• Emerging operating models

Some businesses will have to switch to new operating models. Cybersecurity and IT rights would require cautious assessment and careful handling for these organizations in any incident’s immediate aftermath. 

Monitoring and support for remote workers will become critical. Before permitting the relocated system to reconnect to the network, cybersecurity specialists must adopt a  system and access scrutiny for personnel who move from home to the workplace.

• Security at the edge

Recognizing the impact of working from home is the next stage in repositioning security in an organization. Almost all workforces became remote during the pandemic’s peak, and even when enterprises progressively return to offices, there will still be a large network of remote workers.

Without VPN architectures, this rapid and massive shift to remote working at the initiation of lockdown constraints would not have been possible. However, the safety governing VPNs is not as powerful as it needs to be for the heavy reliance on these systems to link employees to critical applications within organizations. As a result, businesses have shifted to Privileged Access Management (PAM) to support global remote access, including SD-WAN. These systems now have integrated security measures, providing remote workers with nearly the same level of protection as the head office. 

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions are a more secure alternative to VPNs that are projected to become more prominent in the future. These services combine network and network security into a single cloud service that is both secure and capable of providing the amount of connectivity required by edge devices.

• Emergence of micro-segmentation

Segmentation and micro-segmentation are anticipated to control digital identities and implement zero-trust network security. Increased investment in vendor roadmap related to zero trust investments will allow for more effective interventions to secure networks. 

• Deploying advanced technology

Advanced capabilities backed by next-generation technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning must be included in threat detection and response capabilities. These are required to recognize & respond to end-user anomalies on machines without human intervention on a real-time basis. 

A new paradigm of cyber security has dawned due to the pandemic. IT security professionals who push the game and defend their organizations’ people, technology & data against new or increased threats from more skilled cyber-criminals will be critical to ensure business continuity. 

Conclusion

Cyber security teams have surmounted the initial obstacles during the crisis, there is an opportunity to learn from the pandemic to strengthen cyber security posture in the long run. The pandemic has posed a significant challenge for businesses worldwide; IT security experts who step up their game against the increased threats posed by skilled cyber-criminals are critical for the future.

This shift, however, has led to a gradual expansion of the IT infrastructure. There are a greater number of devices, OSes, end-users, software applications, data hosting platforms that exist now in a typical IT set-up.

Subsequently, an IT infrastructure transforms into a multi-layered structure, comprising of many IT elements — both on-cloud and on-premises, resulting in an increased number of privileged identities – holding access keys to highly classified and sensitive data.

So, what does Privileged Mean?

The ability to manage and control critical IT functional areas is called Privileged in IT terminology. A user with administrative capabilities will have complete or near-complete authority over the system.

Resultantly, securing these critical IT assets become increasingly important amid increasing cyber-attacks from compromised insiders and malicious third-parties.

However, organizations have always struggled to establish control over too many identities, especially the privileged identities, a problem that has caused large data breaches. One of the reasons is that a Privileged Identity Management or Privileged Access Management is a complex task without an automated PAM solution.

Complex privilege identity management is often a deterrent for a security team to provide access to multidimensional teams which results in excessive privilege assignments.

So, what exactly means “too much privileges” or “over-privileged identity”?

These are identities that have far more privileges than are required to carry out the tasks that have been given to them. An obvious example of an over-privileged identity is a user login account that only needs access to the local file system but contains PC or network admin permissions. Excessive Privileges can include the capacity to successfully modify or even eliminate crucial portions of the infrastructure itself. 

Likewise, a cloud-based user that has been given unnecessary privileges can have very dangerous IT consequences.

But what makes managing privileged identities so challenging?

A combination of cumulative “privilege tasks” for individual privileged accounts, increase in the number of privileged identities, and lack of appropriate record-keeping (segregation of privileged users based on roles and responsibilities) typically results in too many privileges. erotic massage body rub nyc near me

Risks arising from excessive privileged entitlements?

• No control over shared user access across enterprise
• Excessive privilege assignment for least critical activities
• No control over activities of third-party staff

Segregating & Securing Privileged Identities

Maintaining all assets in a single pool for a large organization might be risky. The Privileged users & processes must be segregated based on trust, role, and permission sets to enforce role and rule-based access to systems. 

