UNDENIABLE FACTS ABOUT INTERNET OF THINGS SECURITY

Internet of Things, the word of the day

The Internet of Things [IoT] continues to be more rooted in our daily lives, increasing value to business and offering society for environmental and human gain. As we continue to depend on IoT, however, it is important that we put emphasis on cyber security to secure our investments, as well as competitive advantages for enterprises and for individuals over the world.

IoT devices and sensors are making collection of data limitless and inevitable. From pictures and emails through to cars, buildings, factories and turbines, it is estimated as per market research that by 2020 more than 50 billion connected devices will be utilized worldwide, thus creating 44 trillion gigabytes of info every year. Cognitive systems will advance our capability to utilize the information gathered from the vast volumes of info to assist us in making informed decisions. It is changing us for good, however if the data is left to get accumulated, it can eventually cause more damage than good.

Concerns and Challenges

The public may not be necessarily aware of the risks in regards to technology like IoT devices, as they don’t always take safety measures, allowing the cyber criminals/ hackers to take advantage creating more security violations unavoidable.

Therefore, it isstakeholder’s duty to take all stance on IoT security. As info becomes more available helping us to make important decisions, there are five indisputable facts on cyber security that we need to be aware to avoid cyber-attacks.

1.       Devices will function in aggressive circumstances

Unlike the tablets, mobile phones, laptops we utilize and lug with us practically anywhere, daily, IoT devices often functionwithout human control. So it’s necessary that IoT devices, like the remote office temperature controls, must be both resistant and rough to physical manipulation.

In the meantime, they need to be capable of recuperating after an attack and fail carefully by breaking down to a manageable processing level- all without human interference. They need visibility and monitoring to handle an unexpected scenario.

2.       Weak configurations will carry on

The pre-chosen configuration of an IoT device will commonly remain in its place as it takes notion and encourages users to change it. If default settings of an instrument have access control switched off, then it becomes the owner’s choice to improve the security. Instead security choices as per market research, should be default or a measure of an inceptive system process – this way the users will be required to make the decision to cancel default securities.

3.       Shared confidential do not remain private

A substantial amount of IoT devices come pre-loaded with similar credentials from various devices. Although the pre-chosen credentials should be changed by users earlier than when the devices are made operational, they are often left as they are. Default confidential is not confidential.

Attackers can use them to takeover such devices for any reasons, making them exposed to interruption. By delivering devices that prompt users to change the password after first use on the device that they deliver thus making sure that there is no default password that can be utilized later.

4.       Software security will worsen over time

All software in use must be updated. The mending process takes place in highly unrestrained environments. However, even if all known vulnerabilities are addressed with initial release, new revelations and vectors for outbreak will almost certainly be exposed. The danger of attack rises with the amount of time the equipment remains in service. Therefore, this means system security will require updating frequently for the device life affecting the supply chain for equipment as well as software.

5.       As data conforms, vulnerable issues will increase

One of the key business drivers for IoT is the info that’s produced devices/ solutions. That puts emphasis on data security along with how its generated, utilized and discarded. IoT devices are absorbing large amounts of info of sensitive/ personal data, including everything from transcripts, audio recordings, GPS locations and heart rate readings. If the info is not managed, protected and demolished when its confirmed to be un-worthy than the danger of holding on to it, the output may lead to loss of privacy and to issues of data ownership. Overall, the necessity of connecting with solution providers and IoT vendors can be divulged with your data. 

How to protect your system against WannaCry Ransomware?

You have probably heard of WannaCry ransomware attack by now and would be confused as to what is going on and whether your computer is safe or not.

So, what is a WannaCry Ransomware? Is it a Trojan or a virus? Do you need a patch to fix it? The below given information is everything you need to know about the WannaCry Ransomware and ways to protect your system from it.

WannaCry Ransomware

WannaCrypt or WannaCry is a type of ransomware [ a malicious software] that encrypts the device’s hard disk drive and then extends over between devices on the same local area network [ LAN]. WannaCry Ransomware spreads through malicious attachments from email as well.

WannaCry Ransomware encodes the files on infected windows computer and spreads by using vulnerability in applications of server message block [ SMB] in Windows OS. Approximately 100 countries, including India were attacked by this massive WannaCry Ransomware. While once hit, users are told to pay $300 in Bitcoins to re-claim their information.

How to protect your system against WannaCryRansomware?

