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Posts tagged ‘Multi-Factor Authentication’

Mar 14

10 Ways Cybersecurity Can Protect COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chains

10 Ways Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Chains Need To Be Protected By Cybersecurity

  • The Pharma industry has lost $14 billion through Intellectual Property (IP) cyber theft worldwide, according to the United Kingdom Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance.
  • 53% of pharmaceutical IP thefts and related breaches are carried out by someone with insider access, also according to the United Kingdom Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance.
  • The pharma industry’s average total cost of a data breach is $5.06 million, with one of the highest costs of remediating the breach at $10.81 million across all industries, according to a recent ProofPoint study.
  • Over 93% of healthcare organizations experienced a data breach in the past three years, and 57% have had more than five data breaches, according to the Cybersecurity Ventures 2020 Healthcare Cybersecurity Report.
  • Gartner predicts the privileged access management (PAM) market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.7% from 2020 through 2024, reaching $2.9 billion by 2024.

Bottom Line: Having developed COVID-19 vaccines in a fraction of the time it takes to create new treatments, pharmaceutical companies need to protect the priceless IP, supporting data, and supply chains from cyberattacks.

Showing how powerful global collaboration between pharmaceutical industry leaders can be, the world’s leading vaccine producers delivered new vaccines in record time. The IP behind COVID-19 vaccines and their supporting supply chains need state-of-the-art protection comprised of cybersecurity technologies and systems, as the vaccines’ IP is an asset that cyber attackers have already tried to obtain.

Pharmaceutical’s Growing Number of Threat Surfaces Make Cybersecurity a Priority 

In the race to create a COVID-19vaccine by collaborating across the industry, pharmaceutical companies have exposed more threat surfaces than existed before the pandemic. In R&D, Clinical Trials, Manufacturing, and Distribution, there’s a proliferation of new threat surfaces cyber attackers are targeting today, as evidenced by threat analysis reports from the U.S. Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The report provides specifics about how cyber attackers could impersonate an executive from a Chinese biomedical company known for having end-to-end cold chain expertise, which is essential for delivering vaccines reliably. The cyber attackers conducted spear-phishing attacks against global companies who support the global cold chain needed for distributing vaccines. There were credential harvesting attempts against global organizations in at least six countries known today to access vaccine transport and distribution sensitive information.

Launching a phishing campaign with the goal of harvesting details on key executives and access credentials across the cold chain is just the beginning. According to Lookout’s Pharmaceutical Industry Threat Report, some of the most significant threat surfaces are the most problematic today, including the following:

Research & Development & Clinical Trials

  • Collaborative research teams across pharmaceutical manufacturers globally
  • Scientists creating initial compounds and completing primary research to define a vaccine.
  • Integration of study sites at the test device and reporting system level

Manufacturing and Distribution

  • Plant workers’ systems, including tablets with build instructions on them
  • Physician & Pharmacist Networks
  • Distribution Channels and their supporting IT systems

Cyber attackers are taking a more synchronized, multifaceted approach to attacking Covid-19 supply chains, reiterated in CISA’s report. There’s evidence that state-sponsored cyber attackers attempt to move laterally through networks and remain there in stealth, allowing them to conduct cyber espionage and collect additional confidential information from victim environments for future operations. Cyber attackers are initially focused on phishing, followed by malware distribution, registration of new Covid-specific domain names, and always looking for unprotected threat surfaces.

