Author: Lily

The Security Leaders’ Guide to Managing Shadow IT Risks

Posted on by Lily

In today’s cybersecurity environment, guaranteeing data privacy is an integral part of enterprise risk management.

Corporate executives and stakeholders used to think of enterprise risk purely in terms of investments, competition, and unit economics. Now, cybersecurity policies and intrusion detection capabilities have earned a central place in the discussion.

According to IBM, it takes an average of 280 days to find and contain a cyberattack. The average cost of a successful attack is just under $4 million. Enterprise leaders rely on their cybersecurity teams to identify and address these risks as part of their broader responsibilities to protect the organization and its users.

But this is easier said than done. Integrating best-in-class security technology is only the first step on the way towards operational security excellence. Information security leaders must also develop policies that promote a security-conscious culture throughout the organization.

IT Security is a Balancing Act

Corporate information security typically revolves around policies. Security leaders draft policies that tell employees how to interact with enterprise systems and IT infrastructure. They instruct users how to find and process files, and how to send processed files further down the production line securely.

As enterprise IT infrastructure expands, the complexity of these policies must also grow. A complex multi-cloud deployment can boost productivity significantly, but it also demands changes to security policy. As those policies become more complex, employee and user compliance may suffer.

This situation creates a balancing act between security and usability in the enterprise space. Improving security often comes with a tradeoff cost in usability, making productivity applications harder to use on a daily basis.

“Shadow IT” refers to employee-level resistance to overly complex security policies. When employees deliberately sidestep secure processing and transmission protocols, they expose valuable data to severe risk. If security leaders don’t have a solution for endpoint risk discovery, the exposed data may go entirely undetected.

Shadow IT is More Disruptive Than You Might Think

Let’s imagine your security policy stipulates sales team members have to use a specific messaging app to communicate with customers. This ensures customer data is accessible from your enterprise resource planning software, and it guarantees the security of the data involved.

Now, let’s say your policy-mandated messaging app disrupts the employee experience with frequent authentication requests and verifications. Some employees will try to get around those disruptions by using alternative apps. They might simply use their personal phones to contact customers on Messenger or WhatsApp, for example.

If those alternatives are not part of your policy, then whatever happens on them is essentially invisible to your security team. Critical sensitive data may be scattered across different endpoints and shadow IT applications without anyone’s knowledge. 

Paradoxically, if new security policies push employees to start using shadow IT capabilities, you might end up making security worse instead of better. Where you might have had limited or inadequate visibility before, now you have no visibility at all.

Shadow IT Complicates Compliance

Security leaders operating in a regulated industry need to be able to provide clear and consistent audit trails showing how sensitive data flows throughout the organization. Regulators need to know that there’s a robust information governance solution in place.

If personally identifiable information (PII), personal health information (PHI), or payment card industry (PCI) data ends up on an unsecured endpoint, the responsibility to explain how that happened falls on security leaders’ shoulders. This can be exceptionally challenging when the corresponding logs are missing or otherwise not available.

Every US state has its own set of data breach incident report regulations. In some cases, exposing sensitive data to the public by storing it on unsecured endpoints can be interpreted as a violation of users’ trust, requiring a report. Some states will let organizations avoid filing a report if the breach is “not reasonably likely to cause substantial harm to affected individuals.”

That means that if you detect exposed data early and mitigate the risk it represents to users, you stand a decent chance of maintaining compliance and avoiding damage to your reputation.

The Solution: Address Shadow IT Head-On

In order to address shadow IT risks, you must first shed light on what employees and users are doing to bypass security policies. Gaining visibility is the first step towards meaningfully securing alternative communications and apps throughout the enterprise.

This is a great opportunity to demonstrate empathetic leadership. Threatening or punishing employees for using unsecured applications is likely to backfire. It may simply encourage them to be more secretive about their shadow IT practices, further endangering the enterprise.

Instead, leaders will usually achieve better outcomes by opening up an empowering dialogue about the utility and value of security policies. Encouraging employees to give honest feedback on their user experience can help security leaders build better, more productive solutions.

At the same time, it gives IT security professionals a chance to educate employees and users on how security policies work and why they are in place. Employees are far more likely to demonstrate compliance with these policies when they understand the motives behind them.

This process will take time, but it is a critical step towards establishing a security-conscious office culture that values data privacy. Users and employees must feel empowered to self-police their use of IT infrastructure and achieve secure results.

Automatically Secure Your Data with Actifile

Cultivating a security-conscious office culture is a noble achievement, but it won’t happen overnight. Even once it is fully established, security professionals will need to consciously maintain it by educating employees and securing at-risk data points wherever they occur.

Actifile provides security leaders with automatic risk discovery and data encryption services through a cloud-based airbag-like protection system. Actifile detects unsecured data residing on non-compliance endpoints and remediates data breach risk by encrypting those files. This provides immediate value to security teams and grants much-needed visibility into shadow IT devices and systems currently in use throughout the enterprise.

Why Your Knowledge Base Needs Automated Dependency Management

Posted on by Lily

Your organization’s knowledge base is the foundation upon which your technologies, processes, and data co-exist. It plays a key role helping developers build and maintain the software solutions your organization depends on.

As your IT infrastructure becomes more complex, your knowledge management needs do as well. The more information gets stuck in emails, chats, forum posts, and support tickets, the harder it will be for your development team to use those insights to drive value.

Almost all modern development teams rely on third party code to some degree. it’s much easier to build new software using existing libraries, modules, and frameworks. However, this ease comes at a cost. To ensure its software solutions work reliably, your organization has to continuously dedicate resources to managing its third party dependencies.

Third Party Dependencies Come With Risks

Managing third party dependencies always involves some degree of risk. In most cases, the productivity benefits of using pre-existing code far outweigh the potential downsides, but the responsibility for weighing those decisions falls on IT leaders. These risks include:

  • Code updates that break your software build.
  • Unsecured connection protocols that undermine your security posture.
  • Productivity losses due to delegating employee-hours to remediating conflicts and patching vulnerabilities.

Enterprise IT leaders can avoid many of these risks by encouraging software best practices. These include avoiding deprecated interfaces, using abstractions whenever possible, and keeping your code loosely coupled to third-party dependencies in general. You may also wish to use similar sets of dependencies across development, testing, and production environments.

