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Posts tagged ‘Louis Columbus’ blog’

Nov 2

How To Protect Healthcare IoT Devices In A Zero Trust World

  • Over 100M healthcare IoT devices are installed worldwide today, growing to 161M by 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.2% in just three years according to Statista.
  • Healthcare executives say privacy concerns (59%), legacy system integration (55%) and security concerns (54%) are the top three barriers holding back Internet of Things (IoT) adoption in healthcare organizations today according to the Accenture 2017 Internet of Health Things Survey.
  • The global IoT market is projected to soar from $249B in 2018 to $457B in 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.4% in just three years according to Statista.

Healthcare and medical device manufacturers are in a race to see who can create the smartest and most-connected IoT devices first. Capitalizing on the rich real-time data monitoring streams these devices can provide, many see the opportunity to break free of product sales and move into more lucrative digital service business models. According to Capgemini’s “Digital Engineering, The new growth engine for discrete manufacturers,” the global market for smart, connected products is projected to be worth $519B to $685B by 2020. The study can be downloaded here (PDF, 40 pp., no opt-in). 47% of a typical manufacturer’s product portfolio by 2020 will be comprised of smart, connected products. In the gold rush to new digital services, data security needs to be a primary design goal that protects the patients these machines are designed to serve. The following graphic from the study shows how organizations producing smart, connected products are making use of the data generated today.

Healthcare IoT Device Data Doesn’t Belong For Sale On The Dark Web

Every healthcare IoT device from insulin pumps and diagnostic equipment to Remote Patient Monitoring is a potential attack surface for cyber adversaries to exploit. And the healthcare industry is renowned for having the majority of system breaches initiated by insiders. 58% of healthcare systems breach attempts involve inside actors, which makes this the leading industry for insider threats today according to Verizon’s 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report (PHIDBR).

Many employees working for medical providers are paid modest salaries and often have to regularly work hours of overtime to make ends meet. Stealing and selling medical records is one of the ways those facing financial challenges look to make side money quickly and discreetly. And with a market on the Dark Web willing to pay up to $1,000 or more for the most detailed healthcare data, according to Experian, medical employees have an always-on, 24/7 marketplace to sell stolen data. 18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000, and 24% of employees know of someone who has sold privileged credentials to outsiders, according to a recent Accenture survey. Healthcare IoT devices are a potential treasure trove to inside and outside actors who are after financial gains by hacking the IoT connections to smart, connected devices and the networks they are installed on to exfiltrate valuable medical data.

Healthcare and medical device manufacturers need to start taking action now to secure these devices during the research and development, design and engineering phases of their next generation of IoT products. Specifying and validating that every IoT access point is compatible and can scale to support Zero Trust Security (ZTS) is essential if the network of devices being designed and sold will be secure. ZTS is proving to be very effective at thwarting potential breach attempts across every threat surface an organization has. Its four core pillars include verifying the identity of every user, validating every device, limiting access and privilege, and utilizing machine learning to analyze user behavior and gain greater insights from analytics.

The First Step Is Protect Development Environments With Zero Trust Privilege

Product research & development, design, and engineering systems are all attack surfaces that cyber adversaries are looking to exploit as part of the modern threatscape. Their goals include gaining access to valuable Intellectual Property (IP), patents and designs that can be sold to competitors and on the Dark Web, or damaging and destroying development data to slow down the development of new products. Another tactic lies in planting malware in the firmware of IoT devices to exfiltrate data at scale.

Attack surfaces and the identities that comprise the new security perimeter of their companies aren’t just people; they are workloads, services, machines, and development systems and platforms. Protecting every attack surface with cloud-ready Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) which secures access to infrastructure, DevOps, cloud, containers, Big Data, and the entire development and production environment is needed.

Zero Trust Privilege can harden healthcare and medical device manufacturers’ internal security, only granting least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment. By implementing least privilege access, healthcare and medical device manufacturers would be able to minimize attack surfaces, improve audit and compliance visibility, and reduces risk, complexity, and costs across their development and production operations.

The Best Security Test Of All: An FDA Audit

Regulatory agencies across Asia, Europe, and North America are placing a higher priority than ever before on cybersecurity to the device level. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Cybersecurity Initiative is one of the most comprehensive, providing prescriptive guidance to manufacturers on how to attain higher levels of cybersecurity in their products.

During a recent healthcare device and medical device manufacturer’s conference, a former FDA auditor (and now Vice President of Compliance) gave a fascinating keynote on the FDA’s intent to audit medical device security at the production level. Security had been an afterthought or at best a “trust but verify” approach that relied on trusted versus untrusted machine domains. That will no longer be the case, as the FDA will now complete audits that are comparable to Zero Trust across manufacturing operations and devices.

As Zero Trust Privilege enables greater auditability than has been possible in the past, combined with a “never trust, always verify” approach to system access, healthcare device, and medical products manufacturers should start engineering in Zero Trust into their development cycles now.

Oct 25

The Current State Of Cybersecurity Shows Now Is The Time For Zero Trust

  • 41% of total breaches in 2017 targeted the healthcare industry, making it the most popular target for breach attempts.
  • Personally Identifiable Information (PII) combined with user credentials tops the percentage of breaches with 29% according to Wipro’s report.
  • 88 records were lost or stolen every second in 2017 according to Wipro’s analysis.
  • Machine learning & AI are the second highest ranking security competencies for the future.