10 Ways Cybersecurity Can Protect COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chains

By combining multiple cybersecurity best practices and strategies, pharmaceutical companies stand a better chance of protecting their valuable IP and vaccines. Presented below are ten ways the pharmaceutical industry needs to protect the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain today:

  1. Prioritize Privileged Access Management (PAM) across the vaccine supply chain, ensuring least privilege access to sensitive data starting with IP. CISA’s note finds that there have been multiple attempts at capturing privileged credentials, which often have broad access privileges and are frequently left standing open. PAM is needed immediately to institute greater controls around these privileged accounts across the supply chain and only grant just enough just-in-time access to sensitive IP, shipping and logistics data, vaccination schedules, and more. Leaders include Centrify, which is noteworthy for cloud-based PAM implementations at the enterprise and supply chain levels. Additional vendors in this area include BeyondTrust, CyberArk, Ivanti, Thycotic, Ping Identity, and Senhasegura.
  2. Assess every supplier’s security readiness in vaccine supply chains, defining minimum levels of compliance to security standards that include a single, unified security model across all companies. In creating a secured vaccine supply chain, it’s imperative to have every supplier network member on the same security model. Taking this step ensures accountability, greater clarity of roles and responsibilities, and a common definition of privileged roles and access privileges.  Leaders in this area include BeyondTrust, Centrify, CyberArk, Ivanti, and Thycotic.
  3. Taking a Zero Trust-based approach to secure every endpoint across the vaccine manufacturer’s R&D, Clinical Trials, Manufacturing, and Distribution networks is necessary to shut down cyber attackers taking advantage of legacy security weaknesses approaches. The pharmaceutical companies and myriad logistics providers see a much faster than the expected proliferation of endpoints today. Trusted and untrusted domains from legacy server operating systems are a time sink when it comes to securing endpoints – and proving unreliable despite the best efforts that Security Operations teams are putting into them. Worst of all, they leave vaccine supply chains vulnerable because they often take an outdated “trust but verify” cybersecurity approach. Leaders include Illumio, Ivanti (MobileIron), Cisco, Appgate, Palo Alto Networks, and Akamai Technologies.
  4. Extend the Zero Trust framework across the entire supply chain by implementing microsegmentation and endpoint security requirements across all phases of the vaccine’s development cycles. This will ensure cyber attackers don’t have the opportunity to embed code to activate later. The goal is to push Zero Trust principles to all related processes integrating with the vaccines’ pipeline, including all dependencies across the entire development lifecycle.
  5. Incorporating Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) across every system in the vaccine supply chain is a given. Usernames and passwords alone are not enough, and MFA is low-hanging fruit to authenticate authorized users. MFA is based on two or more factors that can authenticate who you are based on something you know (passwords, PINs, code works), something you have (a smartphone, tokens devices that produce pins or pre-defined pins), or something you are (biometrics, facial recognition, fingerprints, iris, and face scans). For example, Google provides MFA as part of their account management to every account holder and has a thorough security check-up, which is useful for seeing how many times a given password has been reused.
  6. Alleviate the conflicts of who will pay for increasing cybersecurity measures by making supplier-level security a separate line item in any CISOs and CIO’s budget. Today certain pharma supply chain CISOs are expected to ramp up cybersecurity programs with the same budget before Covid-19. While there are slight increases in cybersecurity budget levels, it’s often not enough to cover the higher costs of securing a broader scope of supply chain operations. CISOs need to have greater control over cybersecurity budgets to protect vaccine IP and distribution. Relying on traditional IT budgets controlled by CIOs isn’t working. There needs to be a new level of financial commitment to securing vaccine supply chains.
  7. Consider using an AIOps platform adept at unifying diverse IT environments into a single, cohesive AI-based intelligence system that can identify anomalous network behavior in real-time and take action to avert breaches. Based on conversations with CIOs across the financial services industry, it is clear they’re leaning in the direction of AIOps platforms that provide real-time integration to cloud platforms combined with greater control over IT infrastructure. LogicMonitor’s prioritizing IT integration as a core strength of their platform shows, as they have over 2,000 integrations available out of the box. Relying on Collectors’ agentless system, LogicMonitor retrieves metrics such as cloud provider health and billing information. This collector then pulls metrics from different devices using various methods, including SNMP, WMI, perf Mon JMX, APIs, and scripts.
  8. Unified Endpoint Security (UES) needs to become a standard across all vaccine supply chains now. Vendors who can rapidly process large amounts of data to detect previously unknown threats are needed today to stop cyberattacks from capturing IP, shipment data, and valuable logistics information. Absolute Software’s approach to leveraging its unique persistence, resilience, and intelligence capabilities is worth watching. Their approach delivers unified endpoint security by relying on their Endpoint Resilience platform, which includes a permanent digital tether to every enterprise’s endpoint. Absolute is enabling self-healing, greater visibility, and control by having an undeletable digital thread to every device. Based on conversations with their customers in Education and Healthcare, Absolute’s unique approach gives IT complete visibility into where every device is at all times and what each device configuration looks like in real-time.
  9. Pharma supply chains need to have a strategy for achieving more consistent Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) across every device and threat surface of the vaccine supply chain. UEM’s many benefits, including streamlining continuous OS updates across multiple mobile platforms, enabling device management regardless of the connection, and having an architecture capable of supporting a wide range of devices and operating systems. Another major benefit enterprises mention is automating Internet-based patching, policy, configuration management. Ivanti is the global market leader in UEM, and their recent acquisition of Cherwell expands the reach of their Neurons platform, providing service and asset management from IT to lines of business and from every endpoint to the IoT edge. Neurons are Ivanti’s AI-based hyper-automation platform that connects Unified Endpoint Management, Security, and Enterprise Service Management. Ivanti is prioritizing its customers’ needs to autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices and self-service end-users.
  10. Track-and-traceability is essential in any vaccine supply chain, making the idea of cyber-physical passports that include serialization for vaccine batches more realistic given how complex supply chains are today. Passports are an advanced labeling technology that provides the benefits of virtual tracking, verification of specific compounds, and yield rates of key materials. Serialization is a must-have for ensuring greater traceability across vaccine supply chains proving effective in stopping counterfeiting. Having digital passports traceable electronically can further help thwart cyber attackers.

