patient information. Apria Healthcare is well aware of these threats and has taken an innovative, insightful approach to thwart them.

Apria Healthcare’s cybersecurity strategy focuses heavily on deterrence at the endpoint and device level, an approach that has proven effective in mitigating breaches globally. The company is a recognized leader in healthcare, serving nearly 2M patients annually across 300 locations in 49 states. They have more than 8,000 laptops, desktops and tablets, many of which regularly leave the organization. Apria needed a way to deliver zero-touch IT asset management, provide self-healing endpoint security, and employ always-on data visibility and protection whether an asset was on or off their corporate network. They turned to Absolute and the company’s patented Persistence technology.

“Persistence [located] in the BIOS is the number one item that I think really sets Absolute apart from other companies touting that they can do asset tracking better,” said Janet Hunt, Senior Director, IT User Support at Apria Healthcare. “The other vendors really can’t, they don’t have that piece – that persistent piece is so important to me. I always am looking for opportunities to use different technologies as they come up, and I haven’t found anything that’s as good as Absolute. Nothing can compare.”

Absolute’s Persistence technology, the foundation of the company’s Resilience solution, enables a self-healing, unbreakable two-way connection to endpoints, applications, and data. It provides an adaptive layer of defense by notifying IT of where devices are and when security applications are removed or corrupt, and triggering automatic reinstallation. Because Absolute is already embedded in the BIOS of Dell, HP, Lenovo, and 22 other leading manufacturers’ devices, it provides Apria with the single source of truth needed to protect personal data and help achieve HIPAA compliance.

Turning HIPAA Compliance into A Competitive Advantage  

Apria quickly established a leadership position in the healthcare industry by setting and maintaining stringent requirements needed to achieve HIPAA compliance across its patient data platform. Leveraging Absolute’s Resilience solution and Persistence technology, Apria differentiated itself from its competitors and reduced the risk they would ever see fines for HIPAA non-compliance. And with HIPAA fines ranging from $25,000 to $15.M per year, Apria’s prescient decision to turn compliance into a competitive advantage was an excellent one because it put patients’ welfare and data security first, above all other IT priorities.

Achieving Greater Device Control & Visibility Is Key 

Absolute’s dashboard provides Apria with both a snapshot of the status of all devices, updated every 15 minutes, as well as a complete device history that enables security managers to see and report on encryption, geolocation, and usage.

“Our geo-fencing is extremely tight. I have PCs that live in the Philippines. I have PCs that live in India. I have one, or actually two, PCs that live in Indonesia. If somebody goes from where they say that they’re going to be to another part of Indonesia, that device will freeze because that’s not where it’s supposed to be, and that’s an automatic thing. Don’t ask forgiveness, don’t ask questions, freeze the device, and see what happens. It’s one of the best things we’ve done for ourselves,” Janet Hunt recently said during a recent during a recent panel discussion. Geofencing is a must-have in any persistent endpoint security strategy.

“[With Absolute] I have a complete history of each device, which makes it really easy for me to say not only whether it is encrypted now, but also what its status was a week ago, or two weeks ago, or two months ago,” said Dave Ochoa, Manager, Information Security Operations at Apria Healthcare. “So, you get this lovely little package that you can hand off to your auditor and say, ‘Not an issue.’ You know that this is not an incident, this is not a breach.”

Endpoint Security’s Network Effect Is Accelerating

Apria Healthcare’s decision to protect its 8,000 laptops, desktops, and tablets using Absolute’s Resilience endpoint solution is a leading indicator of the Network Effect happening with endpoint security today. A sure sign the Network Effect is taking place is how demand is growing for more endpoint security agents and applications. Absolute is seeing this Network Effect globally and has been steadily adding integrations with more than 30 endpoint security agents and applications – most recently adding support for the market-leading security solution VMware® Carbon Black.

“The average enterprise today has already spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars on security controls and applications, and that total security investment only continues to rise in the face of escalating risk,” said Christy Wyatt, CEO of Absolute. “However, the vast number of controls and agents being invested in and subsequently piled onto the endpoint can introduce a false sense of security; those controls are only effective if they are present and actually running. A foundation of Resilience enables IT and security teams to understand the current state of their assets, understand if the security controls have been compromised, and heal those that have been taken offline.”

Conclusion

In the face of increasingly sophisticated attackers and vectors, organizations continue to layer on security controls. Gartner estimates that more than $174B will be spent on security by 2022, and of that, approximately $50B will be dedicated to protecting the endpoint. Absolute’s 2019 Endpoint Security Trends Report revealed that organizations have an average of 10 distinct agents layered onto endpoint devices, all competing with one another for device services and resources. The resulting complexity not only negatively impacts endpoint performance but creates an environment ripe for collision and decay. This, along with humans tampering with or removing security controls, means that even the most well-functioning endpoint agents have a high probability of failure.

All of this has IT and security administrators grappling with increasing complexity and risk levels, while also facing mounting pressure to ensure endpoint controls maintain integrity, availability, and functionality at all times, and deliver their intended value. And so, organizations need complete visibility and real-time insights to pinpoint the dark endpoints, identify what’s broken and where gaps exist, as well as respond and take action quickly.

Absolute’s Resilience offering empowers organizations to build an enterprise security approach that is intelligent, adaptive, and self-healing. Rather than perpetuating a false sense of security, Absolute provides a single source of truth and the diamond image of resilience for endpoints as Apria Healthcare’s cybersecurity strategy and results indicate.

 

 

 

 

Mar 18

Why Your Biometrics Are Your Best Password

Why Your Biometrics Are Your Best Password

Bottom Line: Biometrics are proving to be better than passwords because they’re easier to use, provide greater privacy and security, and are gaining standardization across a broad base of mobile, desktop, and server devices that users rely on to access online services.

In keeping with the theme of this year’s RSA Conference of Human Element, vendors offering passwordless authentication were out in force. Centrify, Entrust Datacard, HID Global, Idaptive, ImageWare, MobileIron, Thales, and many others promoted their unique approaches to passwordless authentication, leveraging the FIDO2 standard. FIDO2 is the latest set of specifications from the FIDO Alliance, an industry standards organization that provides interoperability testing and certification for servers, clients, and authenticators that meet FIDO2 specifications.