These and many other fascinating findings are from Wipro’s State of Cybersecurity Report 2018. A copy of the report can be downloaded here (PDF, 96 pp., no opt-in). The study is based on four primary sources of data including primary research of Wipro customers, Cyber Defense Center (CDC) primary research, secondary research sources and Wipro partner content. 42% of respondents are from North America, 10% from Europe, 18% from the Middle East, 21% from Asia and 8% from Australia. For additional details on the methodology, please see pages 3 through 5 of the report.

Banking & Financial Services and Healthcare Breaches Most Common

Over 40% of all breaches Wipro was able to track using their CDCs are targeted at healthcare, followed by banking & financial services with 18%. This is consistent with Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report which shows healthcare leading all industries with five times the number of breaches experienced than any other industry. Banking & financial services receive more server-based breach incidents than any other industry according to Verizon’s latest study. Accenture’s study, “Losing the Cyber Culture War in Healthcare: Accenture 2018 Healthcare Workforce Survey on Cybersecurity” found that 18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000.

Wipro’s State of Cybersecurity Report 2018 underscores how all industries are facing a security crisis today. The study shows how all industries need a more scalable approach to security that protects every attack surface by validating every access request on every device, for every resource.  Zero Trust Security (ZTS) continues to be proven effective in thwarting breach attempts across all industries by relying on its four core pillars of verifying the identity of every user, validating every device, limiting access and privilege, as well as relying on machine learning to analyze user behavior and gain greater insights from analytics. Leaders in this field include Centrify for Privileged Access Management, Idaptive, (a new company soon to be spun out from Centrify) for Next-Gen Access, as well as Cisco, F5 and Palo Alto Networks in networking.

ZTS starts by maturing an organization’s identity management practices ― be it to secure end-user access credentials through Next-Gen Access (NGA) or to secure privileged user credentials via Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP). NGA empowers organizations to validate every end user access attempt by capturing and then analyzing a wide breadth of data, including user identity, device, device operating system, location, time, resource request, and many other factors to derive risk scores. NGA determines in less than a second if verified end users will get immediate access to resources requested, or be asked to verify their identity further through Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Zero Trust Privilege is focused on privileged users that typically hold the “keys to the kingdom” and therefore are a common target for cyber adversaries. ZTP grants least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment. By implementing least privilege access, organizations minimize attack surfaces, improving audit and compliance visibility, and reducing risk, complexity, and costs for the modern, hybrid enterprise. Every industry needs Zero Trust Security to secure the proliferating number and variety of attack surfaces and realize that each customer, employee and partner identity is their real security perimeter.

Key takeaways of the Wipro State of Cybersecurity Report 2018 include the following:

  • Security Architecture & Design and Machine learning & AI are the #1 and #2 ranked security competencies for the future. When senior executive respondents were asked which security competencies would most help security practitioners excel in the cybersecurity domain, they mentioned security architecture & design (31%) and machine learning & AI (19%) as their top choices. Next-Gen Access platforms leverage machine learning algorithms to continuously learn and generate contextual intelligence that is used to streamline access for verified end users while thwarting breach attempts, the most common of which is compromised credentials. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

  • 29% of respondents say that Privileged Access Management (PAM) gave them most value, further validating now is the time for Zero Trust Privilege. IT executives are more and more understanding that privileged access credential abuse is the most common cause for cyber-attacks and therefore are starting to place more emphasis on implementing Privileged Access Management. Centrify has recently announced a new focus on Zero Trust Privilege, extending PAM to a broader modern threatscape including DevOps, containers, Big Data and more. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

  • Endpoint attack vectors are proliferating faster than traditional enterprise security approaches can keep up. The scale and scope of endpoint attack vectors continue to change quickly. Wipro found that breach attempts are often multi-dimensional with orchestrated attempts to compromise a combination of attack vectors at once. Wipro’s findings that endpoint attack vectors are fluctuating so quickly further support the need for ZTS enabled by Next-Gen Access as the primary security strategy to thwart breach attempts. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

Conclusion

In quantifying the number and scope of breaches healthcare, banking & financial services, retail, education and manufacturing companies experienced in 2017, Wipro’s latest Wipro State of Cybersecurity Report shows how every identity is the new security perimeter of a business. Attack surfaces are proliferating with the growth of business models in each of these industries, accelerated by the Internet of Things (IoT) adoption and smart, connected products and systems. By relying on the four core pillars of verifying the identity of every user, validating every device, limiting access and privilege, as well as relying on machine learning to analyze user behavior and gain greater insights from analytics, Zero Trust Security thwarts breach attempts by protecting every threat surface in real-time.

Oct 14

2018 Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates

Cloud computing platforms and applications are proliferating across enterprises today, serving as the IT infrastructure driving new digital businesses. The following roundup of cloud computing forecasts and market estimates reflect a maturing global market for cloud services, with proven scale, speed and security to support new business models.

CIOs who are creating compelling business cases that rely on cloud platforms as a growth catalyst is the architects enabling these new business initiatives to succeed. The era of CIO strategist has arrived. Key takeaways include the following:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounted for 55% of the company’s operating profit in Q2, 2018, despite contributing only 12% to the company’s net sales. In Q1, 2018 services accounted for 40% of Amazon’s revenue, up from 26% three years earlier. Source: Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits, Statista, July 27, 2018.