A PAM solution aids in the creation of flexible privilege policies that allow security controls to be implemented based on privileged users’ roles and responsibilities. Segregating privileged entitlements also prevents breaches from spreading as privileged users are granularly controlled.

How Segregating Identities helps to strengthen security

As end-users access systems, the logged data enables the IT staff to understand the IT resources’ usage/access patterns. This in turn helps them to map an outline of various access requirements, and subsequently, once the entitlements are segregated, access policies can be formulated based on “need-to-now” and “need-to-do” principle.

Conclusion

Essentially, to prevent credentials abuse and data breach, organizations must do a comprehensive mapping of their IT environment. It helps to understand the daily use-cases that require to access critical IT resources. Once privileged entitlements are segregated, the IT security staff can enforce granular level access controls. It improves the security posture and helps to comply with the IT standards and regulations as well.

Ever come across the humour of technology competition—who’s big? The joke goes this way: a social media giant claims the credit of evolving the whole of mankind by connecting the netizens; then an email comes forward and asks, ‘if I’d not have been there, would you exist?’ The next moment the internet comes forward and says what is your role without me? Finally, electricity comes into the scene, pins everyone down and utters nothing – everything is understood!

Truly speaking, electricity builds the foundation of every technological advancement. The entire world is facing immense demand for more power and energy every day. The energy consumption rate is growing upto 2% globally per year. It is the fastest growing energy among the rest. To ensure uninterrupted energy supply, nations depend on their own natural sources like bio-fuels to meet their needs. Sometimes the resources are imported with the help of Government initiatives. Therefore, it is obvious for utilities to be in good financial shape and the critical infrastructure – be it of power supplies, water management systems or any other essential services – should be secure from any untoward IT incident. 

Why Critical Infrastructure (Utilities) is targeted?

Digitalization has forced power houses, nuclear plants, oil & gas organizations and coal mines to adopt new technologies like ICS (Industrial Control System), RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Data Analytics and even cloud computing. For this, there is a huge expansion (both Geographical & Internal) of IT infrastructure to manage the immense workload. 

A large number of privileged accounts with elevated rights to mission critical systems are provisioned to access the same. There are numerous segregations of operational roles in the energy and utility industry, and hence privileged rights are required to manage and monitor the tasks seamlessly. Quite often the IT team creates new identities on an adhoc basis, but eventually, the overall vigilance of those Ids and their activities goes casual. It creates unnecessary chaos in the network, results in insecure access controls, and thereby invites chances of system/ data exploitation. Today cyber crooks are finding this industry as a ‘new goldmine’ of critical information. This industry has turned cyber vulnerable due to several reasons.

• Frequent adoption of advanced technologies to speed up productivity without adequate privileged access controls 
• Inadequate mechanisms to assess and fix IT security vulnerabilities
• No robust solution to secure critical infrastructure 
• Absence of continuous monitoring of the IT operations or supply chain
• Non-compliance loopholes
• Gradual increase of insider threats
• Poor awareness programs and Zero maintenance of security culture

If any utility faces any cyber incident, there are long-term consequences.

• Long unwanted Disruption in the production
• Chances of Critical Information loss
• Huge (some immeasurable) financial losses
• Face the wrath of legal formalities
• Compliance Penalties
• Malign of goodwill
• Additional cost of rearranging IT infrastructure

What could be done?

Cyber-attacks are not just costly but also big blows to the nation’s economy. And for power and utilities, it affects the lives of millions of people. There is no better option for energy and utility firms but to abide by the stringent regulatory mandates without hampering their day-to-day business operations. 

Specifically, the access control mechanism should be robust. Insiders, compromised third-party end-users and sophisticated cyber-criminals typically target privileged accounts. They snoop on privileged credentials. Once they acquire it, they hijack privileged accounts. In the past there have been many incidents where organized cyber-criminals disrupted power supplies and water management systems. Vulnerable access controls in most cases encourage cyber-criminals. 

A robust Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution such as ARCON | PAM provides necessary safeguards to protect and secure privileged access and credentials. The solution offers a centralized engine to govern privileged users where role and rule-based authorization policy, controls and monitors privileged users inside the network. And any suspicious privileged session is detected in real-time to ensure proactive security. 