These strategies will prevent some of the most critical dependency-related issues, but they can’t absolve your IT team of its knowledge management responsibilities. Your developers still need to spend a great deal of time manually managing dependencies instead of working on high-value features and functionalities. 

You can’t simply stop using third party code, either. Paying your developers to reinvent the wheel simply doesn’t make economic sense. Instead, you need to establish and enforce an efficient system for dependency management in your knowledge base.

Software Vendors Can’t Shoulder the Responsibility Alone

The US government began adopting open source software in the mid 2010s, prompting vendors to make dependency management easier for enterprise and institutional users. Most of these new initiatives resulted in automated solutions for:

  • Policy-based Dependency Reinforcement. This approach prevents developers from adding unauthorized dependencies, and provides them with a process for seeking dependency approval from administrators.
  • Vulnerability Identification. Security leaders could use these tools to understand the known security risks associated with their current tech stack.
  • Vulnerability Mitigation. These solutions suggest recent dependency versions that include patches that fix known vulnerabilities. 
  • License Compliance. IT leaders need to know how their current slate of third party dependencies are licensed. License compliance tools provide a solution for visualizing this data easily.
  • Build Services. In an open source environment, build services help construct the dependency from source code, ensuring its security and integrity.

While all these features are undoubtedly useful, they do not absolve IT leaders of the responsibility for proactively managing knowledge base content. In practice, these solutions generate a flood of emails and notifications that end up getting lost in an inbox if they are not of immediate critical importance.

Start Driving Value Through Knowledge Management

Effective knowledge management can boost productivity by reducing the amount of time it takes for employees to find, access, and process the data they need. It can streamline the process of managing third-party dependencies and enable a wide range of application analytics benefits that reduce costs across the board.

To make the most of your knowledge base, you need to answer three simple but challenging questions about how your system works:

  1. How do you find things?

If users can’t find data because it’s stored in an arbitrary place, productivity will suffer as a result. This can happen even when your internal data is well-structured. One employees’ idea of good folder structure may not coincide with another’s. Your knowledge base has to make it easy for people to find the information they’re looking for, regardless of where or what it is.

When the data in question involves a third party dependency, obtaining this information can be even more difficult. You can’t easily guarantee the availability of third party data, so you need to incorporate that information as completely as possible in your own internal knowledge base system.

Search functionality is one of the most useful solutions you can integrate into a knowledge base, but it can’t do everything on its own. Duplicate content, ownership issues, and broken dependencies can interfere with knowledge base functionality if not addressed.

  1. Who owns your content?

The wiki format is a powerful solution for maintaining up-to-date information, but it has its drawbacks. It tends to blue ownership rights of individual pages and files, discouraging users from changing content authored by someone else. Instead, most users will simply add a slightly modified copy. 

This confuses later users, who have to choose between multiple copies of the same file. They may not know which one to trust. If they have to make their own changes, a highly disruptive version control conflict may erupt.

Your knowledge base must incorporate a well-defined hierarchy of roles equipped with specific privileges. This will go a long way towards helping users understand content ownership and responsibility.

  1. What happens to obsolete data?

For your knowledge base to remain relevant, it must contain accurate, up-to-date data. Content ownership must transfer along with changing roles within the organization, and individual administrators must be equipped with the appropriate tools to effectively curate data.

There are several ways you can address problems related to obsolete data. Giving users the ability to flag outdated documents is one. You may also wish to support content moderation so that administrators can verify and categorize new content before it gets published. However, these are both time-consuming manual processes with limited capacity to handle third-party dependencies.

To truly streamline your knowledge management capabilities, you need to integrate an application analytics solution capable of automating dependency management across third-party dependencies. This will provide you with accurate, timely information your developers can use without having to spend valuable time on obsolete versions.

Automate Your Knowledge Base with DeltaForce

DeltaForce is an application analytics solution that provides IT users with complete insight into enterprise applications and databases. It boosts developer productivity by establishing a comprehensive knowledge base that can automate complex dependencies between multiple technologies and programming languages. Find out how you can gain insight into the way your IT infrastructure works with our help.

 

Top 10 Enterprise Security Technologies You Need in 2022

Posted on by Lily

The cybersecurity tech stack has been spiraling out of control for years now. Even before the rise of industrialized ransomware-as-a-service providers, enterprise security leaders had too many vendors in their tech stacks. Now, the average enterprise deploys an average of 45 different security solutions at any given time.

In the world of information security, more does not necessarily mean better. Having many different cybersecurity solutions working together can easily create gaps in your overall security posture. In many cases, these gaps are nearly invisible – it would take a full audit to uncover them. But that doesn’t mean cybercriminals are equally unaware of them.

Today’s most secure enterprises concentrate their limited time and resources on implementing best-in-class solutions from reputable, trustworthy vendors. Quality, not quantity, is vital for adequately protecting your organization from cyberattack.

For enterprise security leaders, navigating dozens of different technologies is a steep challenge. Finding a set of security solutions that don’t interfere with one another is easier said than done. To that end, we’ve collected a list of high-performance security technologies that work in complementary ways, giving IT leaders a clear reference point for building out their stack.

Top 10 Security Solutions on Enterprise IT Leaders’ Radar in 2022

1. Exabeam SIEM

Security information and event management is a core functionality in the modern enterprise security framework. In order to accurately keep tabs on an increasingly complex attack surface, analysts need to be able to collect and interpret log data from across the entire organization. Early SIEM solutions evolved to meet this need, providing valuable insight on external threats and risk factors.

Exabeam takes the SIEM concept one step further. Instead of comparing log activity to a static set of security rules and policies, it uses user entity and behavioral analytics to verify authenticated users against an internal baseline of authorized activity. This enables Exabeam to identify insider threats and malicious activities that static rules-based SIEMs cannot see, making it a valuable addition to any complex enterprise.  

2. Anomali ThreatStream

SIEM vendors typically include a generic set of threat indicators in their software’s default configuration. These provide the indicators of compromise that analysts match against observed activity on the enterprise network. The more accurate and comprehensive they are, the better.

Anomali ThreatStream is a threat intelligence service that integrates real-time threat activity data with SIEM log capture and analysis capabilities. Instead of matching user activities against hundreds of well-known threat indicators, you can match those activities against a timely, curated list of tens of thousands of indicators collected from across the world.

3. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) goes beyond the limitations of traditional endpoint detection and response systems. It provides proven endpoint protection that can block sophisticated malware and prevent fileless attacks while extending that coverage using behavioral analytics and valuable investigative toolsets.

Analysts can use Palo Alto Cortex XDR to quickly investigate threats and gain a comprehensive understanding of the tactics and techniques used. They can orchestrate coherent responses to these attacks while maintaining compliance with applicable incident management regulations. Cortex is a powerful and accurate tool for orchestrating and executing successful incident response playbooks in the enterprise IT environment.

4. OneMorePass

Security doesn’t always have to come at the cost of usability. OneMorePass is a technology that updates one of the most overlooked aspects of enterprise security – the password. Even if your password policies are up-to-date, that’s no guarantee that employees and users are adequately taking care of their password habits. They may still reuse passwords across devices, write them down on paper, or share them between account holders.

OneMorePass secures enterprise systems from many of the weaknesses associated with bad passwords. It uses the Fast Identify Online (FIDO) framework to establish dual-factor authentication mechanisms that continuously validate users without interrupting the user experience itself. These authentications typically use a mobile device to register fingerprint, voice, or facial recognition data to ensure a secure environment.

5. Resec CDR

Content Disarm and Reconstruction is one of the most successful prevention-based technologies available to the modern enterprise. Instead of allowing incoming files to move throughout the network, Resec CDR scans the incoming file and rebuilds a perfectly identical one in the same format as the original. If there are malicious scripts included in the original, they are automatically left out by the rebuilding process – even if they’re undetected.

Previous generations of CDR technology created “flattened” files with significantly reduced usability – essentially image files of the source document. Resec provides a fully functional sanitized copy of all incoming files that matches the content and format of the original. With Resec, an incoming spreadsheet will retain its internal structure and metadata and remain fully editable, the way it should be.

6. DeltaForce

Robust security architecture relies on high-quality development and maintenance routines. In an enterprise environment, that means keeping track of multiple languages and technologies through an increasingly complex knowledge base system. Keeping that system up to base is not easy, especially if you have to do it manually.

DeltaForce is a solution that streamlines the process of updating and maintaining enterprise knowledge base content. It automatically imports source files and database schema, then identifies the object-level dependencies they share. This eliminates the need to manually manage object dependencies and build knowledge base data from scratch, making it much easier to identify and secure enterprise vulnerabilities.

7. Microsoft PowerBI

Data visualization is a critical aspect of data-driven enterprise culture. Security leaders can’t achieve results if they’re unable to demonstrate the value of the tasks they undertake and influence others to become more conscientious about their own security habits. Microsoft PowerBI is a data visualization tool that helps security leaders motivate users and other stakeholders to play their part achieving overall security goals.

Real-time analytics enable security leaders to show executives and shareholders how their decisions impact the company’s bottom line. They provide ample data into how security decisions impact productivity, and help make a clear case for continuing security investment to successfully protect against new and evolving threats.

8. DataHawk

Data lineage is critical to effective governance. In order to ensure data flow throughout the organization follows local and national regulation, you must be able to track how that data actually moves through each step in the enterprise workflow. DataHawk gives security leaders insight into how data moves between enterprise departments and what kinds of transformations it undergoes in the process.

This enables the enterprise to break down organizational silos, increase productivity, and simplify compliance management. It also reduces the risks associated with change management, and ensures low-quality data doesn’t interfere with high-level decision-making.

9. Wazuh 

Wazuh is an open-source security platform that has an important role to play in the modern enterprise. Remote work has become a hallmark of the post-pandemic workplace, and many security leaders are still working through the impact remote-enabled teams have on security operations.

Remote log management is one of the key use cases for Wazuh’s open-source security platform. Organizations with a highly diverse, distributed team of employees spread out across the globe can use Wazuh to standardize data collection and curation so that analysts have access to ready-made logs that are easy to interpret without delay.

10. CheckPoint CloudGuard 

Cloud-enabled workflows are becoming increasingly common among large enterprises. While cloud infrastructure is notably more secure than most on-premises solutions, it does present several unique vulnerabilities that information security leaders must address. Relatively few vendors focus specifically on containerized workflow security, which makes it attractive to ambitious, technically proficient cybercriminals.

CheckPoint CloudGuard provides threat prevention capabilities specifically suited to containerized applications common to DevOps pipelines. Agile enterprises need a solution like CloudGuard to prevent unsecured DevOps workflows from impacting production environments and creating avoidable vulnerabilities in their security posture.

Select Your Security Tech Stack With Care

Optimizing your tech stack is one of the greatest responsibilities a security leader must shoulder. A robust, well-integrated set of solutions will reliably prevent cyberattacks and mitigate data disasters. An ill-chosen selection of technologies will have the opposite effect, and it’s hard to predict exactly how a dozen different technologies will interact with one another in a given environment. Take care to select and test high-quality technologies you can rely on to work together seamlessly. Contact us today to implement the best enterprise technologies with ease.

 

FIDO Explained: How Fast Identity Online Authentication Works

Posted on by Lily

Don’t let bad passwords become the Achilles’ Heel of your organization’s security posture.

Passwords are by far the most common way to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive systems and data. 

It’s easy to understand why passwords have been the security status quo since the earliest days of computing. A good password is nearly impossible to break using conventional brute force attacks, where attackers attempt to guess a password by repeatedly checking millions of possible combinations in sequential order.

However, the definition of a “good password” is constantly changing. During the dot-com era, security professionals set the 8-character password as a viable standard for enterprise security. 

In some industries this is still the case today, despite the fact that hackers can now successfully break even the most complex 8-character passwords in less than an hour. For comparison, an equally complex password with double the number of characters would take 92 billion years to crack.

The problem is that it’s not easy to create and remember such long, complicated passwords. Everyone understands how to make a perfect password using a random sequence of numbers, punctuation marks, and capital and undercase letters. Yet when prompted to create one for themselves, very few actually take time to create and memorize a good password. Instead, they choose one that’s simple, memorable – and easy to crack.