The Alliance has introduced a new Universal Server certification for servers that interoperate with all FIDO authenticator types (FIDO UAF, WebAuthn, and CTAP). The following graphic explains how the FIDO2 architecture authenticates every account requesting access to resources on a secured system:

Why Your Biometrics Are Your Best Password

The security industry has been trying to kill the password for decades. It has long been viewed as a weakness, primarily because of the human element: people continue to use weak passwords, on multiple accounts, at work, and in their personal lives. 81% of data breaches involve weak, stolen, default, or otherwise compromised credentials, according to a Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.

Usernames and passwords (“something you know”) was the best factor of authentication available for decades yet didn’t provide enough of a barrier to hackers. Then came two-factor authentication, which added “something you have” as a second factor, such as a smartphone, key card, token, or other tangible item associated with the user.

Today everyone lives in a multi-factor authentication (MFA) world where cybersecurity technologists have added another factor: “something you are.” This is where biometrics come in, and facial recognition, fingerprint scanning, retinal scanning, and other forms of bio-identification have become normal thanks to technologies like Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID. Many people have already been using these technologies for years on their iPhones.

The reality is that these additional factors based on “something you have” or “something you are” are both much stronger than “something you know,” such as a password or PIN. Not only can the latter be easily stolen, guessed, or phished for, but authentication based on biometrics is very hard to fake or duplicate.

In short, by using the two newer factors of authentication, everyone who uses an electronic device daily is moving closer to a passwordless reality. Cybersecurity technologists are going to continue making authentication easier and more secure to improve user experiences and reduce the threat of a breach.

Privileged Admin Passwords Need To Be The First To Go  

Key lessons learned from visiting with the 30 or so vendors who claimed to support passwordless authentication include the following:

  • Centrify was the only vendor who prioritized enforcing FIDO2-based privileged administrator logins. It was also one of the few that specifically mentioned support for Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID, as well as Windows Hello, showing full support for the FIDO2 standard.
  • Windows Hello and Windows Hello for Business are table stakes in passwordless authentication, all vendors claim and can demo this capability.
  • Combining multiple forms of biometrics is proving problematic for the majority of vendors, as evidenced by the inconsistent demos on the show floor. No one could conclusively demo multiple types of biometrics for their solutions on the fly in a demo environment while at RSA. Of the many vendors claiming this capability, Centrify’s approach is the most unique in that privileged user identities are verified, satisfying a valuable pillar of its Identity-Centric PAM approach.
  • All vendors claiming FIDO2 compliance were able to demonstrate Apple’s Touch ID electronic fingerprint recognition, while Apple Face ID facial recognition product demos were hit or miss. If you are evaluating biometrics vendors who claim FIDO2 compliance be sure to stress-test facial recognition, as the demos on the show floor made it clear there’s work to do in this area.
  • Product management teams have been studying the NIST 800-53 high-assurance authentication controls standard and integrating it into their roadmaps. The 170 controls that comprise the NIST 800-53 standard are being adopted quickly across the vendors who claim passwordless authentication as a core strength in their product strategies. Using biometrics eliminates the risk of credential theft techniques and provides better alignment with the NIST 800-53 high-assurance authentication controls standard.
  • Vendors are at varying levels of maturity when it comes to being able to capitalize on the metadata biometrics provides, with a few claiming to have real-time analytics. Every vendor had a different response to how they manage the massive amount of metadata being generated by their biometrics, which all claim also to support analytics. After speaking with the vendors at RSA, analytics used to authenticate rather than just report activity is far more effective. I had a chance to talk to Dr. Torsten George, Cybersecurity Evangelist at Centrify, who said, “Centrify’s support for the FIDO2 standard is a direct result of our ongoing commitment to our customers and their requests for biometric authentication of privileged user identities. Combining our support for the FIDO2 standard with our existing multi-factor authentication and real-time analytics capabilities, we’re able to greatly reduce the risk of security breaches that might exploit weak, default, or stolen privileged credentials.”

Conclusion

RSA’s theme Human Element was prescient from the heavy emphasis on passwordless authentication at this year’s conference. FIDO2 is getting solid support across the cybersecurity vendors who chose to exhibit there, which is great for enterprises, organizations, and small businesses who need to defend themselves. Of the many vendors there, Centrify’s approach stood out based on its unique approach to authenticating privileged user identities for its Identity-Centric PAM platform.

FIDO2 ultimately makes security stronger and less disruptive because it can not only eliminate passwords but also make the user experience more seamless and less likely to be circumvented. Passwordless authentication ensures that login credentials are unique across every website, never stored on a server, and never leave the user’s device. This security model helps eliminate the risks of phishing, as well as all forms of password theft and replay attacks.

We’re closer than ever before to the elusive goal of a passwordless future.

Mar 15

Five Interesting Takeaways From RSA Conference 2020

Five Interesting Takeaways From RSA Conference 2020

 

Bottom Line: Passwordless authentication, endpoint security, cloud-native SIEM platforms, and new API-based data security technologies were the most interesting tech developments, while keynotes focusing on election security, industrial control systems’ vulnerabilities and the persistent threat of state-sponsored ransomware dominated panel discussion.

This year’s RSA Conference was held February 24th to 28th in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, attracting more than 36,000 attendees, 704 speakers, and 658 exhibitors unified by the theme of the Human Element in cybersecurity. The conference’s agenda is here, with many session recordings and presentation slides available for download. Before the conference, RSA published the RSAC 2020 Trend Report (PDF, 13 pp., no opt-in). RSA received 2,400 responses to their Call for Speakers and based their report on an analysis of all submissions. The ten trends in the RSAC 2020 Trend Report are based on an analysis of all papers submitted to the conference. It’s a quick read that provides a synopsis of the main themes of the excellent sessions presented at RSAC 2020.