Conclusion

By closing the cybersecurity gaps in vaccine supply chains, the world’s nations can find new, leaner, more efficient processes to distribute vaccines and protect their citizens. It’s evident from the results achieved so far in the U.S. alone that relying on traditional supply chains and means of distribution isn’t getting the job done fast enough, and cyber attackers are already looking to take advantage. By combining multiple cybersecurity tactics, techniques, and procedures, the vaccine supply chain stands to improve and be more secure from threats.

Jan 30

10 Ways To Own Your Cybersecurity In 2020

10 Ways To Own Your Cybersecurity In 2020

Bottom Line: One of the best New Year’s resolutions anyone can make is to learn new ways to secure their personal and professional lives online, starting with ten proven ways they can take greater control over their own cybersecurity.

For many professionals, their personal and professional lives have blended together thanks to the growing number of connected, IoT-capable devices, including cars, home security systems, smartphones, virtual assistants including Amazon Echo, Google Home, WiFi routers, and more. It’s typical to find homes with two dozen or more connected devices that are relied for everything going on in a person’s life from personal interests, connecting with friends, and getting work done.

It’s Time to Secure Every Area of Your Smart, Connected World

Faced with chronic time shortages, many people rely on smart, connected devices supported by AI and machine learning to get more done in less time. They’re proliferating today because they’ve proven to be very effective at personalizing experiences while providing the added convenience of being always on and available to help. Smart, connected devices are an extension of a person’s identity today as they contain insights into buying behavior and, in some cases, actual conversations. The more these devices are protected, the more a person’s identity and most valuable resource of all – time – is protected too.

Strengthening your own cybersecurity starts by seeing every device and the apps you use as potential attack surfaces that need to be protected. Just as you wouldn’t likely leave any of the physical doors to your home unprotected and locked, you need to secure all the digital entrances to your home and person. Like the CEO and cybersecurity team of any organization who is focusing on how to reduce the risk of a breach, the same level of intensity and vigilance to personal cybersecurity needs to become the new normal.