Despite this fact, the average employee is expected to create and remember hundreds of different passwords throughout their career. It’s easy to understand why people tend to reuse passwords, write them down, and generally undermine password effectiveness in their day-to-day operations.

Ultimately, this means passwords tend to fail in their role protecting sensitive data and accounts from unauthorized access. Security leaders constantly try to update and enforce good password policy, but they fail whenever that policy conflicts with employee productivity and ease of use.

FIDO Authentication Techniques Go Beyond Passwords

Passwords are not the only way people can authenticate themselves. Any unique characteristic that a person has can be used to validate their identity. 

Passwords rely on information that only an authorized user is supposed to know. Other authentication methods rely on behaviors or qualities that only authorized users have.

Fast Identity Online is not one specific technology, but a collection of technical standards that push credential security beyond simple passwords. These protocols work together to provide robust credential security without disrupting the user experience or inhibiting productivity.

Many of these authentication processes rely on identifying who users are, instead of testing them on what they know. Examples of FIDO-enabled authentication processes include:

  • Speaking into a microphone
  • Touching a fingerprint scanner
  • Looking into a camera

These authentication factors are much harder to break than even the best passwords. This is especially the case when using multi-factor authentication to validate users using more than one.

Unlike passwords, these factors can undergo periodic validation without interrupting the user experience. In some cases, there is no need to stop authorized users from doing whatever they’re doing when verifying their identities, and it’s possible to verify them multiple times during a single session.

FIDO Protocols Treat Privacy Seriously

Facial images, fingerprints, and voice recordings are examples of highly sensitive biometric data. One of the most important characteristics of the FIDO authentication protocol is how it treats this data to ensure security and user privacy.

Before sending any data for validation, FIDO-enabled devices establish an encrypted communications channel with the verifying server. The private key that secures this channel never leaves the user’s device, reducing the risk it gets intercepted by opportunistic hackers. Similarly, the biometric data itself is stored on the user’s device instead of the validating server.

Before people can start using FIDO authentication protocols, they must register and select the authentication method they feel most comfortable with. FIDO protocols do not generally favor one method over another, so users can simply choose not to provide biometric data they don’t want to share.

In most cases, the data itself comes from a paired mobile device. This way, anyone who uses facial recognition on their smartphone can easily extend that authentication factor to any FIDO-enabled application they have access to. The same goes for fingerprint scanning and vocal identification.

There are additional FIDO-compliant authentication methods that don’t require biometric data at all. For example, users who do not wish to be recorded or scanned can choose to enter a PIN code into their smartphone or press a specific button. This ensures the user is in possession of their mobile device and capable of unlocking it.

FIDO Addresses Password Policy Shortcomings

By challenging users to prove their identity based on biometric data or activity data, FIDO-enabled applications avoid forcing users to remember complicated passwords. When users no longer have to periodically set and change their passwords, they are better positioned to focus on their work without worrying about security policy.

The practical benefit of FIDO-enabled security is that it lifts security responsibility off employees’ shoulders. Instead of prompting them to create, remember, and periodically change a complex password, FIDO requires only that they have a compatible mobile device ready.

There are even FIDO-compliant solutions that don’t require users to validate with their personal smartphone. Universal Second Factor (U2F) devices are secure USB dongles that play the same role, validating user identities and transmitting authentication data to a secure server without disrupting the user experience.

When taken together, these technologies and policies provide strong authentication security without relying on passwords. They address many of the critical weaknesses that come from bad password policy.

Almost 70% of employees admit sharing their passwords with co-workers. FIDO-compliant authentication data cannot easily be shared the way passwords are. The authorized user must be physically present and aware of the session, and may periodically have to renew it. This has a profoundly positive impact on enterprise security compliance.

Implement Best-in-Class Authentication Policies Today

Enhancing your organization’s authentication policies is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve operational security without disrupting the user experience. Implement a FIDO-compliant technology like OneMorePass and benefit from a flexible, secure authentication solution that puts the user experience first.

Automated Data Governance Unlocks the Value of Enterprise Data Flow

Posted on by Lily

In today’s enterprise environment, it’s difficult to overstate the value of high-quality data. 

Data has worked its way into nearly every aspect of enterprise decision-making. It informs operational efficiency, marketing strategies, and compliance success. It enables organizations to increase adoption and improve collaboration.

Before it can do any of these things, data needs to be interpreted in a cost-effective way. Enterprise-level organizations and their stakeholders need to agree upon a common, well-documented understanding of how data moves throughout the organization. This framework must also stipulate who has access to data and why.

Organizations that establish clear data governance policies set themselves up for highly streamlined operations, reliable profitability, and resilience against uncertainty. Over the past few years, data governance has become so important that many enterprises dedicate a C-suite position solely to managing and governing data. 

This is a new phenomenon. Nearly 50% of publicly-traded companies with a Chief Data Officer appointed their first CDO between 2019 and 2022.

One of the primary responsibilities these executives have is establishing a data governance framework that enables enterprise data to generate value. They must then align people, processes, and technology to that framework in ways that help the organization achieve its strategic goals.

What Does a Well-Designed Data Governance Program Look Like?

Competitive enterprises must constantly gather feedback on day-to-day operations as well as long-term strategic initiatives. For a corporate data governance program to streamline this process, it must be established on multiple levels. A typical enterprise data governance system may include the following:

  • A Governance Team. Since core governance directives are informed by executive strategy and insight, the governance team is often led by a C-suite executive. In some cases, a Director-level leader is provided with a department and charged with reporting to company executives.
  • A Steering Committee. Data is embedded in nearly every aspect of daily operation, which means data governance must accommodate insights from many different sources. Steering committees are multi-disciplinary governing bodies that direct and prioritize data governance initiatives, while overseeing their execution.
  • Operational Data Stewards. Data stewards are responsible for the management and oversight of organizational data assets. They coordinate policies and procedures to ensure data is accurate, consistent, complete, secure, and discoverable.

Accomplishing these goals requires a broad skill set that includes data architecture, data modeling, and information security. A comprehensive data governance program consists of 10 different components:

People

The success of any data governance initiative relies on the expertise and professionalism of the executive leaders, steering committees, and data stewards who execute it. Hiring top talent with demonstrable data governance expertise can make a significant difference in every aspect of the governance framework.

