Getting smarter about information security
Cyber attacks are fast becoming one of the greatest risks of doing business and your chances of being exposed to one are ever growing. Hackers are getting smarter about security and so too should you; with the rise of cloud data and the volume of sensitive data exploding, you’re opening yourself up to a very real danger.
Over 50% of media companies across the world have been victim to some sort of cyber-attack according to a global study by Newscycle Solutions late last year, and the latest government Security Breaches Survey found that nearly 75% of (particularly small) businesses reported a security breach in the last 12 months, a substantial increase on previous years.
Your company may house payment data, customer information, personal health files, confidential personnel information, etc, and you need to know that it’s all secure. Extra precautions are needed, and we don’t just mean better perimeter firewalls; internal threats are also becoming a huge problem. Consider this, 81% of companies outsource part of their operations to external service providers, 90% have been victims of at least one security breach in the last 12 months, 18% of major security breaches were attributed to an external service provider, according to a 2015 study conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Companies will quickly take on handfuls of sub-contractors as a kneejerk reaction to a looming deadline but often they’ve been through no formal process, and un-vetted workers end up with privileged access to your highly sensitive company data. Disgruntled employees also pose a risk, as do scams like phishing emails and even just human error by an employee, third party or service provider, for example. It happens constantly, and businesses wake up to leaked public company announcements, customer or insider legal data or even the news of sensitive information being passed to competitors. With mounting warnings from experts advising businesses to make cyber security a priority, it’s why more and more are investing in increasing their external security posture.
Feeling the pressure of getting IT wrong
A security breach could be catastrophic to your business for a number of reasons. We’ve all seen how quickly such cyber attacks tend to hit the headlines now and the potential damage they can inflict upon your brand image and relationships with your customers. Most businesses are completely unprepared to deal with such repercussions, nor do they have the time and money it costs to recover from them, and inadequate responses to security breaches are as damaging as the attack itself. That’s not even to mention the legal ramifications.
The tough regulatory standards that have emerged in recent years require your business to provide complete traceability of privileged user activities (administrator, root, etc) on core information systems. Most businesses use a variety of devices and technicians to provide authenticated user access to privileges (VPN, leased lines, internal developments, etc) but these all come with a range of disadvantages such as low granularity of rights, the need to systematically transmit users’ passwords for the account used on the target device, reporting failure, additional salary costs, potential human error, etc. Examining this log of connections also fails to show you exactly what actions were performed during a user session, which is far from ideal when regulations are so strict and above all, you require complete visibility and control.
Moving with the times: the perfect solution WAB Suite from Wallix
Security isn’t the only field that is slowly but surely being automated and though it might not be what the person monitoring your privileged access wants to hear, it’s for a good reason. Take WALLIX’s WAB Suite. In it’s basic form, it offers control and compliance to specific industry regulations; it lets you control, oversee, monitor and record administrator sessions across multiple systems, so you always know who’s looking at and doing what. Our WAB Suite is also more accurate, thorough, cost-efficient and faster than outdated and sometimes manual processes all-seeing and trustworthy in its development and specifically designed to cover all of the risks associated with access privileges in the shortest time possible.
After the few days it takes to install, it allows you to filter out a number of commands and establish a ‘black-list’ of prohibited character strings that may be specific to an account or user. You can set up alert emails and automatic disconnection of the session if deemed necessary and can even record the contents of sessions. The WAB suite’s auditing and reporting potential make it an essential tool for compliance that could have an invaluable impact on your business. Eliminating such hazardous risks gives your company the confidence to build relationships and make promises about trust and security that you know you can really keep.