  • 80% of enterprises are both running apps on or experimenting with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their preferred cloud platform. 67% of enterprises are running apps on (45%) and experimenting on (22%) the Microsoft Azure platform. 18% of enterprises are using Google’s Cloud Platform for applications today, with 23% evaluating the platform for future use. RightScale’s 2018 survey was included in the original data set Statista used to create the comparison. Source: Statista, Current and planned usage of public cloud platform services running applications worldwide in 2018. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier viewing.

  • Enterprise adoption of Microsoft Azure increased significantly from 43% to 58% attaining a 35% CAGR while AWS adoption increased from 59% to 68%. Enterprise respondents with future projects (the combination of experimenting and planning to use) show the most interest in Google (41%). Source: RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier viewing.

  • Wikibon projects the True Private Cloud (TPC) worldwide market will experience a compound annual growth rate of 29.2%, reaching $262.4B by 2027. The firm predicts TPC growth will far outpace the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) growth of 15.2% over the same period. A true private cloud is distinguished from a private cloud by the completeness of the integration of all aspects of the offering, including performance characteristics such as price, agility, and service breadth. Please see the source link for additional details on TPC. Source: Wikibon’s 2018 True Private Cloud Forecast and Market Shares. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier viewing.

  • Total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments is projected to attain a 10.9% year-over-year growth rate, reaching $52.3B this year. Long-term, IDC expects spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8%, reaching $55.7B. Source: Spending on IT Infrastructure for Deployment in Cloud Environments is Forecast to Grow 10.9% in 2018, According to IDC.

  • More than $1.3T in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud by 2022. 28% of spending within key enterprise IT markets will shift to the cloud by 2022, up from 19% in 2018. The largest cloud shift before 2018 occurred in application software, particularly driven by customer relationship management (CRM) software, with Salesforce dominating as the market leader. CRM has already reached a tipping point where a higher proportion of spending occurs in the cloud than in traditional software. Source: Gartner Says 28 Percent of Spending in Key IT Segments Will Shift to the Cloud by 2022.

  • IDC predicts worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending will reach $180B in 2018, an increase of 23.7% over 2017. According to IDC, the market is expected to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9% with public cloud services spending totaling $277B in 2021. The industries that are forecast to spend the most on public cloud services in 2018 are discrete manufacturing ($19.7B), professional services ($18.1B), and banking ($16.7B). The process manufacturing and retail industries are also expected to spend more than $10B each on public cloud services in 2018. These five industries will remain at the top in 2021 due to their continued investment in public cloud solutions. The industries that will see the fastest spending growth over the five-year forecast period are professional services (24.4% CAGR), telecom (23.3% CAGR), and banking (23.0% CAGR). Source: Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Forecast to Reach $160 Billion This Year, According to IDC.
  • Discrete Manufacturing is predicted to lead all industries on public cloud spending of $19.7B in 2018 according to IDC. Additional industries forecast to spend the most on public cloud services this year include Professional Services at $18.1B and Banking at $16.7B. The process manufacturing and retail industries are also expected to spend more than $10B each on public cloud services in 2018. According to IDC, these five industries will remain at the top in 2021 due to their continued investment in public cloud solutions. The industries that will see the fastest spending growth over the five-year forecast period are Professional Services with a 24.4% CAGR, Telecommunications with a 23.3% CAGR, and banking with a 23% CAGR. Source: Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Forecast to Reach $160 Billion This Year, According to IDC.

Additional Resources:

Sep 22

How AI & Machine Learning Are Redefining The War For Talent

These and many other fascinating insights are from Gartner’s recent research note, Cool Vendors in Human Capital Management for Talent Acquisition (PDF, 13 pp., client access reqd.) that illustrates how AI and machine learning are fundamentally redefining the war for talent. Gartner selected five companies that are setting a rapid pace of innovation in talent management, taking on Human Capital Management’s (HCM) most complex challenges. The five vendors Gartner mentions in the research note are AllyO, Eightfold, jobpal, Knack, and Vettd. Each has concentrated on creating and launching differentiated applications that address urgent needs enterprises have across the talent acquisition landscape. Gartner’s interpretation of the expanding Talent Acquisition Landscape is shown below (please click on the graphic to expand):

Source: Gartner, Cool Vendors in Human Capital Management for Talent Acquisition, Written by Jason Cerrato, Jeff Freyermuth, John Kostoulas, Helen Poitevin, Ron Hanscome. 7 September 2018

Company Growth Plans Are Accelerating The War For Talent

The average employee’s tenure at a cloud-based enterprise software company is 19 months; in the Silicon Valley, this trends to 14 months due to intense competition for talent according to C-level executives leading these companies. Fast-growing enterprise cloud computing companies and many other businesses like them need specific capabilities, skill sets, and associates who know how to unlearn old concepts and learn new ones. Today across tech and many other industries, every company’s growth strategy is predicated on how well they attract, engage, screen, interview, select and manage talent over associates’ lifecycles.

Of the five companies Gartner names as Cool Vendors in the field of Human Capital Management for Talent Acquisition, Eightfold is the only one achieving personalization at scale today. Attaining personalization at scale is essential if any growing business is going to succeed in attracting, acquiring and growing talent that can support their growth goals and strategies. Eightfold’s approach makes it possible to scale personalized responses to specific candidates in a company’s candidate community while defining the ideal candidate for each open position.