Strategy

High-level enterprise requirements must be comprehensively described in a strategic document that guides the governance roadmap. Establishing a strategic roadmap protects against scope creep and keeps the governance team focused on high-priority goals.

Processes

Data management processes include monitoring the quality of data, sharing analytics insights, and tracking data lineage, among many others. These processes are key to unlocking the value that enterprise data represents, and help inform policies that augment that value.

Policies

Data policies start with high-level statements declaring the expectations of data governance processes. They then inform lower-level operational guidelines about how individual users should treat data on a day-to-day basis. Policies are guided by security best practices and regulatory compliance, as well.

Standards

Documented, standardized processes keep “tribal knowledge” out of the data governance framework, ensuring everyone knows exactly how to format and communicate information effectively. ISO 3166 is an example of a popular, international data standard that specifies the definitions of country codes, as well as their dependent territories and other subdivisions.

Security

Data must be accessible to the people who need it, and inaccessible to those who don’t. Information security policies play an incredibly important role informing how governance policies differentiate between authorized and unauthorized users, and how suspicious activities should be handled.

Communication

Digital communication is a major element of data governance, but not the only one. Written and spoken communication also fall under governance frameworks, especially when considering sensitive data that requires additional security. Employees must know what format to use when communicating information, based on the context and sensitivity of the data being transmitted.

Integration

Organizational policies and structures should fit the overall framework established by data governance initiatives. Even internal office culture and water-cooler talk (or the lack thereof) must be taken into consideration when establishing new standards of behavior.

Analysis

To capture the value of data governance initiatives, leaders must analyze the right key performance indicators and business metrics. These are unique to each organization, but often include insights drawn from support tickets and security event logs, among other sources.

Technology

All data governance programs rely on various technologies to capture, manage, and analyze metadata in accordance with a governance framework. The larger and more complex the program is, the more robust its technology stack needs to be. 

Each of these components has to work together smoothly in order to generate value with consistency in the enterprise environment. Poorly implemented data governance solutions can deeply impact the user experience for employees, customers, and business partners alike.

Managing the Flow of Data is Crucial to Effective Governance

Many data governance technologies focus on establishing consistent, secure frameworks for managing data and reducing organizational silos. This is an important aspect of overall governance, but it only produces optimal results when combined with an optimized approach to controlling data flow throughout the organization as well.

Data stewards and their governance partners need to be able to track the lineage of data as it travels through the organization. The ability to investigate how data arrives at its destination, and examine the processes that take it there are incredibly valuable for meeting information security and compliance objectives.

Enterprises and institutions that handle extremely high volumes of data throughput on a daily basis cannot adequately conduct these investigations in real-time without automated data lineage reporting. Data visualization solutions like DataHawk can help stewards, steering committee members, and executives gain visibility into how data flows throughout the organization and why.

Discover how to improve the efficiency and accuracy of your data lineage reports using a highly automated data governance platform with advanced search functionality. WeBridge provides governance technologies like DataHawk to enterprises that demand advanced, secure data lineage management solutions.

5 Steps to Improve Enterprise Cybersecurity

Posted on by Lily

Cybersecurity is a widespread issue across multiple industries. Cyberthreat reports indicate that many companies have been targeted by hackers or been subject to data breaches. One report states that 68% of all organizations in the education industry reported being subject to a data breach over the last year, and 67% of schools had reported being attacked by phishing scams.

Nearly 40% of businesses in the US experienced cyberattacks in 2021. With the cost of recovering from these attacks rising (nearly $3 million on average) and the frequency and complexity of these attacks also increasing, it’s more important than ever for enterprise organizations to create a plan and prepare for these issues.

In this article let’s look at the need for enterprise cybersecurity and how to get started.

Why do enterprise companies need extra security?

Today’s enterprise IT solutions are much more complicated than traditional security. You can’t just put a firewall around on premise hardware, because it is complex and there are many different ways hackers can get in.

While people outside of the company are still the primary cause for much of the attacks, 25% of breaches are now caused by careless employees or even malicious insiders and most companies have an IT infrastructure that’s a mix of old systems, new applications and either public or private cloud-based solutions.

What enterprise cybersecurity really means

Enterprise cybersecurity is used to protect data on the cloud, and old cybersecurity tactics weren’t designed to protect data on the cloud.

To ensure a company’s security, protection must be across on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure as well as vetting third parties. Another important part of cybersecurity is protecting new connections coming to your network.

Why is enterprise cybersecurity such a difficult challenge?

IoT devices like smart cities and connected factories are quickly becoming a norm. Many businesses that rely on IoT networks will experience data hacks without proper security measures in place.

Businesses need data to both engage with their customers and automate their internal processes. But cybercriminals understand exactly how valuable data is, so crimes like ransomware and phishing are increasing. You want to train your employees of the most common mistakes that will lead to cybersecurity issues.

When security breaches occur in a company, the results are costly and devastating. In order to protect your company, you need cybersecurity that goes beyond simply creating a perimeter. With the growing threat, new needs arise for robust enterprise cybersecurity.

5 Steps to Improve Enterprise Cybersecurity

Now that you understand the difference between enterprise cybersecurity and traditional cybersecurity, let’s look at the the top 5 things you can do today to improve it.

Boundaries

You must have a set of boundaries for your assets; each object is protected by information safeguards, such as your data on a local hard drive or the cloud.

Mirroring the changes in cloud computing and the Internet of Things, boundaries have become a more significant issue. Before, local IT staff would safeguard valuable information assets through on-site storage and copying.

When you’re sharing data with a third-party cloud server, there needs to be boundaries in place. Every type of transferable data must have a boundary and, for example, when your company is using different devices for downloading, editing, and uploading, those must also be protected from all possible methods of interception.

Software policies

The second component of enterprise information security is the software environment. Define the purpose and policies for each form of software within your company system. If a software program falls out of use or is old, it should be removed from the system.

When you are defining your environment, you can choose what type of software is allowed to contact the network. If your organization has a lot of employees who come from various devices and have various levels of access to computers and the company’s systems, be aware that any accessible software might pose a threat to your company’s computer system.

To constantly update your software security, you need to make sure you are installing updates and patches, and scanning your devices regularly. These programs are essential to keep your company up to date with the latest trends in technology.