The following are the five most interesting takeaways from the 2020 RSA Conference:

  • Endpoint security products dominated the show floor, with over 120 vendors promoting their unique solutions. There were over 50 presentations and panels on the many forms of endpoint security as well. Instead of competing for show attendees’ attention on the show floor, Absolute Software took the unique approach of completing a survey during RASC 2020. Absolute’s team was able to interview 100 respondents, with most holding the position of a manager/supervisor or C-level executive. More than three in four respondents reported their organizations are using endpoint security tools, multi-factor authentication, and employee training and education to protect data, devices, and users. You can review their survey results here.
  • The number of vendors claiming to have Zero Trust solutions grew 50% this year, from 60 in 2019 to 91 in 2020. There continues to be a lot of hype surrounding Zero Trust, with vendors having mixed results with their product and messaging strategies in this area. A good benchmark to use for evaluating vendors in the Zero Trust market is the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019, written by Chase Cunningham and published on October 29, 2019. I’ve summarized the lessons learned in the post, What’s New on the Zero Trust Security Landscape In 2019.
  • Over 30 vendors claimed to have passwordless authentication that met the current FIDO2 standard. In keeping with the theme of this year’s RSA Conference of Human Element, vendors offering passwordless authentication were out in force. Centrify, Entrust Datacard, HID Global, Idaptive, ImageWare, MobileIron, Thales, and many others promoted their unique approaches to passwordless authentication, leveraging the FIDO2 standard. FIDO2 is the latest set of specifications from the FIDO Alliance, an industry standards organization that provides interoperability testing and certification for servers, clients, and authenticators that meet FIDO2 specifications. I’ve written a separate post just on this topic, and you can find it here, Why Your Biometrics Are Your Best Password. 
  • Cloud-based security information and event management (SIEM) systems capable of integrating with 3rd party public cloud platforms reflect the maturity nature of this market. Of the several vendors claiming to have cloud-based SIEM, Microsoft’s Azure Sentinel’s demo showed in real-time how fusion AI technology can parse large volumes of low fidelity signals into a few important incidents for SecOps teams to focus on. Microsoft said that in December 2019 alone, Azure Sentinel evaluated nearly 50 billion suspicious signals, isolating them down to just 25 high-confidence incidents for SecOps teams to investigate. The following graphic explains how Azure Sentinel Fusion works.
  • One of the most interesting startups at RSA was Nullafi, who specializes in a novel API-based data security technology that combines data aliasing, vaulting, encryption, and monitoring to create an advanced data protection platform that makes hacked data useless to hackers. What makes Nullafi noteworthy is how they’ve been able to build a data architecture that protects legacy and new infrastructures while making the original data impossible for a hacker to reverse engineer and gain access to. It desensitizes critical data so that it’s useless to hackers but still useful for an organization to keep operating, uninterrupted by a breach to your business. Nullafi is built to AWS GovCloud standards. The Nullafi SDK encrypts the data before sending it to the Nullafi API. It then re-encrypts the data within their zero-knowledge vault in the cloud (or on-premises). The result is that no sensitive data in any format is shared with Nullafi that could be used or lost, as their architecture doesn’t have visibility into what the actual data looks like. The following graphic explains their architecture:

 

Jan 28

Five Factors Predicting The Future Of MacOS Management And Security

Bottom Line: Going into 2020, CISOs’ sense of urgency for managing their fleets of Android, Apple iOS & macOS, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 devices all from an integrated Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is transforming the MacOS Management and Security landscape.

For many, CISOs, the highest priority project they’re starting the New Year with is getting their diverse fleet of devices on a common unified endpoint management platform. “We’ve gone through no less than a dozen UEMs (Unified Endpoint Management) systems, and they are either very good at supporting iOS and macOS or terrible at every other operating system or vice versa,” the CISO of a leading insurance and financial services firm told me over lunch recently. “Our sales, marketing, graphic artists, DevOps, and Customer Success teams all are running on Macs and iPhones, which makes it even more of a challenge to get everyone on the same endpoint management platform.” He went on to explain that the majority of macOS and iOS endpoint management systems aren’t built to support the advanced security he needs for protecting Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 devices.

Unified Endpoint Management is a key CISO priority in 2020

macOS and iOS devices had their own endpoint management tools in previous years when they were limited in use. Now they’re common in the enterprise and need to be considered part of an organization-wide fleet of devices, making it a high priority to add them to the unified endpoint management platform all other devices are on. Further accelerating this change is the success of BYOD policies that give employees the choice of using the tablets, smartphones, and laptops they’re the most productive with. One CISO told me their BYOD program made it clear macOS and iOS are the de facto standard across their enterprise.

While endpoint management platforms are going through an Apple-driven inflection point, forcing the need for a more inclusive unified endpoint management strategy, CISOs are focusing on how to improve application and content control at the same time. How enterprises choose to solve that challenge are predicting the future of MacOS management and security.

Five Factors Driving the Future of macOS Management and Security

CISOs piloting and only buying platforms that can equally protect every device operating system, macOS, and iOS’ rapidly growing enterprise popularity and better support for adaptive access are a few of the catalysts redefining the landscape today. The following five factors are defining how MacOS Management and Security will improve in 2020:

  • Enterprises need more effective endpoint and application management that includes Android, Apple iOS & macOS, Windows Phone, and Windows 10. There’s a major gap in how effective endpoint protection is across the UEM platforms today. Data-at-risk encryption and App distribution, or how well a UEM system can create, update, and distribute macOS applications are two areas cybersecurity teams are focusing on today.