Let us see how ARCON | PAM can address the Utilities’ challenges mentioned above:

1. Role and rule-base access to the privileged accounts is a must in energy & utilities. It will not just manage and monitor the users as per their profiles but also avoid unprecedented threats coming from malicious insiders. If the critical systems of the production and operational units are accessed without role and rule-based privileges, then it might wreak havoc. A single cyber incident can put the entire production into a standstill. ARCON | PAM’s robust access control mechanism identifies unauthorized access in the network and prevents it from obtaining critical access.
2. ARCON | PAM offers just-in-time privilege elevation, which helps to revoke standing privileges after the task is over. Moreover, it becomes easy for the IT team to ensure security with limited access to critical systems or applications. As a result, it nullifies the chances of successful unauthorized access in the network. 
3. ARCON | PAM frequently randomizes all critical privileged credentials and helps to store them safely in the Password Vault. In this age of automation, most of the organizations avoid manual control of passwords and search for automated password management. ARCON’s PAM solution provides a digital password vault, adaptive authentication and dashboard for complete IT governance. It assists the IT risk management team to continuously check and assess the vulnerable areas in the privileged access environment. 
4. Staying compliant to the international regulatory standards is very crucial for the utility industry. Today most (if not all) of the organizations seek and verify compliance before any kind of business collaboration. While any Government remains sceptical about their GDP, energy and utilities play a pivotal role in improving the economic standards of any nation. ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) helps organizations to follow the mandates by default and avoid any non-compliance penalties. It gives a message of assurance and service reliability. 
5.  ARCON | PAM offers workflow management that enables the IT security and compliance management to streamline the access approval process across the privileged access environment. With the help of predefined IT policies, organizations can enhance their IT administrative and operational efficiency.

Conclusion

Today, critical infrastructure is facing enormous cyber threats. Access controls, especially privileged access control must be robust. With 15 years of experience and expertise in securing the critical infrastructure of large utility companies across the globe, ARCON | PAM helps the IT teams to reinforce control mechanisms to ensure security, reliability, and productivity.

Can we afford to lose the master key of our bank locker? We are always over-cautious about the security of our financial assets. Similarly, in the digitalization era, we are controlling our virtual money through mobile banking, internet banking, UPI and more. The changing consumer behaviour has forced the financial institutions to overhaul their IT infrastructure.  

In the digital era, modern financial institutions must adopt innovative IT mechanisms and security in order to ward off data threats. More importantly, access to Privileged accounts, gateway to confidential information, must be robust to mitigate malicious insider activities and anomalous third-party threats. 

Why are Financial Institutions targeted?

Financial institutions like banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies among other financial entities are prone to data breaches. There is a continuous threat to this sector such as financial losses arising from breaches, regulatory penalties along with damage to reputation.

The IT infrastructure vastness and the extent of data sensitivity of this industry have always lured cyber criminals to target this industry for years. 

Financial institutions process, store, and transfer business-critical information and private customer records every day and every hour. This huge and endless process of data accumulation keeps organizations piling on their ‘responsibility to protect data’ every single day. Once compromised, these PII (Personally Identifiable Information) claims a comparatively higher price on the dark web. Thus, this industry is more susceptible to breaches.

What are the consequences?

A couple of years back, an Indian nationalized bank suffered an embarrassing IT security breach where the hackers siphoned off almost Rs. 95 crore. The organization has overcome the loss gradually, but the scar of being in the news for the wrong reasons never fades away. Once organizations face such a cyber catastrophe, the victim might face years of:

• Financial Stress 
• Legal Liabilities
• Compliance Penalties
• Faceloss/ Reputation loss
• Fear of disloyalty from customers
• No more proactive investors
• Stakeholders lack of trust
• Longer revamp of IT security policies

Why is it a challenge for financial institutions?