10 Ways You Can Own Your Cybersecurity

The following are the top ten ways you can take control and own your own security. Several of the ways mentioned below are from the recent Centrify webinar, Cybersecurity Best Practices: The Basics and Beyond:

  • Replace weak passwords used on multiple accounts with a unique, longer password for each online account. Start by getting away from having the same password for multiple accounts. When a single account gets hacked, it can easily lead to all the others with the same password and comparable user ID. Passwords are proving to be the weakest attack vector there is for personal information today. World Password Day serves as a reminder every May to use stronger, different passwords on each account.
  • Start researching and choose a Password Manager that is flexible enough to match how you like to work. It’s time to get beyond Post-It notes and paper-based approaches to managing your own passwords now. Dashlane, LastPass, and OneLogin are all excellent password managers worth checking out. If you’re not sure password managers are worth it, I’ve seen them add an additional layer of security to personal and work accounts that would not have otherwise been available. Some will even notify you when an account you have might have been breached, and recommend a new password for you. A screen capture from the webinar illustrates the differences between personal, professional and Privileged Access Management (PAM) levels of password security:

10 Ways To Own Your Cybersecurity In 2020

  • Use single-sign-on (SSO) if available for systems at work, even if you’re logging in at the office. SSO systems use temporary tokens, which have proven to be more reliable than static credentials. One of the primary design goals of SSO is to authenticate your identity once, and give you access to the applications and system resources you need and are entitled to access to get work done.
  • Vault away passwords to critical systems and data. In the privileged access world of Cybersecurity operations in any organization, password vaults have become commonplace. Password vaults are similar to password managers many people use for their personal devices, web applications, and sites they regularly visit. In the case of a password vault, privileged credentials are checked in and out by admins, with each password automatically rotating to ensure greater randomization.
  • Enable security on all the devices you received over the holidays, starting with your WiFi router. If you’ve never set an admin password on your WiFi router and the two guest access points they typically have, now is a great time to do that. If you have an Amazon Echo or Google Home, manually disable the microphones. On the Echo, press the microphone button until the external ring turns red. On Google Home, use the small switch on the side to turn off the microphone..On an Amazon Alexa, it’s possible to review voice recordings associated with your account and delete the voice recordings one by one, by date range, by Alexa-enabled device, or all at once by visiting Settings > Alexa Privacy in the Alexa app or https://www.amazon.com/alexaprivacysettings. It’s a good idea to use PIN protection to disable voice purchases too. If you have Baby Monitors in your home, connect to them using a secured WiFi connection, not Bluetooth. Have everything behind your home firewall, so there’s a minimal number of threat surfaces in your home.
  • Take few of the many LinkedIn learning courses on practical cybersecurity to stay current on the latest techniques. LinkedIn Learning has 19 courses available today that are focused on practical cybersecurity steps you can take to protect your company’s systems and your own. You can find all the 19 courses here. LinkedIn Learning has 462 learning resources available today, available here. I’ve taken a few over a lunch break and have found them informative, interesting, and useful.
  •  Realize that you may be getting phishing and spear-phishing e-mails every week. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of browser plug-ins to pop up messages asking for your login and password information for sites. Combining the latest information from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites, hackers often target new employees and with spearfishing campaigns where they impersonate a CEO and other senior-level executives. Spearfishing attempts can be easily thwarted by calling the supposed sender to ask if the request is legitimate. A second way to spot phishing and spear-fishing attempts is they will ask you for one or more of the pieces of information needed for completing a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) login to an account. Misspelled words, questionable e-mail addresses, and unsecured domains and websites are also a sure tip-off of a phishing attempt.
  • Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) greatly expands the enterprise attack surface. 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. It’s common for BYOD enablement strategies to include integrations to Dropbox, Slack, Salesforce and Workday, Slack, Salesforce, and others.
  • Always use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) everywhere it’s offered. MFA is based on three or more factors that can authenticate who you are. Something you know (passwords, PINs, code works), something you have (a smartphone, tokens devices that produce pins or pre-defined pins) or something you are (biometrics, facial recognition, fingerprints, iris, and face scans). Google, for example, provides MFA as part of their account management to every account holder, in addition to a thorough security check-up, which is useful for seeing how many times a given password has been reused.