Gartner finds Eightfold noteworthy for its AI-based Talent Intelligence Platform that combines analysis of publicly available data, internal data repositories, HCM systems, ATS tools, and spreadsheets then creates ontologies based on organization-specific success criteria. Each ontology, or area of talent management interest, is customizable for further queries using the app’s easily understood and navigated user interface. Gartner also finds that Eightfold.ai is one of the first examples of a self-updating corporate candidate database. Profiles in the system are now continually updated using external data gathering, without applicants reapplying or submitting updated profiles. The Eightfold.ai Talent Intelligence Platform is shown below:

Taking A Data-Driven Approach to Improve Diversity

AI and machine learning have the potential to remove conscious and unconscious biases from hiring decisions, leading to hiring decisions based on capabilities and innate skills. Many CEOs and senior management teams are enthusiastically endorsing diversity programs yet struggling to make progress. AI and machine learning-based approaches like Eightfold’s can help to accelerate them to their diversity goals and attain a more egalitarian workplace. Data is the great equalizer, with a proven ability to eradicate conscious and unconscious biases from hiring decisions and enable true diversity by equally evaluating candidates based on their experience, growth potential and strengths.

Conclusion

At the center of every growing business’ growth plans is the need to attract, engage, recruit, and retain the highest quality employees possible. As future research in the field of HCM will show, the field is in crisis because it’s relying more on biases than solid data. Breaking through the barrier of conscious and unconscious biases will provide contextual intelligence of an applicant’s unique skills, capabilities and growth trajectories that are far beyond the scope of any resume or what an ATS can provide. The war for talent is being won today with data and insights that strip away biases to provide prospects who are ready for the challenges of helping their hiring companies grow.

Sep 10

58% Of All Healthcare Breaches Are Initiated By Insiders

  • 58% of healthcare systems breach attempts involve inside actors, which makes this the leading industry for insider threats today.
  • Ransomware leads all malicious code categories, responsible for 70% of breach attempt incidents.
  • Stealing laptops from medical professionals’ cars to obtain privileged access credentials to gain access and install malware on healthcare networks, exfiltrate valuable data or sabotage systems and applications are all common breach strategies.

These and many other fascinating insights are from Verizon’s 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report (PHIDBR). A copy of the study is available for download here (PDF, 20 pp., no opt-in).  The study is based on 1,368 incidents across 27 countries. Healthcare medical records were the focus of breaches, and the data victims were patients and their medical histories, treatment plans, and identities. The data comprising the report is a subset of Verizon’s Annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) and spans 2016 and 2017.

Why Healthcare Needs Zero Trust Security To Grow

One of the most compelling insights from the Verizon PHIDBR study is how quickly healthcare is becoming a digitally driven business with strong growth potential. What’s holding its growth back, however, is how porous healthcare digital security is. 66% of internal and external actors are abusing privileged access credentials to access databases and exfiltrate proprietary information, and 58% of breach attempts involve internal actors.

Solving the security challenges healthcare providers face is going to fuel faster growth. Digitally-enabled healthcare providers and fast-growing digital businesses in other industries are standardizing on Zero Trust Security (ZTS), which aims to protect every internal and external endpoint and attack surface. ZTS is based on four pillars, which include verifying the identity of every user, validating every device, limiting access and privilege, and learning and adapting using machine learning to analyze user behavior and gain greater insights from analytics.

Identities Need to Be Every Healthcare Providers’ New Security Perimeter

ZTS starts by defining a digital business’ security perimeter as every employees’ and patients’ identity, regardless of their location. Every login attempt, resource request, device operating system, and many other variables are analyzed using machine learning algorithms in real time to produce a risk score, which is used to empower Next-Gen Access (NGA).

The higher the risk score, the more authentication is required before providing access. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is required first, and if a login attempt doesn’t pass, additional screening is requested up to shutting off an account’s access.

NGA is proving to be an effective strategy for thwarting stolen and sold healthcare provider’s privileged access credentials from gaining access to networks and systems, combining Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM). Centrify is one of the leaders in this field, with expertise in the healthcare industry.

NGA can also assure healthcare providers’ privileged access credentials don’t make the best seller list on the Dark Web. Another recent study from Accenture titled, “Losing the Cyber Culture War in Healthcare: Accenture 2018 Healthcare Workforce Survey on Cybersecurity” found that 18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000. 24% of employees know of someone who has sold privileged credentials to outsiders, according to the survey. By verifying every login attempt from any location, NGA can thwart the many privilege access credentials for sale on the Dark Web.

The following are the key takeaways from Verizon’s 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report (PHIDBR):

  • 58% of healthcare security breach attempts involve inside actors, which makes it the leading industry for insider threats today. External actors are attempting 42% of healthcare breaches. Inside actors rely on their privileged access credentials or steal them from fellow employees to launch breaches the majority of the time. By utilizing NGA, healthcare providers can get this epidemic of internal security breaches under control by forcing verification for every access request, anywhere, on a 24/7 basis.

  • Most healthcare breaches are motivated by financial gain, with healthcare workers most often using patient data to commit tax return and credit fraud. Verizon found 876 total breach incidents initiated by healthcare insiders in 2017, leading all categories. External actors initiated 523 breach incidents, while partners initiated 109 breach incidents. 496 of all breach attempts are motivated by financial gain across internal, external and partner actors. Internal actors are known for attempting breaches for fun and curiosity-driven by interest in celebrities’ health histories that are accessible from the systems they use daily. When internal actors are collaborating with external actors and partners for financial gain and accessing confidential health records of patients, it’s time for healthcare providers to take a more aggressive stance on securing patient records with a Zero Trust approach.