Five Factors Predicting The Future Of MacOS Management And Security

  • System integration options needs to extend beyond log reports and provide real-time links to Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. CISOs and their cybersecurity teams need real-time integration to incident management systems so they can be more effective troubleshooting potential breach attempts. Sharing log files across other systems is a first step, yet real-time integration is clearly what’s needed to protect enterprises’ many devices and threat surfaces today. The following Splunk dashboard illustrates the benefits of having real-time integration beyond log reports, encompassing SIEM systems:

Five Factors Predicting The Future Of MacOS Management And Security

  • UEM platforms that differentiate between corporate-owned and personal devices, content and authentication workflows, and data are defining the future of macOS Management and Security. Key factors that CISOs need in this area of unmanaged device support include more effective content separation, improved privacy settings, support for actions taken on personally-owned devices, and role-based privacy settings. MobileIron is a leader in this area, with enterprises currently using their role-based workflows to limit and verify access to employee-owned devices. MobileIron can also limit IT’s scope of control over an employee device, including turning off location tracking.
  • Support and proven integration of Identity solutions such as Okta, Ping Identity, Microsoft, and Single sign-on (SSO) are defining the future of adaptive access today. This is the most nascent area of UEM platform development today, yet the one area that CISOs need the greatest progress on this year. Endpoint protection and system integration are the two areas that most define how advanced a given UEM providers’ platform is today.
  • The ability to provision, revoke, and manage device certificates over their lifecycles is becoming a must-have in enterprises today. UEM platforms, in large part, can handle certificate device provisioning, yet Certificate Authority (CA) integration is an area many struggle with. CISOs are asking for more effective certificate lifecycle management, especially given the proliferation of macOS and iOS devices.

Conclusion

The five factors of MacOS management and security are transforming the Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solution landscape. CISOs often speak of wanting to have a more integrated UEM strategy, one that can provide better SIEM system integration, differentiate between corporate-owned and personal devices, and also manage the lifecycles of device certificates. MobileIron has proven their ability to scale in a BYOD world and is a UEM vendor to watch in 2020.

Jan 23

10 Ways Asset Intelligence Improves Cybersecurity Resiliency And Persistence

10 Ways Asset Intelligence Improves Cybersecurity Resiliency And Persistence

Bottom Line: By securing every endpoint with a persistent connection and the resiliency to autonomously self-heal, CIOs are finding new ways to further improve network security by capitalizing on each IT assets’ intelligence.

Capturing real-time data from IT assets is how every organization can grow beyond its existing boundaries with greater security, speed, and trust. Many IT and cybersecurity teams and the CIOs that lead them, and with whom I’ve spoken with, are energized by the opportunity to create secured perimeterless networks that can flex in real-time as their businesses grow. Having a persistent connection to every device across an organizations’ constantly changing perimeter provides invaluable data for achieving this goal. The real-time data provided by persistent device connections give IT and cybersecurity teams the Asset Intelligence they need for creating more resilient, self-healing endpoints as well.

How Asset Intelligence Drives Stronger Endpoint Security 

Real-time, persistent connections to every device in a network is the foundation of a strong endpoint security strategy. It’s also essential for controlling device operating expenses (OPEX) across the broad base of device use cases every organization relies on to succeed. Long-term persistent connections drive down capital expenses (CAPEX) too, by extending the life of every device while providing perimeterless growth of the network. By combining device inventory and analysis, endpoint data compliance with the ability to manage a device fleet using universal asset management techniques, IT and cybersecurity teams are moving beyond Asset Management to Asset Intelligence. Advanced analytics, benchmarks, and audits are all possible across every endpoint today. The following are the 10 ways Asset Intelligence improves cybersecurity resiliency and persistence:

  • Track, trace and find lost or stolen devices on or off an organizations’ network in real-time, disabling the device if necessary. Every device, from laptops, tablets, and smartphones to desktops and specialized use devices are another threat surface that needs to be protected. Real-time persistent connections to each of these devices make track-and-trace possible, giving CIOs and their teams more control than had been possible before. Real-time track-and-trace data combined with device condition feedback closes security blind spots too. IT and cybersecurity teams can monitor every device and know the state of hardware, software, network and use patterns from dashboards. Of the endpoint providers in this market, Absolute’s approach to providing dashboards that provide real-time visibility and control of every device on a network is considered state-of-the-art. An example of Absolute’s dashboard is shown below:

10 Ways Asset Intelligence Improves Cybersecurity Resiliency And Persistence

  • Asset Intelligence enables every endpoint to autonomously self-heal themselves and deliver constant persistence across an organization’s entire network. By capitalizing on the device, network, threat, and use data that defines Asset Intelligence, endpoint agents learn over time how to withstand breach attempts, user errors, and malicious attacks, and most importantly, how to return an endpoint device to its original safe state. Asset Intelligence is the future of endpoint security as it’s proving to be very effective at enabling self-healing persistence across enterprise networks.
  • Asset Intelligence solves the urgent problem created from having 10 or more agents installed on a single endpoint that collide, conflict and decay how secure the endpoint is. Absolute Software’s 2019 Endpoint Security Trends Report found that the more agents that are added to an endpoint, the greater the risk of a breach. Absolute also found that a typical device has ten or more endpoint security agents installed, often colliding and conflicting with the other. MITRE’s Cybersecurity research practice found there are on average, ten security agents on each device, and over 5,000 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) found on the top 20 client applications in 2018 alone.
  • Asset Intelligence sets the data foundation for achieving always-on persistence by tracking every devices’ unique attributes, identifiers, communication log history and more. Endpoint security platforms need a contextually-rich, real-time stream of data to know how and when to initialize the process of autonomously healing a given endpoint device. Asset Intelligence provides the centralized base of IT security controls needed for making endpoint persistence possible.
  • Having a real-time connection to every device on a perimeterless network contributes to creating a security cloud stack from the BIOS level that delivers persistence for every device. CIOs and CISOs interested in building secured perimeterless networks are focused on creating persistent, real-time connections to every device as a first step to creating a security cloud stack from each devices’ BIOS level. They’re saying that the greater the level of Asset Intelligence they can achieve, the broader they can roll out persistence-based endpoints across their networks that have the capacity to self-diagnose and self-heal.
  • Device fleets are churning 20% a year or more, increasing the urgency CIOs have for knowing where each device is and its current state, further underscoring Asset Intelligence’s value. Gavin Cockburn of ARUP is the global service lead for workplace automation and endpoint management, including how the firm acquires devices, manages and reclaims them. ARUP is using the Absolute Persistence platform for managing the many high-value laptops and remote devices their associates use on global projects. During a recent panel discussion he says that device replacements “becomes part of our budgeting process in that 33% of devices that we do replace every year, we know where they are.” Gavin is also using API calls to gain analytical data to measure how devices are being used, if the hard drive is encrypted or not and run Reach scripts to better encrypt a device if there is not enough security on them.
  • The more Asset Intelligence an organization has, the more they can predict and detect malware intrusion attempts, block them and restore any damage to any device on their perimeter. When there’s persistent endpoint protection across a perimeterless network, real-time data is enabling greater levels of Asset Intelligence which is invaluable in identifying, blocking and learning from malware attempts on any device on the network. Endpoint protection platforms that have persistence designed in are able to autonomously self-heal back to their original state after an attack, all without manual intervention.
  • Persistent endpoints open up the opportunity of defining geofencing for every device on a perimeterless network, further providing valuable data Asset Intelligence platforms capitalize on. Geofencing is proving to be a must-have for many organizations that have globally-based operations, as their IT and cybersecurity teams need to track the device location, usage, and compliance in real-time. Healthcare companies are especially focused on how Asset Intelligence can deliver geofencing at scale. Janet Hunt, Senior Director, IT User Support at Apria Healthcare recently commented during a recent panel discussion that “our geo-fencing is extremely tight. I have PCs that live in the Philippines. I have PCs that live in India. I have one PC or actually two PCs that live in Indonesia. If somebody goes from where they say that they’re going to be to another part of Indonesia, that device will freeze because that’s not where it’s supposed to be and that’s an automatic thing. Don’t ask forgiveness, don’t ask questions, freeze the device and see what happens. It’s one of the best things we’ve done for ourselves.”  Gavin Cockburn says, “We actually do some kind of secretive work, government work and we have these secure rooms, dotted around the organization. So we know if we put a device in that room, what we do is, what we say is this device only works in this area and we can pinpoint that to a pretty decent accuracy.”  From healthcare to secured government contracting, geofencing is a must-have in any persistent endpoint security strategy.
  • Automating customer and regulatory audits and improving compliance reporting by relying on Asset Intelligence alleviates time-consuming tasks for IT and cybersecurity teams. When persistent endpoint protection is operating across an organization’s network, audit and compliance data is captured in real-time and automatically fed into reporting systems and dashboards. CIOs and their cybersecurity teams are using dashboards to monitor every device’s usage patterns, audit access, and application activity, and check for compliance to security and reporting standards. Audits and compliance reporting are being automated today using PowerShell, BASH scripts and API-based universal asset commands. Gavin Cockburn of ARUP mentioned how his firm gives customers the assurance their data is safe by providing them ongoing audits while project engagements are ongoing. “We need to show for our clients that we look after their data and we can prove that. And we show that again and again. I mean similar story, we’ve seen machines go missing, either breaking into cars, re-image three times. We wipe it every time. Put the new hard drive in, think it might be a hard drive issue, it wipes again. We never see it come online again, “ he said.
  • Asset Intelligence improves data hygiene, which has a direct effect on how effective all IT systems are and the customer experiences they deliver. CIOs and their teams’ incentives center on how effective IT is at meeting internal information needs that impact customer experiences and outcomes. Improving data hygiene is essential for IT to keep achieving their incentive plans and earning bonuses. As Janet Hunt, Senior Director, IT User Support at Apria Healthcare said, “right now we are all about hygiene and what I mean by that is we want our data to be good. We want all the things that make IT a valued partner with the business operation to be able to be reliable.” The more effective any organization is at achieving and sustaining a high level of data hygiene, the more secure their perimeterless network strategies become.

 

Dec 21

Shadow IT Is The Cybersecurity Threat That Keeps Giving All Year Long

Shadow IT Is The Cybersecurity Threat That Keeps Giving All Year Long

  • More than 5,000 personal devices connect to enterprise networks every day with little or no endpoint security enabled in one of every three companies in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.
  • More than 1,000 shadow IoT devices connect to enterprise networks every day in 30% of the U.S., U.K., and German companies.
  • 12% of U.K. organizations are seeing more than 10,000 shadow IoT devices connect to their enterprise networks every day.
  • Associates most often use shadow IT devices to access social media (39%), followed by downloading apps (24%), games (13%), and films (7%). Hackers, organized crime and state-sponsored cybercrime organizations rely on social engineering hacks, phishing, and malware injection across these four popular areas to gain access to enterprise networks and exfiltrate data.

Shadow personal IoT voice assistants, Amazon Kindles, smartphone, and tablet devices are proliferating across enterprise networks today, accelerated by last-minute shopping everyone is trying to get done before the end of December. 82% of organizations have introduced security policies governing the use of these devices but just 24% of employees are aware of them. Meanwhile, the majority of IT senior management, 88%, believe their policies are effective. These and many other fascinating insights are from a recent study completed by Infoblox titled, What is Lurking on Your Network, Exposing the threat of shadow devices (PDF, 7 pp., no opt-in).

Shadow IT’s Security Gaps Create New Opportunities For Hackers

Gaps in threat surface and endpoint security are what hackers, organized crime, and state-sponsored cybercrime organizations thrive on. The holidays create new opportunities for these organizations to capitalize on security gaps using social engineering hacks, phishing, malware injection and more. “With cybercriminals increasingly exploiting vulnerable devices, as well as targeting employees’ insecure usage of these devices, it is crucial for enterprise IT teams to discover what’s lurking on their networks and actively defend against the threats introduced,” Gary Cox, Technology Director, Western Europe for Infoblox said. Just a few of the many threats include the following:

  • A quick on-ramp for hackers to exfiltrate data from enterprise systems. Every personal device left unprotected on an enterprise network is an ideal threat surface for hackers and other malicious actors to infiltrate an enterprise network from. The most common technique is to use DNS tunneling, which enables cybercriminals to insert malware or pass stolen information into DNS queries, creating a covert communication channel that bypasses most firewalls. Project Sauron was one particularly advanced threat, which allegedly went undetected for five years at a number of organizations that used DNS tunneling for data exfiltration.
  • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are often launched from a series of hijacked connected devices that are often the least protected threat surface on corporate networks. It’s common for DDoS attacks to begin with malicious actors hijacking any vulnerable device they can to launch repeated and frequent queries that bombard the Domain Name Server (DNS) with the intent of slowing down its ability to process legitimate queries, often to the point that it can no longer function.
  • Creating and targeting Botnet armies using vulnerable IoT devices to attack organizations’ enterprise systems is increasing, according to Verizon’s latest 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report. “Botnets are truly a low-effort attack that knows no boundaries and brings attackers either direct revenue through financial account,” according to Verizon’s 2019 study. Botnets are also being used to steal privileged access credentials to an enterprises’ systems that are being accessed from the same personal devices employees are using for social media access and shopping. There have been over 40,000 breaches initiated using botnets this year so far, according to Verizon. The report notes that a variant of the Mirai IoT botnet began scanning for vulnerable Drupal servers in April of this year and was successful in finding the most vulnerable systems globally to install crypto mining software. The attack is known as Drupalgeddon2, and the scope of its vulnerabilities are still being discovered today.
  • Unsecured personal devices connected to enterprise networks are ransomware landing zones. 70% of all malware attacks happen in healthcare according to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report because patient health records are bestsellers on the Dark Web, ranging in price from $250 to over $1,000 per record. Ransomware is a form of malware that, once it takes over a computer or network, threatens to deny access to or destroy an organizations’ data. Ransomware can easily intercept an enterprise network after being accidentally downloaded by an employee on either a business or personal device connected to a network.

Where To Start: Secure The Networks Shadow IT Relies On

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) have told me that the most challenging aspect of securing the proliferation of shadow IT devices is protecting the multitude of remote locations that together form their distributed networks. They’re saying that in 2020, enabling network security is the greatest challenge their enterprises will face. More enterprises are adopting cloud-based DDI platforms that enable enterprises to simplify the management of highly distributed remote networks as well as to optimize the network performance of cloud-based applications. Leaders in this area include Infoblox, a leader in SD-WAN and cloud-based DDI platforms for enterprises. Here are the most common strategies they’re relying on to secure their distributed networks based on the proliferation of personal devices:

  • Integrating threat intelligence data to evaluate if specific sites and applications are high risk or not. IT administrators need to deploy solutions that allow them to build safeguards that will prevent potential dangerous activity occurring on the network. Integrating threat intelligence data into DNS management enables security teams to monitor and prevent access to Newly Observed Domains. Many new domains will be set up ahead of phishing and/or spear-phishing campaign, so in preventing access to these sites, organizations can reduce the risk of employees accidentally introducing malware through clicking through to insecure links on personal devices connected to the enterprise network.
  • Set the goal of achieving full visibility across distributed networks by starting with a plan that considers cloud-based DDI platforms. CISOs and the IT teams working with them need to translate their policies into action by achieving more unified visibility by upgrading their core network services, including DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, on cloud-based DDI platforms to bring greater security scale and reliability across their enterprise networks.
  • Design in greater DNS security at the network level. Enterprise networks are heavily reliant on DNS, making them an area malicious actors attempt to disrupt in their broader efforts to exfiltrate valuable data from organizations. Existing security controls, such as firewalls and proxies, rarely focus on DNS and associated threats – leaving organizations vulnerable to highly aggressive, rapidly proliferating attacks. When secured, the DNS can act as an organization’s first line of defense. The DNS can provide essential context and visibility, so IT teams can be alerted of any network anomalies, report on what devices are joining and leaving the network, and resolve problems faster.

Conclusion

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives’ benefits far outweigh the costs, making the business case for BYOD overwhelming positive, as seen in how financial services firms stay secure.  Enterprises need to consider adopting a cloud-based DDI platform approach that enables them to simplify the management of highly distributed remote networks as well as to optimize the network performance of cloud-based applications. Many CISOs are beginning to realize the model of relying on centralized IT security isn’t scaling to support and protect the proliferation of user devices with internet access, leaving employees, branch offices, and corporate networks less secure than ever before. Every IT architect, IT Director, or CIO needs to consider how taking an SDWAN-based approach to network management reduces the risk of a breach and data exfiltration.

 

Dec 9

Why Cybersecurity Needs To Focus More On Customer Endpoints

Why Cybersecurity Needs To Focus More On Customer Endpoints

  • Cloud-based endpoint protection platforms (EPP) are proliferating across enterprises today as CIOs and CISOs prioritize greater resiliency in their endpoint security strategies going into 2020.
  • Gartner predicts that Global Information Security and Risk Management end-user spending is forecast to grow at a five-year CAGR of 9.2% to reach $174.5 billion in 2022, with approximately $50B spent on endpoint security.
  • Endpoint security tools are 24% of all IT security spending, and by 2020 global IT security spending will reach $128B according to Morgan Stanley Research.
  • 70% of all breaches still originate at endpoints, despite the increased IT spending on this threat surface, according to IDC.

There’s a surge of activity happening right now in enterprises that are prioritizing more resiliency in their endpoint security strategies going into 2020. The factors motivating CIOs, CISOs, IT, and Practice Directors to prioritize endpoint resiliency include more effective asset management based on real-time data while securing and ensuring every endpoint can heal itself using designed-in regenerative software at the BIOS level of every device. CIOs say the real-time monitoring helps reduce asset management operating expense, a big plus many of them appreciate give their tight budgets. Sean Maxwell, Chief Commercial Officer at Absolute, says, “Trust is at the center of every endpoint discussion today as CIOs, CISOs and their teams want the assurance every endpoint will be able to heal itself and keep functioning.”

The Endpoint Market Is Heating Up Going Into 2020

Over thirty vendors are competing in the endpoint security market right now. A few of the most interesting are Absolute Software, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and others who are seeing a surge of activity from enterprises based on discussions with CIOs and CISOs. Absolute Software’s Persistence self-healing endpoint security technology is embedded in the firmware of more than 500 million devices and gives CIOs, CISOs and their team’s complete visibility and control over devices and data. Absolute is the leading visibility and control platform that provides enterprises with tamper-proof resilience and protection of all devices, data, and applications.

Like Absolute, Microsoft is unique in how they are the only vendor to provide built-in endpoint protection at the device level, with the core focus being on the OS. Windows 10 has Windows Defender Antivirus now integrated at the OS level, the same System Center Endpoint Protection delivers in Windows 7 and 8 OS. Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) incident response console aggregates alerts and incident response activities across Microsoft Defender ATP, Office 365 ATP, Azure ATP, and Active Directory, in addition to Azure.