10 Ways To Own Your Cybersecurity In 2020

  • Determine where you and your company are from a privileged access maturity standpoint. Centrify shared the four stages of privileged access security on the webinar, and each phase is a useful benchmark for anyone or organization looking to improve their cybersecurity effectiveness. Centrify found in a recent survey that 42% of organizations are at the nonexistent phase of the model. As an organization progresses up the model, there’s greater accountability and visibility for each aspect of a cybersecurity strategy. For individuals, the progression is much the same, all leading to a lower risk of a breach and stolen privileged access credentials occurring.

10 Ways To Own Your Cybersecurity In 2020

Conclusion

While not every user in an organization is going to have privileged entitlements, it is up to every individual to take ownership of their cybersecurity hygiene to ensure they don’t become the most-easily-exploited employee in the company. That’s what the bad guys are looking for: the easiest way in. Why try to hack in against sophisticated technology when they can just guess your easy password, or get you to hand it over to them by phishing? Be cyber smart in 2020 – these ten tips might save you from being the weakest link that could cost your organization millions.

Apr 6

5 Things Every Executive Needs To Know About Identity And Access Management

  • For new digital business models to succeed, customers’ privacy preferences need to be secure, and that begins by treating every identity as a new security perimeter.
  • Organizations need to recognize that perimeter-based security, which focuses on securing endpoints, firewalls, and networks, provides no protection against identity and credential-based threats. Until they start implementing identity-centric security measures, account compromise attacks will continue to provide a perfect camouflage for data breaches.
  • 74% of data breaches start with privileged credential abuse that could have been averted if the organizations had adopted a Privileged Access Management (PAM) strategy, according to a recent Centrify survey.
  • Just 48% of organizations have a password vault, and only 21% have multi-factor authentication (MFA) implemented for privileged administrative access.

New digital business models are redefining organizations’ growth trajectories and enabling startups to thrive, all driven by customer trust. Gaining and strengthening customer trust starts with a security strategy that can scale quickly to secure every identity and threat surface a new business model creates. Centrify’s recent survey, Privileged Access Management in the Modern Threatscape, found 74% of data breaches begin with privileged credential abuse. The survey also found that the most important areas of IT infrastructure that new digital business models rely on to succeed — including Big Data repositories, cloud platform access, containers, and DevOps — are among the most vulnerable. The most urgent challenges executives are facing include protecting their business, securing customer data, and finding new ways to add value to their business’ operations.

Why Executives Need to Know About Identity and Access Management Now  

Executives have a strong sense of urgency to improve Identity and Access Management (IAM) today to assure the right individuals access the right resources at the right times and for the right reasons. IAM components like Access Management, Single Sign-On, Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), Advanced Authentication, Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), IoT-Driven IAM, and Privileged Access Management address the need to ensure appropriate access to resources across an organization’s entire attack surface and to meet compliance requirements. Considering that privileged access abuse is the leading cause of today’s breaches, they’re especially prioritizing Privileged Account Management as part of their broader cybersecurity strategies to secure the “keys to their kingdom.” Gartner supports this view by placing a high priority on Privileged Account Management, including it in its Gartner Top 10 Security Projects for 2018, and again in 2019.

During a recent conversation with insurance and financial services executives, I learned why Privileged Access Management is such an urgent, high priority today. Privileged access abuse is the leading attack vector, where they see the majority of breach attempts to access the company’s most sensitive systems and data. It’s also where they can improve customer data security while also making employees more productive by giving them access systems and platforms faster. All of them know instances of hackers and state-sponsored hacking groups offering bitcoin payments in exchange for administrative-level logins and passwords to their financial systems.