  • Abusing privileged access credentials (66%) and abusing credentials and physical access points (17%) to gain unauthorized access comprise 82.9% of all misuse-based breach attempts and incidents. Verizon’s study accentuates that misuse of credentials and the breaching of physical access points with little or no security is intentional, deliberate and driven by financial gain the majority of the time. Internal, external and partner actors acting alone or in collaboration with each other know the easiest attack surface to exploit are accessed credentials, with database access being the goal half of the time. When there’s little to no protection on web application and payment card access points to a network, breaches happen. Shutting down privilege abuse starts with a solid ZTS strategy based on NGA where every login attempt is verified before access is granted and anomalies trigger MFA and further user validation. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

  • 70.2% of all hacking attempts are based on stolen privileged access credentials (49.3%) combined with brute force to obtain credentials from POS terminals and controllers (20.9%). Hackers devise ingenious ways of stealing privileged access credentials, even resorting to hacking a POS terminal or controllers to get them. Healthcare insiders also steal credentials to gain access to mainframes, servers, databases and internal systems. Verizon’s findings below are supported by Accenture’s research showing that 18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell privileged access credentials and confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

  • Hospitals are most often targeted for breaches using privileged access credentials followed by ambulatory health care services, the latter of which is seen as the most penetrable business via hacking and brute force credential acquisition. Verizon compared breach incidents by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and found privileged credential misuse is flourishing in hospitals where inside and outside actors seek to access databases and web applications. Internal, external and partner actors are concentrating on hospitals due to the massive scale of sensitive data they can attain with stolen privileged access credentials and quickly sell them or profit from them through fraudulent means. Verizon also says a favorite hacking strategy is to use USB drives to exfiltrate proprietary information and sell it to health professionals intent on launching competing clinics and practices. Please click on the graphic to expand it for easier reading.

Conclusion

With the same intensity they invest in returning patients to health, healthcare providers need to strengthen their digital security, and Zero Trust Security is the best place to start. ZTS begins with Next-Gen Access by not trusting a single device, login attempt, or privileged access credential for every attack surface protected. Every device’s login attempt, resource request, and access credentials are verified through NGA, thwarting the rampant misuse and hacking based on comprised privileged access credentials. The bottom line is, it’s time for healthcare providers to get in better security shape by adopting a Zero Trust approach.

Sep 9

iStock

Google Needs To Make Machine Learning Their Growth Fuel

  • In 2017 Google outspent Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook on R&D spending with the majority being on AI and machine learning.
  • Google needs new AI- and machine learning-driven businesses that have lower Total Acquisition Costs (TAC) to offset the rising acquisition costs of their ad and search businesses.
  • One of the company’s initial forays into AI and machine learning was its $600M acquisition of AI startup DeepMind in January 2014.
  • Google has launched two funds dedicated solely to AI: Gradient Ventures and the Google Assistant Investment Program, both of which are accepting pitches from AI and machine learning startups today.
  • On its Q4’17 earnings call, the company announced that its cloud business is now bringing in $1B per quarter. The number of cloud deals worth $1M+ that Google has sold more than tripled between 2016 and 2017.
  • Googles M&A strategy is concentrating on strengthening their cloud business to better compete against Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

These and many other fascinating insights are from CB Insight’s report, Google Strategy Teardown (PDF, 49 pp., opt-in). The report explores how Alphabet, Google’s parent company is relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to capture new streams of revenue in enterprise cloud computing and services. Also, the report looks at how Alphabet can combine search, AI, and machine learning to revolutionize logistics, healthcare, and transportation. It’s a thorough teardown of Google’s potential acquisitions, strategic investments, and partnerships needed to maintain search dominance while driving revenue from new markets.

Key takeaways from the report include the following:

  • Google needs new AI- and machine learning-driven businesses that have lower Total Acquisition Costs (TAC) to offset the rising acquisition costs of their ad and search businesses. CB Insights found Google is experiencing rising TAC in their core ad and search businesses. With the strategic shift to mobile, Google will see TAC escalate even further. Their greatest potential for growth is infusing greater contextual intelligence and knowledge across the entire series of companies that comprise Alphabet, shown in the graphic below.

  • Google has launched two funds dedicated solely to AI: Gradient Ventures and the Google Assistant Investment Program, both of which are accepting pitches from AI and machine learning startups today. Gradient Ventures is an ROI fund focused on supporting the most talented founders building AI-powered companies. Former tech founders are leading Gradient Ventures, assisting in turning ideas into companies. Gradient Venture’s portfolio is shown below:

  • In 2017 Google outspent Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook on R&D spending with the majority being on AI and machine learning. Amazon dominates R&D spending across the top five tech companies investments in R&D in 2017 with $22.6B. Facebook leads in percent of total sales invested in R&D with 19.1%.

  • Google AI led the development of Google’s highly popular open source machine software library and framework Tensor Flow and is home to the Google Brain team. Google’s approach to primary research in the fields of AI, machine learning, and deep learning is leading to a prolific amount of research being produced and published. Here’s the search engine for their publication database, which includes many fascinating studies for review. Part of Google Brain’s role is to work with other Alphabet subsidiaries to support and lead their AI and machine learning product initiatives. An example of this CB Insights mentions in the report is how Google Brain collaborated with autonomous driving division Waymo, where it has helped apply deep neural nets to vehicles’ pedestrian detection The team has also been successful in increasing the number of AI and machine learning patents, as CB Insight’s analysis below shows:

  • Mentions of AI and machine learning are soaring on Google quarterly earnings calls, signaling senior management’s prioritizing these areas as growth fuel. CB Insights has an Insights Trends tool that is designed to analyze unstructured text and find linguistics-based associations, models and statistical insights from them. Analyzing Google earnings calls transcripts found AI and machine learning mentions are soaring during the last call.