Further evidence of how enterprise customers are placing a high priority on endpoint security is the increase in valuations of key providers in this market, including Absolute Software (TSE: ABT) and others. Absolute’s stock price has jumped 13% in just a month, following their latest earnings announcement on November 12th with a transcript of their earnings call here. Absolute’s CEO Christy Wyatt commented during the company’s most recent earnings call that, “The ability to utilize near real-time data from the endpoint to… to deliver actionable insights to IT about where controls are failing and the ability to apply resilience to self-heal and reinforce those security controls will become a critical skill for every one of our customers. This is the essence of Absolute’s platform, which adds resiliency to our customer’s operations.” It’s evident from what CIOs and CISOs are saying that resiliency is transforming endpoint security today and will accelerate in 2020.

Key Takeaways From Conversations With Enterprise Cybersecurity Leaders

The conversations with CIOs, CISOs, and IT Directors provided valuable insights into why resiliency is becoming a high priority for endpoint security strategies today. The following are key takeaways from the conversations:

  • Known humorously as the “fun button” cybersecurity teams enjoy being able to brick any device any time while monitoring the activity happening on it in real-time. One CIO told the story of how their laptops had been given to a service provider who was supposed to destroy them to stay in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and one had been resold on the back market, ending up in a 3rd world nation. As the hacker attempted to rebuild the machine, the security team watched as each new image was loaded, at which time they would promptly brick the machine. After 19 tries, the hacker gave up and called the image re-build “brick me.”
  • IT budgets for 2020 are flat or slightly up, with many CIOs being given the goal of reducing asset management operating expenses, making resiliency ideal for better managing device costs. The more effectively assets are managed, the more secure an organization becomes. That’s another motivating factor motivating enterprises to adopt resiliency as a core part of the endpoint security strategies.
  • One CIO was adamant they had nine software agents on every endpoint, but Absolute’s Resilience platform found 16, saving the enterprise from potential security gaps. The gold image an enterprise IT team was using had inadvertently captured only a subset of the total number of software endpoints active on their networks. Absolute’s Resilience offering and Persistence technology enabled the CIO to discover gaps in endpoint security the team didn’t know existed before.
  • Endpoints enabled with Resiliency have proven their ability to autonomously self-heal themselves, earning the trust of CIOs and CISOs, who are adopting Absolute to alleviate costly network interruptions and potential breaches in the process. 19% of endpoints across a typical IT network require at least one client or patch management repair monthly, according to Absolute’s 2019 Endpoint Security Trends Report. The report also found that increasing security spending on protecting endpoints doesn’t increase an organizations’ safety – and in some instances, reduces it. Having a systematic, design-in solution to these challenges gives CIOs, CISO, and their teams greater peace of mind and reduces expensive interruptions and potential breaches that impede their organizations’ growth.

 

Nov 27

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What’s New On The Zero Trust Security Landscape In 2019

What’s New On The Zero Trust Security Landscape In 2019

  • Forrester added in Checkpoint, Forescout, Google, illumio, MobileIron, Proofpoint, Symantec, and Unisys in their latest Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers this year.
  • Forrester’s 2019 scorecard increased the weight on network security, automation and orchestration, and portfolio growth rate compared to last year, adding in Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) ecosystem advocacy to the scorecard for the first time.
  • Microsoft and VMWare are no longer included in the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers this year.

These and many other interesting insights are from what’s new in the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019, written by Chase Cunningham and published on October 29, 2019. Chase is a leading authority on Zero Trust Security, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview him earlier this year. You can read the interview here,10 Questions With Chase Cunningham On Cybersecurity. Forrester included 14 vendors in this assessment: Akamai Technologies, Check Point, Cisco, Cyxtera Technologies, Forcepoint, Forescout, Google, illumio, MobileIron, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, Symantec, and Unisys. The following is the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019 graphic from the free reprint offered by MobileIron here.

Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019

 

Summary of What’s New In Forrester’s Zero Trust Wave This Year

The latest Forrester Wave adds in and places high importance on Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) ecosystem advocacy, allocating 25% of the weight associated with the Strategy section on the scorecard. Forrester sees Zero Trust as a journey, with vendors who provide the greatest assistance and breadth of benefits on a unified platform being the most valuable. The Wave makes it clear that Zero Trust doesn’t refer to a specific technology but rather the orchestration of several technologies to enable and strengthen their Zero Trust framework. Key insights from what’s new this year in the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019 include the following:

  • Platforms are powering the Zero Trust landscape and delivering the greatest value to organizations on their Zero Trust journey. Forrester notes that organizations are getting the greatest benefits from choosing a single vendor who can deliver integrated, real-world capabilities instead of marketing hype.
  • Ease of use and excellent usability need to be the new normal when it comes to Zero Trust Solutions. Forrester sees a widening gap between Zero Trust solutions that take administrator and end-user experience into account and deliver the critical capabilities that make ZTX frameworks successful and those that don’t. It’s common knowledge of how challenging Zero Trust solutions and platforms are to deploy. Raising the issue of improving usability will help expand the total available market for Zero Trust solutions and increase the effectiveness of every platform installed.
  • A much stronger focus on Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) and integration. This year’s Wave places much greater emphasis on APIs and the need to integrate every application and Web Service across a Zero Trust platform. The greater the integration expertise of any Zero Trust vendor, the faster an organization adopting their systems and platforms will attain secured stability across every threat surface.
  • Forrester advises Zero Trust vendors to concentrate on four key aspects of their strategy if they’re going to deliver overwhelming value to organizations they’re selling to. These four key aspects include actively advocating for Zero Trust as evidenced by driving product strategies that prioritize needed capabilities; supporting micro-segmentation; enforcing policy everywhere by first enabling extensive, proven integrations using well-documented and tested APIs that make it possible to enable policy definition and enforcement across enterprises; and provide identity beyond identity and access management (IAM).
  • Cyxtera Technologies, MobileIron, and Proofpoint are new to the Zero Trust World, each bringing valuable contributions to enterprises on their Zero Trust journey. Of the three, MobileIron is the most noteworthy as their approach to Zero Trust begins with the device and scales across mobile infrastructures. Forrester observes that “MobileIron’s recently released authenticator, which enables passwordless authentication to cloud services, is a must for future-state Zero Trust enterprises and speaks to its innovation in this space.” MobileIron’s product suite also includes a federated policy engine that enables administrators to control and better command the myriad of devices and endpoints that enterprises rely on today. Forrester sees all three vendors as having excellent integration at the platform level, a key determinant of how effective they will be in providing support to enterprises pursuing Zero Trust Security strategies in the future.