CERT-In, i.e. Computer Emergency Response Team of India recently issued an utmost important alert [ red color]. They have advised Windows using organizations and individuals to apply patches to Windows OS. Technology experts opined that this WannaCry Ransomware was targeting common files such as Doc, PPT, TIFF and MP4 and MKV files.

Update your system

Update your Window OS and install all the new patches. Install the Microsoft fix MS17-010 immediately to protect your computer from WannaCry Ransomware. After the Microsoft fix is installed, reboot the system.

Do not open suspicious emails, apps or websites

WannaCry ransomware breaks out through phishing emails, dubious apps, malicious advertisements on websites and suspicious software programs. Therefore, the best thing you can do to defend your system is by avoid clicking on such dubious emails and adverts. You can install software and apps which can be directly downloaded from official online stores, website and service etc.

Don’t pay money

Paying money [ ransom] will not guarantee the malware’s removal from your system or even safe retrieval of your files. Furthermore, there is a probability that hackers will strike against you once more and demand more money.

Back up your system

Make sure that you create secure backups of the all the necessary info asap in a completely different system. Technology gurus point out that cloud storage is another choice you can consider; however, it makes your data vulnerable to other kinds of attacks. Therefore, make sure that you have a secure backup for all the important information you need all the time.

Install anti-virus software

Many good antivirus software offer tools to remove these types of ransomware. You can make use of such antivirus software tools, it assists you in removing malware and virus quickly and painlessly. Additionally, the antivirus software actively monitors your system and prevents all incoming threats, all the while quarantining and removing all suspicious software.

7 ways attackers steal privileged credentials

Organizations are as strong as their security systems are. Measurements, numbers, facts and observations act as the basis for strategy formulation in any organization. This is applicable to all types of Industries irrespective of the products and services they deal with. It then becomes a necessity to safeguard the knowledge capital in the form of data and facts. Key information is usually maintained as privileged credentials by the top Management in organizations.

Privileged credentials include confidential financial data, information pertaining to personal identification and critical health records in specific industries.  Some of the entry points through which hackers access such pertinent information are accounts that are administrative and privileged in nature, application backdoors, hardcoded passwords and default passwords assigned to certain aspects of the network.

The crux of the matter is how much security is offered to privileged credentials to protect them from being hacked. A clear understanding of the techniques deployed by the hackers to steal privileged credentials will help us understand the importance and means to protect the same.

1.      Privileged credentials is the target for attack

Privileged credentials which act as oxygen to organizations, acts as the gateway for hackers to take away crucial information.  Without laying their hands on such pivotal information hackers’ movements in the concerned networks gets blocked. It is these privileged credentials that provide them the access to servers which will enable steal pertinent data and track the domain controllers. These domain controllers ultimately makes them take complete control over the IT environment of organizations as a whole. Block the access to privileged controls in order to block your data from getting hacked.

2.      Safeguard your security system

All organizations which are interested to safeguard their data must ensure that their security systems are secured at the first instance. Attention must be focussed on setting up detection methods and data encryption systems right while setting up the privileged credentials network. An organization’s security system is effective only to the extent of security available for privileged accounts in the network. This makes it mandatory to put the security system in place for the privileged credentials before the general security solutions are put in place.

3.      Domain controllers are the key

Domain Controllers act as the key to the IT environment of organizations. When hackers get their hands of domain controllers, organizations lose their control over the complete IT infrastructure. Access to domain controllers is the passport given to the hackers to move around the network freely. They can travel through the IT environment end to end without any hassles when they are able to lay their hands on Domain controllers. It is highly difficult to pinpoint the exact space of infection and can get manifested the moment any user downloads a malware or when they click on the phishing link. When this happens, the complete infrastructure comes under the control of hackers within a few minutes. Safeguard your domain controller so you disallow the hackers to take charge of your privileged credentials.

4.      Identifying the exact security need

Identifying the exact need to safeguard the privileged credentials from the hackers is the beginning point of all efforts taken towards protecting the same. When Privileged Accounts are secured in a perfect manner the entire network escapes from the wrath of mischievous insiders as well as the malicious outsiders. The high levels of protection offered to privileged accounts add value to general network security by keeping strict control over the access rights given to users in different capacities.             