Several of the executives I spoke with are also evaluating Zero Trust as the foundation for their cybersecurity strategy. As their new digital business models grow, all of them are focused on discarding the outdated, “trust, but verify” mindset and replacing it with Zero Trust, which mandates a “never trust, always verify” approach. They’re also using a least privilege access approach to minimize each attack surface and improve audit and compliance visibility while reducing risk, complexity, and costs.

The following are the five things every executive needs to know about Identity and Access Management to address a reality that every company and consumer must recognize exists today: attackers no longer “hack” in, they log in.

  1. Designing in the ability to manage access rights and all digital identities of privileged users require Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) systems be integrated as part of an IAM strategy. For digital business initiatives’ security strategies to scale, they need to support access requests, entitlement management, and user credential attestation for governance purposes. With identities being the new security perimeter, provisioning least privileged access to suppliers, distributors, and service organizations is also a must-have to scale any new business model. Natively, IGA is dealing only with end users – not privileged users. Therefore integration with PAM systems is required to bring in privileged user data and gain a holistic view of access entitlements.
  2. IAM is a proven approach to securing valuable Intellectual Property (IP), patents, and attaining regulatory compliance, including GDPR. The fascinating digital businesses emerging today also function as patent and IP foundries. A byproduct of their operations is an entirely new business, product and process ideas. Executives spoken with are prioritizing how they secure intellectual property and patents using an Identity and Access Management strategy.
  3. Knowing with confidence the identity of every user is what makes every aspect of an IAM strategy work. Having Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled for every access session, and threat surface is one of the main processes that make an IAM strategy succeed. It’s a best practice to reinforce Zero Trust principles through multi-factor authentication enforcement on each computer that cannot be circumvented (or bypassed) by malware.
  4. Designing in transaction verification now for future e-commerce digital business models is worth it. Think of your IAM initiative as a platform to create ongoing customer trust with. As all digital business initiatives rely on multi-channel selling, designing in transaction verification as part of an IAM strategy is essential. Organizations are combining verification and MFA to thwart breaches and the abuse of credential access abuse.
  5. In defining any IAM strategy focus on how Privileged Access Management (PAM) needs to be tailored to your specific business needs. PAM is the foundational element that turns the investments made in security into business value. It’s a catalyst for ensuring customer trust turns into revenue. Many organizations equate PAM with a password vault. But in a modern threatscape where humans, machines, applications, and services dynamically require access to a broadening range of attack surfaces such as cloud, IoT, Big Data, and containers, that outdated legacy approach won’t effectively secure the leading attack vector: privileged access abuse. Vendors such as Centrify and others are looking beyond the vault and offering Zero Trust solutions for PAM that address these modern access requestors and attack surfaces.

Conclusion

Insurance and financial services executives realize, and even predict, that there’s going to be an increase in the number and intensity of efforts to break into their systems using compromised credentials. Prioritizing Privileged Access Management as part of the IAM toolkit is proving to be an effective cybersecurity strategy for protecting their businesses and customers’ data while also making a valuable contribution to its growth. The bottom line is that Identity and Access Management is the cornerstone of any effective Zero Trust-based strategy, and taking an aggressive, pre-emptive approach to Privileged Access Management is the new normal for organizations’ cybersecurity strategies.

Jan 13

6 Best Practices For Increasing Security In AWS In A Zero Trust World

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported $6.6B in revenue for Q3, 2018 and $18.2B for the first three fiscal quarters of 2018.
  • AWS revenue achieved an impressive 46% year-over-year net sales growth between Q3, 2017 and Q3, 2018 and 49% year-over-year growth for the first three quarters of the year.
  • AWS’ 34% market share is bigger than its next four competitors combined with the majority of customers taken from small-to-medium sized cloud operators according to Synergy Research.
  • The many announcements made at AWS Re:Invent this year reflect a growing focus on hybrid cloud computing, security, and compliance.