Network security

Step 1: Identify the network environment and boundaries. Step 2: Harden any assets that connect to the network.

To harden your system, scrutinize and test every device for vulnerabilities. If a third party can break one of the devices, reprogram or remove it from the system. Likewise, fix software or cloud protocols which expose private data.

If your network is more secure, it may be less functional. One possible solution is to take the safest steps possible while still maintaining the functionality of your company’s operations.

Plan for vulnerabilities

Although endpoint cybersecurity is often good, there are target vulnerabilities in software programs. Cyber thieves exploit new program patches and updates – it’s important to ultimately stay ahead by staying updated on new methods that cyber thieves use.

Ensure that a security risk or system hole is patched up as soon as it’s discovered. This will prevent your company’s computing network from being vulnerable and unsecured.

You don’t know a data breach is happening until it takes place for a long time. If you want to speed up the process of discovering and correcting a breach in your system, then use an effective remediation plan. Hackers can access your sensitive data for months before someone notices the danger.

Controlled access

Once you have determined who is supposed to have administrative access, you can then cut off their entrance point and prevent hackers or cyber thieves from getting in that way. It is crucial to review the current level of access and determine who has authorized levels of access.

Take a look at the credentials of your employees assigned admin privileges. If they don’t require these abilities, remove them. There should be an exception for someone who plays an important administrative function and requires limited access to this area.

Ready to take the next step?

We-Bridge curates the best enterprise cybersecurity products that will keep your company protected from cyberattacks and breaches. Take a look at our product offerings on our website or schedule a demo today to learn more.

What Is Data Lineage?

Posted on by Lily

Data is necessary for your business to thrive. With so much to focus on, it might feel impossible to find the time to figure out exactly how well your data is working for you.

Data is most valuable when the company understands its origins, how it got to their business, and how it moves through the company. Data lineage analyzes data sources and where they are used, so that managers know if there are any problems or inefficiencies.

Let’s look at what data lineage is and explore how crucial it is.

Understanding data lineage

Data can be traced back to its origins, and all the stops it had within that journey. This makes documenting anything easier, for instance what is being used on a day-to-day basis in every system or to fix errors.

Data lineage vs. data provenance

A record keeper for data’s historical origins, data provenance is a tool that provides an in-depth description of where this data comes from, including its analytic life cycle. The dataset’s origin has been recorded and the quality assessed by using machine learning technology.

Using data provenance helps track errors, update processes and identify sources. It also sorts data in a data warehouse and identifies audit trails for governance. Data Lineage is considered “why-provenance” and centres around the flow of data.

Data provenance provides the ability to track data, which ensures its reliability.

The importance of data lineage

Increasing data streams require new ways to sort through and manage these large amounts of information. A Data Lifecycle provides access to information, which aids in decision-making and company development.

Source tracking can facilitate error resolution. Data quality will be enhanced by knowing who made a change, how something was updated, and which process was used. Data lineage gives people confidence in the data they’re using.

Businesses need data. Every department – such as marketing, manufacturing, management, and sales – relies on your company’s data. Collected data helps refine design, improve product availability over time, and make decisions about products and sales. With detailed data lineage, businesses can also have continuous self-education around products if needed.

By using data lineage, companies can track when data changes, and adjust accordingly. This enables firms to properly use data in increasingly changing environments.

Business owners or IT professionals with teams who need to create new programs should have data lineage tools on hand. This allows them to do more of what they need by finding the data sources needed and providing a comprehensive list.

If you’re looking for the data, who created it and what systems it entered the system in, Data Lineage can help. It’s a way to trace the data back to its origin: making differentiations on how that data is being used — helping reduce risk.

For firms operating in the healthcare and finance industries, rigorous regulatory reporting and transparency have become priorities. They need to be able to show that they are using accurate data, and they must also maintain its lineage. This means recording where data came from, when it was accessed by whom, who created it and how it was used.

Learn about the cloud and the future of data lineage

The internet has made it easy to gather and access data, but difficult to manage.

The cloud makes data governance important, because it helps businesses to understand their data and make the most of it. Data lineage is one of the ways that data governance is done. It gives businesses a way to check the quality of their data, ensuring accuracy and saving time.

Data lineage will become increasingly important as the cloud evolves. Although data governance efforts protect data and gives companies better insight into their technology, it also grows in size, affects governance policies and slows down data access which can affect time to market.

Does your organization have the skillset to input data as it comes in? This new, reactive approach to working will give you critical situational insights so that you can make more informed decisions.

New systems have huge potential for errors so data lineage plays an important and effective role. By understanding where data comes from, there is more transparency which can tackle governance and accuracy problems head on.

A data lineage solution reduces the cost and complexity of using cloud storage. It also provides scalability, data quality, a simple data exchange system for collecting multiple sources of information, and spaces to store all of your data.

Where to start with data lineage

Data lineage is a data governance strategy that will help you to understand how data flows through your system. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect in May of 2018, requires companies to create a data sound environment for their clients.

Data lineage is the best way to ensure data quality, although it may be tedious and time-consuming.

Don’t waste time and money sorting through a data system. Instead, there are comprehensive solutions that can easily sort your data automatically.

A better data lineage solution

DataHawk

Most companies use ETL-centric data mapping definition document for data lineage management. This is where DataHawk is different.

DataHawk is a data lineage management solution that automatically collects and analyzes data lineage of mission critical data – visualizing data flow and derivation rule from data source to target.

To learn more, click here. 

Introducing DataHawk – A Data Lineage Management Solution

Posted on by Lily

DataHawk is a data lineage management solution that automatically collects and analyzes data lineage of mission critical data – visualizing data flow and derivation rule from data source to target.

data lineage

What is Data Lineage?

Data Lineage is the flow of data from the source to the target. Data lineage tracking is understanding what flow and derivation rules the data was processed, transformed, and used through.

Why Data Lineage Management?

Managing data lineage can improve business efficiency by understanding the order of data flow, identify the scope of impact and identify the source/path of error data, and reduce communication costs between IT and businesses.

It also can help meet compliance standards such as BASEL III BCBS 239, IFRS 17, GDPR, and more.

Challenges with Other Data Lineage Management Solutions

Most companies use ETL-centric data mapping definition document for data lineage management. This is where DataHawk is different.