5.      Privileged Accounts post breach

Once a hacker takes over the Domain controller, it is advisable to build the infrastructure completely right from the scratch. New systems need to be installed with the help of new hardware. The first thing that needs to be addressed post breach is to add multiple layers of security to privileged credentials. This will safeguard the overall security of the entire network in the organization making it stronger than ever before. Post breach organizations will be more proactive since they have already experienced the effect of lack of the same.

6.      Plugins and Applications for periodical security audits

Hackers find it easy to hack privileged credentials that are not proactively audited and protected. Privileged credentials can be safeguarded at all points of time if security audits are conducted periodically in an in depth manner. There are many applications and plugins available to conduct such security audits in set periodicities. Such applications are capable of identifying the privileged accounts connecting them with the relevant user authorized to operate on the same. This attaches complete responsibility with the particular accounts, usage of which is constantly tracked. Such constant tracking enable steady monitoring, blocking or terminating any activity that is suspicious.

7.      Management and support for Privileged Credentials

Managements of every organization must make protection for privileged credentials as their priority at all points of time. Unless the importance of the same is clearly understood by business heads, the bright days will belong to the hackers who are waiting for the next hacking opportunity. Top Management of organizations must ensure that relevant policies are enforced on time to protect privileged credentials. These policies can hover around password usage protocols which must include privileged accounts also. Organizations must also have proper systems in place which allows automatic replacement of passwords once an employee in crucial position gets relieved from his responsibilities. Periodical quality audits will also ensure the implementation of access rights in the set ways and set manner.

Ever organization has its own set of privileged credentials. Privileged credentials, looked at from this angle, is something internal to every organization. While the infrastructural arrangements and security levels differ between one organization and the other, the basic motto of organizations is profit making and sustenance. Unprotected IT accounts and privileged credentials can cause huge dent for an organization from a finance and security point of view. It is prudent to be proactive and safeguard the privileged credentials than reacting to breaches which costs a fortune to the organization. Be prudent. Safeguard your business by safeguarding your privileged credentials. 

Why Is The Artificial Intelligence’s contribution in Cyber Security The Most Trending Thing Now?

Cyber- attackers are influencing automation technology at launch strikes, whereas most organizations at rest use physical efforts to collective internal security findings, also putting them in a specific context with outside threat data. With the use of these conventional methods, it can take months or weeks to notice intrusions, during which time invaders can exploit susceptibilities to compromise systems and take out information. To deal with these challenges, ongoing organizations are exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their day-to-day cyber risk management operations.

According to a technology market report, more than 70% of attacks exploit known vulnerabilities with available patches. Similarly, the findings show that hackers take benefit of vulnerabilities within minutes of their becoming public information. Such statistics emphasize the importance of time-to-remediation. But, because of lack of security professionals and the general challenge of dealing with big data sets in safety, it is not astonishing that vulnerability remediation efforts are not keeping up with cyber challengers. Current industry research proves that it takes organizations on average 146 days to fix critical vulnerabilities.  Noticeably, this benchmark points out you need to rethink existing approach to enterprise security.

Cyber challengers have long influencing machines and automation systems to streamline their operations. Therefore why shouldn’t organizations do the same?

Identification of threats:

Organizations face a rising battle when it comes to cyber security, as the attack surface they have to protect has extended importantly and is predicted to balloon even further. In previous times, it was adequate to focus on endpoint protection and network, however now with applications, cloud services, and mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, Bluetooth devices, and smart watches) Organizations are battling a largely completed attack surface.

This ‘deeper and wider’ attack surface just attaches to the existing problem of how to manage the velocity, volume and complexity of information generated by the myriad of IT and security tools in a firm. The feeds from these disconnected techniques should be analyzed, remediation, and normalized effort prioritized.  The more difficult the challenge, the more tools, and the broader the attack surface, the more data to analyze. Conventionally, this approach required legions to staff to comb during the huge amount of data to connect find latent dangers and the dots. Such efforts took months, for the period of which time attackers utilized vulnerabilities and took out information.

Breaking down existing automating conventional security operations tasks and silos, thus, technology has helped to become a force-multiplier for augmenting scarce cyber security operations talent. In this context, the use of human-interactive machine learning engines can mechanize the aggregation of data across different data types; data of map assessment to compliance requirements; and normalize the information to rule out false- positive, enrich data attributes and duplicates.