Conclusion

The latest Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019, reflects the growing maturity of the Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) Ecosystem. Adding in Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) ecosystem advocacy and weighing it at 25% reflects how serious Forrester is about evaluating vendors on solid, real product features over marketing claims. The increased focus on platforms, APIs and integration also reflect the growing maturity of enterprises adopting Zero Trust frameworks today.

Nov 12

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Financial Services Rely On BYOD – How Do They Stay Secure?

Financial Services Rely On BYOD – How Do They Stay Secure?

Bottom Line: 2020 is going to be the year companies launch more digital business initiatives that depend on BYOD than ever before, making Zero Trust Security a key contributor to their success.

Financial Services firms are at an inflection point going into 2020. Mobile-first products and services now dominate their product roadmaps for next year, with applications’ speed and security being paramount. In fintech, DevOps teams have been working with AngularJS for years now, and the scale and speed of their applications reflect their expertise. How well existing IT infrastructure flexes to support the new mobile-first product and services strategies depends on how quickly members of IT, customer service, and customer success teams can respond. BYOD is proving invaluable in achieving the speed of response these new digital business models require.

In 2020 more employees of Financial Services firms will rely on their mobile devices as their primary form of digital ID than has ever been the case before. A recent survey conducted by IDG in association with MobileIron found that 89% of security leaders believe mobile devices will be the primary digital ID employees use to gain access to resources and get work done. The CIOs I’ve spoken agree. A copy of the IDG and MobileIron study, Say Goodbye to Passwords, can be downloaded here.

Counting On BYOD To Deliver Responsiveness And Speed

CIO and IT bonuses are often indexed to the revenue contributions their new products and services deliver, making speed, scale, security, and responsiveness the most important features of all. Fintech CIOs are saying that BYOD is proving indispensable in scaling IT in support of new digital business initiatives as a result. By 2022, 75% of smartphones used in the enterprise will bring your own device (BYOD), up from 35% in 2018, forcing a migration from device-centric management to app- and data-centric management, according to Gartner’s Competitive Landscape: Managed Mobility Services.

Two factors continue to propel BYOD adoption in financial services, fueling the need for Zero Trust Security across every mobile device. The first is the need for real-time responsiveness from internal team members and the second is having every threat surface protected without degrading the time to respond to customers. Every CIO, IT and Product Management leader I’ve spoken with mention the race they are in to deliver mobile-first products and services early in 2020 that redefine their business.  With every identity being a new security perimeter, Financial Services firms are relying on Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and additional zero trust-enabling technologies as an integral part of their Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) strategy. Their goal is to create a Zero Trust Security framework that protects every mobile device endpoint. Leaders in this field include MobileIron, who also provides zero sign-on (ZSO), and mobile threat defense (MTD) in addition to UEM and EMM solutions today.  The following are the key features every BYOD program needs to offer to stay secure, scale and succeed in 2020:

  •  Separation of business and personal data is a must-have in any BYOD security strategy. FinTechs who have the greatest success with BYOD as part of their digital initiatives are relying on Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to selectively wipe only the business data from a device in the event it is compromised.
  • An interactive, intuitive user experience that can be quickly customized at scale by role, department, and workflow requirements without impacting user productivity. Too often BYOD users have had to trade off having stronger security on their own devices versus using a company-provided smartphone to get remote work done. The best EMM and UEM solutions in the market today enable Zero Trust by treating every identity as a new security perimeter.
  • Define the success of a BYOD security strategy by how well it immediately shuts down access to confidential data and systems first. Being able to immediately block access to confidential systems and data is the most important aspect of securing any BYOD across a network.
  • Limit access to internal system resources based on the employee’s department, role, and function to eliminate the risk of confidential data ending up in a personal app. EMM solutions have progressed quickly, especially on the dimension of providing Zero Trust Security across BYOD networks. Look for an EMM solution that gives the administrator the flexibility of limiting mobile device access to a specific series of services and access points based on an employees’ role in a specific department and the scope of data they need access to.
  • Proven multi-operating system expertise and support for legacy internally created mobile applications and services. One of the main reasons BYOD is succeeding today as an enablement strategy is the freedom it gives users to select the device they prefer to work with. Supporting Android and IOS is a given. Look for advanced EMM and UEM solutions that also support legacy mobility applications. The best BYOD security solutions deliver device and application compatibility with no degradation in security or performance.

Conclusion – Why BYOD Strategies Need Zero Trust Now

Trust-but-verify isn’t working today. Attackers are capitalizing on it by stealing or buying privileged access credentials, accessing any system or database they choose. Financial Services firms fully expect their new products and services launching in 2020 to face an onslaught of breach and hacking attempts. Trust-but-verify approaches that are propagated across an enterprises’ BYOD base of devices using Virtual Private Networks and demilitarized zones (DMZ) impede employee’s productivity, often force login authentication. Trust-but verify doesn’t scale well into BYOD scenarios, leaving large gaps attackers can gain access to valuable internal data and systems. For BYOD users, trust-but-verify reduces productivity, delivers poor user experiences, and for new business models, slower customer response times.

By going to a Zero Trust Framework, Financial Services firms will be able to treat every identity and the mobile device they are using as their new security perimeter. Basing a BYOD strategy on a Zero Trust Framework enables any organization to find the correlation between the user, device, applications, and networks in milliseconds, thwarting potential threats before granting secure access to the device. Leaders delivering Zero Trust for BYOD include MobileIron, who provides endpoint management (UEM) capabilities with enabling technologies of zero sign-on (ZSO) user and device authentication, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and mobile threat detection (MTD).

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