Enterprises are rapidly accelerating the pace at which they’re moving workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for greater cost, scale and speed advantages. And while AWS leads all others as the enterprise public cloud platform of choice, they and all Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers rely on a Shared Responsibility Model where customers are responsible for securing operating systems, platforms and data.  In the case of AWS, they take responsibility for the security of the cloud itself including the infrastructure, hardware, software, and facilities. The AWS version of the Shared Responsibility Model shown below illustrates how Amazon has defined securing the data itself, management of the platform, applications and how they’re accessed, and various configurations  as the customers’ responsibility:

Included in the list of items where the customer is responsible for security “in” the cloud is identity and access management, including Privileged Access Management (PAM) to secure the most critical infrastructure and data.

Increasing Security for IaaS in a Zero Trust World

Stolen privileged access credentials are the leading cause of breaches today. Forrester found that 80% of data breaches are initiated using privileged credentials, and 66% of organizations still rely on manual methods to manage privileged accounts. And while they are the leading cause of breaches, they’re often overlooked — not only to protect the traditional enterprise infrastructure — but especially when transitioning to the cloud.

Both for on-premise and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), it’s not enough to rely on password vaults alone anymore. Organizations need to augment their legacy Privileged Access Management strategies to include brokering of identities, multi-factor authentication enforcement and “just enough, just-in-time” privilege, all while securing remote access and monitoring of all privileged sessions. They also need to verify who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment. These are all essential elements of a Zero Trust Privilege strategy, with Centrify being an early leader in this space.

6 Ways To Increase Security in AWS

The following are six best practices for increasing security in AWS and are based on the Zero Trust Privilege model:

  1. Vault AWS Root Accounts and Federate Access for AWS Console

Given how powerful the AWS root user account is, it’s highly recommended that the password for the AWS root account be vaulted and only used in emergencies. Instead of local AWS IAM accounts and access keys, use centralized identities (e.g., Active Directory) and enable federated login. By doing so, you obviate the need for long-lived access keys.

  1. Apply a Common Security Model and Consolidate Identities

When it comes to IaaS adoption, one of the inhibitors for organizations is the myth that the IaaS requires a unique security model, as it resides outside the traditional network perimeter. However, conventional security and compliance concepts still apply in the cloud. Why would you need to treat an IaaS environment any different than your own data center? Roles and responsibilities are still the same for your privileged users. Thus, leverage what you’ve already got for a common security infrastructure spanning on-premises and cloud resources. For example, extend your Active Directory into the cloud to control AWS role assignment and grant the right amount of privilege.

  1. Ensure Accountability

Shared privileged accounts (e.g., AWS EC2 administrator) are anonymous. Ensure 100% accountability by having users log in with their individual accounts and elevate privilege as required. Manage entitlements centrally from Active Directory, mapping roles, and groups to AWS roles.

  1. Enforce Least Privilege Access

Grant users just enough privilege to complete the task at hand in the AWS Management Console, AWS services, and on the AWS instances. Implement cross-platform privilege management for AWS Management Console, Windows and Linux instances.

  1. Audit Everything

Log and monitor both authorized and unauthorized user sessions to AWS instances. Associate all activity to an individual, and report on both privileged activity and access rights. It’s also a good idea to use AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch to monitor all API activity across all AWS instances and your AWS account.

  1. Apply Multi-Factor Authentication Everywhere

Thwart in-progress attacks and get higher levels of user assurance. Consistently implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for AWS service management, on login and privilege elevation for AWS instances, or when checking out vaulted passwords.

Conclusion

One of the most common reasons AWS deployments are being breached is a result of privileged access credentials being compromised. The six best practices mentioned in this post are just the beginning; there are many more strategies for increasing the security in AWS.  Leveraging a solid Zero Trust Privilege platform, organizations can eliminate shared Amazon EC2 key pairs, using auditing to define accountability to the individual user account level, execute on least privilege access across every login, AWS console, and AWS instance in use, enforce MFA and enable a common security model.

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