Risk Assessment:

Once internal security intelligence is contextualized with external threat information (e.g. malware, exploits, threat actors, reputational intelligence), such finding should be inter-related with business criticality to identify the actual risk of the security gaps and their ultimate impact on the organization.

Eventually, unknowing the impact a ‘coffee server’ has on the business assessed to an ‘email server’, makes it nearly impossible to aim at remediation efforts on what actually matters. In this context, human- interactive machine learning and advanced algorithms play a big role in driving the exact response to individual risks.

Orchestration of Remediation:

Increasing teamwork between security teams that are responsible for  recognizing security gaps and IT operations teams which are focused on remediating them, carry on to be challenge for many firms. Through setting up thresholds and pre-defined policies, groups can also plan remediation actions to fix security gaps in a well-timed trend.

Procuring machine learning to do the heavy lifting in first line security information assessment facilitates analysts to aim at more progressed researches of threats rather than performing strategic information crunching. This meeting of the minds, by which, Artificial Intelligence is applied using a human-interactive approach grasps lots of promise for responding, fighting, and detecting to cyber risks.  

Cyber Security – The past, present and future of the industry That Will Actually Make Your Life Better.

With hundreds to thousands of cyber vulnerabilities across the IT infrastructure, the security providers are left with an insurmountable disadvantage. This often leads to longer dwell times and non-coexistentrepetitions that curtail the efficacy of network security programs. So, this begs the question, what is preventing us from prevailing against cyber threats. Furthermore, what are the upcoming approaches that allow enterprises to evolve from a traditional domain expert model to something that is more iterative, communicable and collaborative.

What are the biggest problems in the Cyber security industry and why?

Businesses often make the mistake of executing a reactive- rather than a pro-active approach tocyber security. Most often they rely on blocking techniques which are proven to be ineffective.

One of the biggest issue in IT security is how to manage the velocity, volume, and complexity of the information generated by a number of IT securitytools in a normal enterprise.Feeds from this disconnected, isolated tools must be examined & normalized. Remediation efforts must be prioritized. The more tools, more difficult the challenge.

Eventually, this data accumulation and analysis requires multitudes of personnel to look through the enormous amounts of information to match up and find the required minute detail from the junk. These efforts can take time, while hackers can exploit susceptibilities and extract sensitive information.

Even if an enterprise can hire enough experts and resources to perform this examination, they often misalign remediation work by relying on the internal security intel that lacks context in relation to active threats and which particular vulnerabilities they are manipulating.

Without taking the external threat information and business criticality into consideration, the security teams can concentrate on extenuating the wrong gaps.

What are the factors that reduce the efficacy by cyber security programs?

·         One Dimensional View

Primarily, many business and vendors still give emphasis on network layer, while ignoring other areas of the attack surface, for e.g. application layer. A holistic view of the attack surface, is the need of the day, to match the tactics and competency of the rivals.

The Verizon data breach in 2016 report confirms this point. The network layer and end points are just one part of riddle. The attack platform has grown intensely and therefore security efforts in    Technology market must align as a result.

·         CVE Focus

Secondarily, most vulnerability management tools depend on CVE [ Common vulnerabilities and exposure], which can lead can lead to a misplacement of resources.

For e.g. the POODLE vulnerability which happened in 2014. At the time it was available, it got a 5.5 assessment by the National Vulnerability Database [ NVD]. It is common to sift susceptibilities and only concentrate on those with 7 point or higher CVD. Implementing this model, POODLE vulnerability would have been overlooked. Thus, recognizing the threat, many companies would have been able to adjust the remediation priorities and speak about the POODLE theat.

This incident portrays the necessity of contextualizing the internal security intel with external risk information.

To develop the odds of overcoming cyber threats, enterprises should implement the following three practices:

·         Escalate the frequency of security posture assessments as broadcasted   by the National Institute of Standard and technology’s – continuous observing and diagnostic guidelines

·         Given the shortage of qualified security personnel, influence technology to automate as many security operations tasks as conceivable.

·         Finally, companies can extend security measures to focus today’s growing attack surface. This consist of moving beyond the network layer and endpoints, to include databases, applications, IOT and cloud environments etc.

To conclude, it is no longer feasible to handle the threats individually, taking into account the steep volume of protection gaps that exist. Therefore, an all-inclusive method that reflects the business impact as well as security posture can curtail attack surfaces and then reduce the dwell period during which susceptibilities can be manipulated.