Our research suggests that cyber attacks against the financial sector increased almost 250% globally between the last two years, with some 80% of financial institutions reporting an increase in cyberattacks during the pandemic. Hence, the severity of cyber vulnerability in the financial sector is quite alarming. There are several reasons behind these whooping figures, but the major among them are

1. More Third-party Service Providers – With the increasing business operations, the IT expansion goes without control and organizations face the challenge of monitoring and controlling all end-users in the network periphery. 
2. Adoption of Cloud Infrastructure – Financial organizations are migrating their data centers and overall IT infrastructure on the IaaS platform for more convenience. However, it invites complex security challenges to ponder over.
3. Lack of Control of Privileged Identities – Too many privilege elevations pose higher risk in a vast IT ecosystem. It results in lack of control and monitoring of the privileged tasks and eventually invites cyber anomalies.
4. Equal Importance to all Regulatory Compliances – Multiple global regulatory standards help organizations to maintain end-to-end security in their IT infrastructure, though many times organizations fail to follow the mandates and invite non-compliance penalties.
5. Lack of Zero Trust Security framework – With the advent of both remote and on-prem work conditions, financial institutions need to have Zero Trust security policy to ensure every access to the critical applications/ systems is verified and tested. Without this framework, proactive security control is not possible.

So, how can we overcome the challenges? What is the solution?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution is the best bet

A robust Privilege Access Management solution as ARCON | PAM secures all privileged accounts of financial organizations and helps to protect the information assets proactively. The seamless controlling and monitoring of every privileged access happening in the servers at a granular level limits the moves of a cyber criminal and lowers the chances of security breach. 

The solution offers a centralized engine to govern privileged users where role and rule-based authorization policy, controls and monitors privileged users. 

For IT efficiencies, financial organizations adopt cloud services, although the risks also multiply. ARCON | PAM offers adequate and relevant safeguards when it comes to securing financial assets on the cloud and even on hybrid cloud. The solution creates a robust security shield around privileged accounts in the IaaS environment to prevent illegitimate access and prevent data breach incidents. It reinforces stringent IT security controls by providing a digital password vault, adaptive authentication and dashboard for cloud identity governance. 

In order to manage all the privileged accounts in a financial institution, role and rule-base access is a must. The primary threat always comes from compromised insiders. If business critical applications are accessed without role and rule-based privileges, just-in-time privilege elevation, and revoking privileges after the task is over, then obviously a malicious insider can misuse or abuse sensitive information and wreak havoc. ARCON PAM offers all critical capabilities such as Just-in-time Privileges to target systems, Privileged Elevation and Delegation Management (PEDM), and Granular controls to ensure access is limited and only on ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do’ basis. 

Financial institutions have to stay compliant to multiple global regulatory standards like EU GDPR, PCI DSS, SWIFT CSCF. As a result, it is always wise to deploy a reliable Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution that helps the organizations to follow the mandates by default and evade chances of any non-compliance penalties.

Lastly, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) has become the benchmark of a robust security infrastructure in modern enterprises. Financial organizations worldwide are facing increased demand for virtual modes of money management. Most of them are striving to ensure seamless and secure remote access across their IT environment, ARCON | PAM offers best security assurance to the risk assessment team by enabling the ZTNA security framework in the overall IT ecosystem.

Conclusion

Today, IT security teams of the financial sector demand solutions that are more proactive rather than reactive. ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution offers a proactive approach to secure privileged access to target systems.

How is it relevant to IT security?

Any massive data breach incident in any renowned organization draws a lot of negative attention from customers and governing authorities — and even investors nowadays. Typically, data breach affected organizations try to hide their security negligence and loss by downplaying the incident. Here lies the significance of stoicism as discussed above (ideation of the military leader). They rush to say that all is well and nothing to worry about.

Organizations get goosebumps thinking about the financial and reputational consequences of any data breach. Hence, those organizations portray the cyber incident as one of the stray incidents which do not have much impact on the business process. That is how stoicism is relevant to IT security today. And ultimately, it badly impacts the security posture because this adamant attitude bars any scope for IT security enhancement.

How to ensure stoicism does not create upheaval in IT infrastructure
There are several effective ways organizations can follow to overcome the effect of stoicism. While the growing number of cyber incidents is prompting global organizations to up the ante for better security posture, the psychological blockage of stoicism is an ignored aspect. This can be controlled by implementing the following measures:

• Frequent audit of the IT security infrastructure
• Developing and following a robust IT security policy that would help the security and risk management team to comply with ascribed IT industry security mandates
• Harnessing a mindset within an organization about what is expected and what is to be avoided to promote safe browsing
• Refraining from any activities that might increase risks of uncontrolled access in the network
• Staying abreast with the latest IT security vulnerabilities

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real-time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.