  • Google’s M&A strategy is concentrating on strengthening their cloud business to better compete against Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Google acquired Xively in Q1 of this year followed by Cask Data and Velostrata in Q2. Google needs to continue acquiring cloud-based companies who can accelerate more customer wins in the enterprise and mid-tier, two areas Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure have strong momentum today.

Aug 29

Identities Are The New Security Perimeter

  • Privileged credentials for accessing an airport’s security system were recently for sale on the Dark Web for just $10, according to McAfee.
  • 18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000, and 24% of employees know of someone who has sold privileged credentials to outsiders, according to a recent Accenture survey.
  • Apple employees in Ireland have been offered as much as €20,000 ($22,878) in exchange for their privilege access credentials in 2016, according to Business Insider.
  • Privileged access credentials belonging to more than 1 million staff at a top UK law firm have been found for sale on the Dark Web.

There’s been a 135% year-over-year increase in financial data for sale on the Dark Web between the first half of 2017 and the first half of 2018. The Dark Web is now solidly established as a globally-based trading marketplace for a myriad of privileged credentials including access procedures with keywords, and corporate logins and passwords where transactions happen between anonymous buyers and sellers. It’s also the online marketplace of choice where disgruntled, angry employees turn to for revenge against employers. An employee at Honeywell, angry over not getting a raise, used the Dark Web as an intermediary to sell DEA satellite tracking system data he accessed from unauthorized accounts he created to Mexican drug cartels for $2M. He was caught in a sting operation, the breach was thwarted, and he was arrested.

Your Most Vulnerable Threat Surface Is A Best Seller

Sites on the Dark Web offer lucrative payment in bitcoin and other anonymous currencies for administrators’ accounts at leading European, UK and North American banking institutions and corporations. Employees are offering their privileged credentials for sale to the highest bidder out of anger, revenge or for financial gain anonymously from online auction sites.

Privileged access credentials are a best-seller because they provide the intruder with “the keys to the kingdom.” By leveraging a “trusted” identity, a hacker can operate undetected and exfiltrate sensitive data sets without raising any red flags. This holds especially true when the organizations are not applying multi-factor authentication (MFA) or risk-based access controls to limit any type of lateral movement after unauthorized access. Without these security measures in place, hackers can quickly access any digital businesses’ most valuable systems to exfiltrate valuable data or sabotage systems and applications.

81% of all hacking-related breaches leverage either stolen and weak passwords, according to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report. A recent study by Centrify and Dow Jones Customer Intelligence titled, CEO Disconnect is Weakening Cybersecurity (31 pp, PDF, opt-in), found that CEOs can reduce the risk of a security breach by rethinking their Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategies. 68% of executives whose companies experienced significant breaches in hindsight believe that the breach could have been prevented by implementing more mature identity and access management strategies.

In A Zero Trust World, Identities Are The New Security Perimeter

The buying and selling of privileged credentials are proliferating on the Dark Web today and will exponentially increase in the years to come. Digital businesses need to realize that dated concepts of trusted and untrusted domains have been rendered ineffective. Teams of hackers aren’t breaking into secured systems; they’re logging in.

Digital businesses who are effective in thwarting privileged credential access have standardized on Zero Trust Security (ZTS) to ensure every potentially compromised endpoint, and threat surface within and outside a company is protected. Not a single device, login attempt, resource requested or other user-based actions are trusted, they are verified through Next-Gen Access (NGA).

Zero Trust Security relies upon four pillars: real-time user verification, device validation, access and privilege limitation, while also learning and adapting to verified user behaviors. Leaders in this area such as Centrify are relying on machine learning technology to calculate risk scores based on a wide spectrum of variables that quantitatively define every access attempt, including device, operating system, location, time of day, and several other key factors.

Depending on their risk scores, users are asked to validate their true identity through MFA further. If there are too many login attempts, risk scores increase quickly, and the NGA platform will automatically block and disable an account. All this happens in seconds and is running on a 24/7 basis ― monitoring every attempted login from anywhere in the world.

A recent Forrester Research thought leadership paper titled, Adopt Next-Gen Access to Power Your Zero Trust Strategy (14 pp., PDF, opt-in), provides insights into how NGA enables ZTS to scale across enterprises, protecting every endpoint and threat surface. The study found 32% of enterprises are excelling at the four ZTS pillars of verifying the identity of every user, validating every device using Mobile Data Management (MDM) and Mobile App Management (MAM), limiting access and privileges and learning and adapting using machine learning to analyze user behavior and gain greater insights from analytics.

NGA is a proven strategy for thwarting stolen and sold privileged access credentials from gaining access to a digital business’ network and systems, combining Identity-as-a-Service, Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM). Forrester found that scalable Zero Trust Security strategies empowered by NGA lead to increased organization-wide productivity (71%), reduced overall risk (70%) and reduced cost on compliance initiatives (70%).