DataHawk is a data lineage management solution that automatically collects and analyzes data lineage of mission critical data – visualizing data flow and derivation rule from data source to target.

Benefits

 
– Visualize data lineage/flow for Big Data and Cloud environments
– Rapidly respond to compliance and audit trail
– Improve data governance level with data lineage/flow visualization
– Increase work productivity by immediately grasping data lineage/flow
– Reduce risk for data change and cleansing
customers

How To Use Marketing To Get New Clients For Your MSP

Posted on by Lily

It’s been said, “Smaller MSPs don’t do marketing and don’t know what to do”. This comes from the fact that many small and medium businesses (SMBs) rely on word of mouth, and “old-school marketing,” such as direct mailers, door-to-door, and cold calling.

These legacy techniques will only get a business so far. The good news is that modern digital marketing offers a lot of effective techniques to build and expand your customer base beyond the results of traditional marketing.

Investing in a diverse portfolio of marketing efforts broadens your reach and is important for long-term sustained growth.

This article will discuss some of the most important steps MSPs starting out can make to elevate their marketing game.

Because some results will be immediate while others will bear fruit in the long term, it’s important to start right now. The sooner you start the faster you’ll grow.

Content is King

Gary Vaynerchuk

Brand Awareness Matters

The global market is changing how digital marketing is handled. SEO is a crucial aspect of driving traffic to your website but many small and medium businesses (SMBs) fail to recognize the importance of local SEO.

Even businesses steeped in technology like MSPs are unaware of the importance of establishing an internet presence and building domain authority.

Increasing your organic search traffic can be a long process of content creation. Doing so in a way that demonstrates your business is a thought leader establishes authority as well as being beneficial to increase traffic.

This can be the crucial differentiator between two businesses that do the same thing.

Consider this example: A customer is searching for companies who provide your services. One business has a standard site with nothing on it, no social media presence, no reviews, and no content. 

Another company has multiple customer reviews, higher ratings, informative articles on their site, frequent social media posts about events or topics related to their industry.

Which business are you more likely to contact? The first might be a better company but how would you know? It’s an easy choice. The brand you know more about is the one that will inspire more confidence. 

Diverse Content Builds Your Brand

Put simply, having more content and reviews than your competitors is an easy way to stand out.

Today’s customers are savvy and those doing their own research are more likely to turn to you when they can see that you know your field.

If your primary offerings are cybersecurity solutions then blog posts such as “Making Sure You’re HIPAA Compliant,” “Backup Your Business Data Safely and Securely,” “The Evolution of Hackers: from Basements to Businesses,” “Protecting Yourself From a Data Breach” can help establish authority with Google and credibility with your audience. 

The more content you have, the more likely Google will list you in their results – this is crucial for getting your business in front of people.

Creating content that targets the pain points and issues that your ideal audience needs you to solve helps ensure that the people who see you are the customers who need you.

It’s crucial to create content that does more than extolling the virtues of your product or services.

By creating content that educates people on important issues or facts related to their business without pitching a product or service you establish credibility as someone they can turn to for answers.

It builds your audience and broadens your reach which in turn drives that legacy concept “word of mouth” into the modern era.

Though organic traffic built from content and brand awareness is a slower method, it is a free method of driving traffic to your business’s website.

The biggest investment you will make is the time it takes to create good content and maybe a writer if you aren’t comfortable with your own writing.

Un-gated content, the information offered without requiring any information, establishes trust with a prospect.

Soft gates, asking for contact information but not requiring it to view the content, and gated content are all ways of generating leads.

Once your audience feels they have a relationship with you through your content they’ll become a prospect and a standard “contact us” form can be used to collect their information. 

Local SEO Makes a Difference

Another quick and easy trick that many businesses miss is updating the company’s Yelp and Google information.

This is a high-value, low-effort way to bump your SEO results. Based on information from the tech company Yext, 37% of businesses have the incorrect name in their Google listings, while listings with the incorrect address sit around  43%, and 19% lack website URLs. 

Once again, you’re trying to stand apart from the other competitors that show up in search results. You don’t need to out-swim a shark, you just need to out-swim the other humans around you.

Make Your Advertising Dollars Count

 

Mark Zuckerberg

Once you’ve got your organic traffic flow moving, then it’s reasonable to consider investing in a digital advertising campaign.

There are many options for paid advertising online — from Google pay-per-click (PPC) to LinkedIn or Facebook Ads, to Google Ads — your company’s needs and where your customers live ill determine the avenue of paid advertising that’s best.  

Google Pay-Per-Click

If your company lacks content or is primarily B2B, Google PPC might be the best option. Google PPC advertising works well when your target audience searches for local results.

Tailor your campaign to fit what your ideal customer will be looking for, something like “Top IT companies in California,” and have your company displayed in the top three results.

Google ads often also generate higher-quality leads. Someone searching on Google for MSPs demonstrates higher intent and therefore is more likely to move forward.

Social Media Advertising

Social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter offer opportunities for organic reach but they also offer targeted paid advertising.

Social Media advertising puts your company in front of more eyes than PPC and is generally more affordable, but it also allows your ads to be tailored to specific demographics within your target audience.

LinkedIn is best for B2B companies while Facebook and Twitter offer more opportunities for B2C.

MSPs using social media advertising should analyze which type of social media their ideal prospects frequent and spend accordingly.

Social advertising puts your content in front of a targeted group and is often designed to generate likes, follows, and leads.

One time tested technique is by offering gated content to customers willing to fill out a short form. This generates leads.

Different Content for Different Platforms

It’s important to note that messaging also differ between Google ads and social advertising. Users are in completely different mindsets when using Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. 

Content you make for each platform should take that into account. An ad that works well on LinkedIn won’t necessarily work on Instagram.

As you use these platforms, take note of ads that catch your eye vs ones that you scroll right past. You can often times copy competitor ads and make adjustments to them to use for your own.

Modern Marketing is Essential for Every Business

Don Draper

As daunting a task as it may seem to bring in new customers, using digital marketing increases your ROI.

Digital marketing techniques make it possible for SMBs to handle marketing even with a single person.

More customers equal more revenue. More revenue allows growth. Leveraging digital marketing basics until more people can be hired offers you a way to grow sustainably.