Additionally, insights gained from user behavior through machine learning allow for greater efficiency — both on reduced compliance (31% more confident) and overall security costs (40% more likely to be confident), as well through increased productivity for the organization (8% more likely to be confident). The following graphic from the study ranks respondents’ answers.

Conclusion

Making sure your company’s privileged access credentials don’t make the best seller list on the Dark Web starts with a strong, scalable ZTS strategy driven by NGA. Next-Gen Access continually learns the behaviors of verified users, solving a long-standing paradox of user experience in security and access management. However, every digital business needs to focus on how the four pillars of Zero Trust Security apply to them and how they can take a pragmatic, thorough approach to secure every threat surface they have.

Aug 26

Glassdoor’s 10 Highest Paying Tech Jobs Of 2018

  • Software Engineering Manager is the highest paying position with an average salary of $163,500 with 31,621 open positions on Glassdoor today.
  • Over 368,000 open positions are available across the 10 highest paying jobs on Glassdoor today.
  • $147,000 is the average salary of the top 10 tech jobs on Glassdoor today.
  • 12.7% of all open positions are for software engineers, making this job the most in-demand in tech today.

Glassdoor is best known for its candid, honest reviews of employers written anonymously by employees. It is now common practice and a good idea for anyone considering a position with a new employer to check them out on Glassdoor first. With nearly 40 million reviews on more than 770,000 companies. Glassdoor is now the 2nd most popular job site professionals rely on in the U.S., attracting approximately 59 million job seekers a month. The Chief Human Resources Officer of one of the largest and best-known cloud-based enterprise software companies told me recently she gets 2X more applications from Glassdoor for any given position than any other recruiting site or channel.

Earlier this month Glassdoor Economic Research published the results of research completed on how base pay compares between tech and non-tech jobs.  The research team gathered a sample of tech companies with at least 100 job postings on Glassdoor as of June 26, 2018. Glassdoor defined tech roles as those positions requiring knowledge of code, software or data. The study found the following to be the 10 highest paying tech jobs today:

Walmart eCommerce, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, and Google have the highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of all positions open. Workday, Salesforce, Verizon, and IBM have the highest concentration of non-tech positions available today.

Source: Glassdoor Economic Research Blog, Landing a Non-Tech Job in Tech: Who’s Hiring Today? July 19, 2018

Aug 23

IoT Market Predicted To Double By 2021, Reaching $520B

  • Bain predicts the combined markets of the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow to about $520B in 2021, more than double the $235B spent in 2017.
  • Data center and analytics will be the fastest growing IoT segment, reaching a 50% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2017 to 2021.
  • IoT customers are planning and executing more proof of concept pilots, with many balancing their expectations regarding broader adoption.
  • Cloud Service Providers (CSP) are emerging as influential providers of IoT services, consulting and analytics for enterprises, leaving smaller opportunities for other providers in niche industries.
  • Security, integration with existing technology and uncertain returns on investment are the three biggest barriers to great IoT adoption in the enterprise.
  • Bain sees the need for vendors to concentrate on a few core industries with greater intensity to deliver more targeted industry solutions.

Enterprises adopting IoT are finding that vendors aren’t making enough progress on lowering the most significant barriers to adoption in the areas of security, ease of integration with existing information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) systems and uncertain returns on investment. As a result, enterprises are extending their expectations of when their use cases will reach scale and delivered results. These and many other fascinating findings are from Bain’s latest IoT research brief, Unlocking Opportunities in the Internet of Things. The PDF is downloadable here (PDF, 12 pp, no opt-in).

Additional key takeaways the research brief include the following:

  • The combined markets of the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow to about $520B in 2021, more than double the $235B spent in 2017. Data center and analytics will be the fastest growing IoT segment, reaching a 50% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2017 to 2021. System integration, data center and analytics, network, consumer devices, connectors (or things) and legacy embedded systems are the six core technology and solution areas of the IoT market. The following graphic compares the CAGR of each area in addition to defining the worldwide revenue for each category.

  • Enterprises are still optimistic about IoT’s business value and potential to deliver a positive ROI; however many are planning less extensive IoT implementations by 2020. Bain finds that enterprises are still running more proofs of concept than they were two years ago. They’ve also discovered that more customers are considering trying out new use cases: 60% in 2018 compared with fewer than 40% in 2016.

  • Security, integration with existing technology and uncertain returns on investment are the three biggest barriers to great IoT adoption. Bain found that enterprises would buy more IoT devices and pay up to 22% more on average for them if security concerns were addressed. Integration continues to be a barrier to greater IoT adoption as well. Bain found that vendors haven’t simplified the integration of IoT solutions into business processes or IT and OT as much as enterprises have expected. The report calls for vendors to invest in learning more about typical implementation challenges in their customers’ industries so they can suggest more strategic, end-to-end solutions.

  • IoT vendors including CSPs generating the most sales are concentrating on two to three industries to scale the depth of their expertise quickly.  More than 80% of vendors still target four to six industries which makes it difficult to reach an expertise and knowledge scale that wins new clients. Bain finds that when vendors and CSPs concentrate on two or three domains, they gain mastery of specific markets faster and can provide insights to enterprises more effectively. Gaining expertise in two to three core industries is also an excellent differentiation strategy for vendors and CSPs who compete against price-driven IoT service providers.