Making sure your website is well designed and complete, including a place to collect emails and phone numbers presents a mature business image.

Determining the correct kind of ads, keeping your business listings up to date, and leveraging social media are all essential for good quality lead generation at any stage of growth.

When used correctly, Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other forms of digital advertising become some of your best tools.

Why is Third-Party Risk Management Important?

Posted on by Lily

To be competitive in today’s business environment, enterprises must leverage third parties to reduce costs, improve back-office operations, and improve performance. But these third-party vendors and services come with financial, reputational, and security risks because they often need access to sensitive data. On average, 13 million records are exposed from a third-party breach.

To protect your enterprise, third-party risk management (TPRM) becomes critical to your organization’s risk management strategy. We’ll explain why TPRM is essential and offer some strategies for building a framework to reduce risk and increase the security of sensitive data. 

What is Third-Party Risk Management?

Third-party risk management is the process for assessing risks from working with third parties, creating a plan and establishing protocols and systems to reduce these risks, and continually monitoring and auditing your third-party vendors and services for new risks and threats. 

You’ll want to establish a process for mitigating any risks that arise from using a third-party service, such as:

  • Cybersecurity risks: These are threats to your data and system security from using a third-party vendor. 
  • Operational risks: These risks disrupt operations, which are usually managed through service level agreements (SLA), and incident response plans. 
  • Compliance and regulation risks: These are third-party risks that affect your ability to comply with government regulations and laws.
  • Financial risks: These are third-party risks that can negatively impact your revenue or ability to produce or sell goods and services. 
  • Reputational risks: These are any risks that can affect public opinion about your company or ruin credibility with your customers. 
  • Strategic risks: These risks may arise from a third party that compromises or affects whether your organization can meet objectives and performance goals. 

Related Link: Why a Cybersecurity Policy is a Must-Have for your MSP in 2022

A Risk Management Framework

A third-party risk management framework defines policies and procedures for mitigating risks and proactively addressing potential threats. To create an effective risk management framework, you’ll need to establish:

Clear Roles and Responsibilities

Your organization needs to designate risk managers and compliance officers. These individuals should have clearly defined responsibilities for identifying, monitoring, and reducing risk with third-party vendors and services. The risk managers and compliance officers should be empowered to hold third parties and internal employees accountable for specific service levels and tasks.

When risks are identified, the risk manager should delegate responsibilities and expectations to create a collective responsibility for managing the risk. By creating accountability, individuals and third parties should maintain service levels and be more proactive about reducing risk situations.

Workflows to Assess and Mitigate Risk

By defining and assessing how your automated workflows integrate with all third-party tasks, you can identify what risks may emerge and how to mitigate them. Your risk management team will need to design the integrated workflow and assess it for compliance and security.

You’ll want your risk management team and IT to create a logical sequence for the workflow to prevent duplicate work and backtracking that can leave your workflow vulnerable to attack. You’ll need to address any vulnerabilities and put systems in place to handle any third-party risk management requirements.

Monitoring and Reporting

You’ll need to utilize a monitoring and tracking system to identify risks, assess accurate data, and regularly report to compliance officers or operations officers. Establishing clear, measurable service level agreements with your third parties is essential. The third parties should also provide monitoring tools for transparency.

What Makes a Third-Party Risk Management Program Successful?

A successful TPRM program should follow this process continually:

  1. Analysis: Before onboarding a new third party, your risk management team should complete a high level of due diligence to identify any potential risks with the third party and evaluate their security rating.
  2. Engagement: Once vetted, the third party should provide clear insight into their workflows and security controls. They should also offer service level guarantees with proper monitoring tools to ensure SLAs. 
  3. Remediation: You need a remediation plan when you identify hazardous risks that could jeopardize your enterprise. Having tools that prioritize risks and provide audit trails can help. If the vendor meets your risk tolerance levels, then you can onboard.
  4. Monitoring: You’ll want systems and tools in place to keep a vigilant eye on your third parties and their access to your systems, data, and business processes.

Need a better risk management monitoring tool? Learn more about our data privacy risk platform with risk analysis, monitoring, and remediation.

Related Link: Stop using VPN! Why Zero Trust is a Better Solution

risk manager assessing risks

Why You Should Invest in Third-Party Risk Management

Third-party risk management can benefit your business in several key areas:

Cost Reduction

While TPRM can be an initial and ongoing investment, it will save money in the case of a data breach. Enterprises can spend an estimated $4.24 million to recover from a data breach involving a third party. And it can take an average of 287 days to identify and contain the breach, costing resources and money.

By putting a TPRM plan in place, you can dramatically reduce the cost of the data breach and the time to contain it by continually auditing and evaluating your third-party risks.

Knowledge and Confidence

By implementing third-party risk management strategies, you’ll make more informed decisions about which third-party services you integrate. You’ll also have more confidence in your vendors and their ability to protect your data.

Risk Reduction

Risk management due diligence on all third-party vendors reduces the risk of new security breaches because you can assess vulnerabilities before onboarding. And you can continue to evaluate and audit third-party services as new security threats and risks arise. By being proactive, you can fortify systems and data before a breach becomes an issue.

Regulatory Compliance

Many industries require TPRM as part of their regulatory compliance to protect intellectual property, personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and other sensitive data. And many laws have been put in place to protect the organization from third-party data breaches, such as:

  • CCPA
  • FIPA
  • PINEDA
  • The Shield Act
  • LGPD

By implementing and maintaining TPRM, your organization will be industry compliant and protected from fines and penalties associated with a third-party data breach.

risk manager assessing risks

Conclusion

It is critical to have a third-party risk management framework to reduce risks that could compromise your systems, data, and reputation in today’s environment. By adopting these TPRM strategies, your enterprise will fortify its cybersecurity strategy and have a plan for handling third-party risks. 

We Bridge is a turn-key SaaS solution for helping cloud-centric enterprises manage their data privacy risk through robust assessment, monitoring, and remediation. Utilizing a zero-trust, end-to-end encryption model, our platform will elevate your business performance while minimizing third-party risk.

Want to learn more about our data privacy risk platform? Check out our Actifile automated SaaS solution.

Related Link: Top 10 Cybersecurity Software Solutions for MSPs in 2022

 

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