  • Interest in remote monitoring and real-time monitoring is flourishing in IoT making this one of the fastest-growing use case categories. Being able to monitor production systems to the machine or asset level remotely and having the option to turn the data stream into a real-time source of knowledge is a fast-growing area of IoT adoption today. Based on interviews with manufacturers the popularity of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is growing, fueled by the options available for remote and real-time monitoring of production assets. Bain discovered that industrial equipment leader ABB bundles remote monitoring into its connected robotics systems and connected low-voltage networks, which allows customers to troubleshoot and quickly identify issues requiring greater attention.
  • Cloud Service Providers (CSP) are emerging as influential providers of IoT services, consulting and analytics for enterprises, leaving smaller opportunities for other providers in niche industries. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure have emerged as the dominant CSP leaders of the fast-moving global market for IoT software and solutions. Bain finds that CSPs are successful in lowering barriers to IoT adoption, allowing for simpler implementations and making it easier to try out new use cases and scale up quickly. The study finds that the broad horizontal services provide little optimization for industry-specific applications, leaving a significant opportunity for industry solutions from systems integrators, enterprise app developers, industry IoT specialists, device makers and telecommunications providers.

Aug 20

Global State Of Enterprise Analytics, 2018

  • 71% of enterprises globally predict their investments in data and analytics will accelerate in the next three years and beyond.
  • 57% of enterprises globally have a Chief Data Officer, a leadership role that is pivotal in helping to democratize data and analytics across any organization.
  • 52% of enterprises are leveraging advanced and predictive analytics today to provide greater insights and contextual intelligence into operations.
  • 41% of all enterprises are considering a move to cloud-based analytics in the next year.
  • Cloud Computing (24%), Big Data (20%), and AI/Machine Learning (18%) are the three technologies predicted to have the greatest impact on analytics over the next five years.
  • Just 16% of enterprises have enabled at least 75% of their employees to have access to company data and analytics.

These and many other fascinating insights are from MicroStrategy’s latest research study, 2018 Global State of Enterprise Analytics Report.  You can download a copy here (PDF, 44 pp., opt-in). The study is based on surveys completed in April 2018 with 500 globally-based enterprise analytics and business intelligence professionals on the state of their organizations’ analytics initiatives across 20 industries. Participants represented organizations with 250 to 20,000 employees worldwide from five nations including Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. For additional details on the methodology, please see the study here. The study’s results underscore how enterprises need to have a unified data strategy that reflects their growth strategies and new business models’ information needs.

Key takeaways from the study include the following:

  • Driving greater process and cost efficiencies (60%), strategy and change (57%) and monitoring and improving financial performance (52%) are the top three ways enterprises globally are using data and analytics today. The study found that enterprises are also relying on data and analytics to gain greater insights into how current products and services are used (51%), managing risk (50%) and attain customer growth and retention (49%). Across the five nations surveyed, Japan leads the world in the use of data and analytics to drive process and cost efficiencies (65%). UK-based enterprises lead all nations in their use of data and analytics to analyze how current products and services are being used.  The report provides graphical comparisons of the five nations’ results.

  • Cloud Computing, Big Data, and AI/Machine Learning are the three technologies predicted to have the greatest global impact on analytics over the next five years. Japanese enterprises predict cloud computing will have the greatest impact on the future of analytics (28%) across the five nations’ enterprises interviewed. AI/Machine Learning is predicted to have the greatest impact on analytics in the U.K. (26%) globally as is Big Data in Germany (29%). Please see the study for country-specific prioritization of technologies.

  • 52% of enterprises are leveraging advanced and predictive analytics today to provide greater insights and contextual intelligence into operations. Additional leverage areas include distribution of analytics via e-mail and collaboration tools (49%), analytics embedded in other apps including Salesforce (44%) and mobile productivity apps (39%). Japanese enterprises lead the world in their adoption of advanced and predictive analytics (60%). German enterprises lead the world in the adoption of analytics for collaboration via e-mail and more real-time data and knowledge-sharing methods (50%).

  • 59% of enterprises are using Big Data Analytics, leading all categories of intelligence applications. Enterprise reporting (47%), data discovery (47%), mobile productivity apps (44%) and embedded apps (42%) are the top five intelligence applications in use globally by enterprises today. Big Data’s dominance in the survey results can be attributed to the top five industries in the sampling frame is among the most prolific in data generation and use. Manufacturing (15%) is the most data-prolific industry on the planet. Additional industries that generate massive amounts of data dominate the survey’s demographics including software technology-based businesses (14%), banking (13%), retail (11%), and financial services/business services (6%).

  • 27% of global enterprises prioritize security over any other factor when evaluating a new analytics vendor. The three core attributes of a scalable, comprehensive platform, ease of use, and a vendor’s products having an excellent reputation are all essential. Enterprises based in four of the five nations also prioritize security as the most critical success factor they evaluate potential analytics vendors to do business with. Enterprise scalability is most important in the U.S., with 26% of enterprises interviewed saying this is the most important priority in evaluating a new analytics vendor.

  • Data privacy and security concerns (49%) is the most formidable barrier enterprises face in gaining more effective use of their data and analytics. Enterprises from four of the five nations say data privacy and security are the most significant barrier they face in getting more value from analytics. In Japan, the greatest barrier is access limited to data across the organization (40%).

  • Globally 41% of all enterprises are considering a move to the cloud in the next year. 64% of U.S.-based enterprises are considering moving to a cloud-based analytics platform or solution in the next year. The U.S. leads enterprises from all five nations in planned cloud-based analytics cloud adoption as the graphic below illustrates.

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