Month: March 2023

Discover how converged identity solutions will revolutionize the cybersecurity landscape in the digital age.

Introduction

The digital world has ushered in an era of unprecedented connectivity, convenience, and innovation. However, it has also created an ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats. As more devices, applications, and services become intertwined, a robust, unified approach to identity management becomes paramount. Converged identity is one such solution, poised to revolutionize the way we approach cybersecurity.

This blog post will delve into the concept of converged identity and discuss how it will change the cybersecurity landscape in the coming years.

What is Converged Identity?

Converged identity is an approach to identity and access management (IAM) that unifies the leadership of both physical and digital identities into a single, comprehensive system. It encompasses the user’s credentials, devices, applications, and services across various platforms and environments, providing a seamless and secure experience. By consolidating and streamlining IAM, converged identity solutions offer improved security, efficiency, and user experience.

Converged Identity Platform	Traditional Identity Platform
Unified management of physical and digital identities	Separate management of physical and digital identities
Streamlined authentication across multiple platforms and environments	Disjointed authentication processes for different platforms and environments
Centralized administration of access rights and permissions	Decentralized administration of access rights and permissions
Scalable and flexible to adapt to changing needs	Limited scalability and flexibility due to siloed solutions
Enhanced security through consolidation and integration of various authentication methods	Potential security vulnerabilities and inconsistencies
Improved user experience with a single set of credentials	Cumbersome user experience with multiple sets of credentials

How Converged Identity will change the future landscape of Cybersecurity

• Enhanced Security

Traditional IAM systems often involve disjointed processes and multiple siloed solutions, leading to security vulnerabilities and inconsistencies. Converged identity addresses these issues by providing a unified platform consolidating various authentication methods, including biometrics, passwords, and tokens. This holistic approach ensures a higher level of security, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.

• Simplified Management

As organizations embrace digital transformation, the number of devices, applications, and services requiring access management grows exponentially. However, managing these disparate systems can be complex and time-consuming. Converged identity simplifies this process by offering a single, centralized platform for managing access rights and permissions. This streamlines administration tasks and allows IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

• Improved User Experience

For users, navigating multiple authentication systems can be confusing and cumbersome. Converged identity offers a more seamless experience, enabling users to access various systems and services with a single set of credentials. This simplification improves user satisfaction and encourages the adoption of security best practices, such as regularly updating passwords and using multi-factor authentication.

• Scalability and Flexibility

As businesses grow and evolve, their cybersecurity needs may change. Converged identity solutions provide the scalability and flexibility needed to adapt to these changes. By offering a modular and customizable approach, organizations can quickly expand their IAM capabilities or integrate new technologies as required.

• Compliance and Regulation

With increasing regulatory requirements, such as GDPR and CCPA, organizations must ensure that their IAM systems comply with relevant legislation. Converged identity solutions can help organizations meet these requirements by providing an auditable and transparent platform for managing user access and permissions.

Conclusion

The need for robust, unified IAM solutions becomes more apparent as the digital landscape expands. Converged identity offers a promising approach to addressing the challenges of modern cybersecurity. By unifying physical and digital identities, enhancing security, simplifying management, and improving user experience, converged identity solutions are poised to revolutionize the future of cybersecurity. As a result, organizations adopting this technology will be better equipped to navigate the ever-evolving digital age threats, safeguarding their assets and ensuring their long-term success.

What is the National Cybersecurity Strategy?

In March 2023, the US Government released the highly anticipated National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) report. This report requires that government organizations and private companies build robust cyber defense strategies amid the rising cyber threats. This NCS comprises of five key pillars to make the digital ecosystem more defensive, effective, and resilient. The five pillars are:

• Defend critical infrastructure
• Disrupt and dismantle threat actors
• Shape market forces to drive security and resilience
• Invest in a resilient future
• Forge international partnerships to pursue shared goals

The NCS expects government and private organizations to put concerted and voluntary efforts for a strong defense against emerging cyber threats. Besides, the NCS demands relevant and adequate usage of IT security tools in a coordinated manner that can protect national data and ensure economic prosperity.

Some Examples where Vulnerable Critical Infrastructure was targeted

• In the middle of 2020, the ICS (Industrial Control Systems) command for water systems of a Middle East-based nation was compromised and the control systems for the pumping stations were attacked. It resulted in disruption of water supply and sewage services for indefinite periods.
• In the same year one of the largest telecom service providers faced a data breach incident that compromised the record of more than 600 corporate clients. The victim hosted the data in hybrid environment. A security vulnerability in the operations server allowed the breach to happen in the company’s information management server.
• Again, in the same year, a government organization from the Asia Pacific region suffered an IT incident due to unauthorized third-party access. Security breach of an online application system resulted in data compromise of 26000 customers.
• In the beginning of 2018, a Parliament in Western Europe was hit by a brute force attack disrupting the email service. An external source tried to gain access to mailboxes of assembly members forcing affected users to change passwords.
• In 2019, personal information of 92 million citizens was breached from the government database in South America and was put up for sale on the dark web.

We could assess how disastrous cyber-attacks can be on critical infrastructure, if the potential damage inflicted by these threat actors are ignored. 

Who are the threat actors?

• Malicious Insiders – who possess access rights to confidential business information
• Third-Party – the external users who access the organization’s systems and applications for maintenance, storage and other regular activities 
• Nation States – the rogue nations who always try to destabilize democratically elected governments by stealing information or spying on their infrastructure of national interest
• Organized Cybercriminals – who harm organizations by stealing/encrypting/or compromising government and private organizations’ confidential data for financial gains

How does Identity and Access Management (IAM) help in building a resilient IT security posture?

In the NCS report, the US government has specifically emphasized reinforcing identity-first security. The report states that, “Enhanced digital identity solutions and infrastructure can enable a more innovative, equitable, safe and efficient digital economy.”

Quite rightly said. Amid the acceleration of digital interaction, more and more organizations host their data in distributed data center environments, multi-cloud environments, managed service environments and hybrid environments. Thousands of human and digital (non-human) identities are being created that constantly interact with mission-critical applications, business and IT (Information Technology) infrastructure assets. These identities, if not provisioned, de-provisioned (on time), monitored, controlled and governed based on the user roles, there are very high chances of breaches and identity abuse from compromised individuals (insiders), including third parties.

In such a scenario, it is highly imperative to ensure that the right user is accessing the right resources at the right time for the right purpose. It not just secures the enterprise resources from unauthorized access but also strengthens the compliance framework.  Identity and access management (IAM) provide the foundation for a robust cybersecurity policy. A robust IAM practice helps organization to manage the lifecycle of digital identities seamlessly, their governance and security at an enterprise level.

Furthermore, a robust and holistic IAM practice streamlines employee experience in the workplace and supports digital initiatives by improving business agility, efficiency and competitiveness. As a result, employee productivity is enhanced.

Conclusion

The National Cybersecurity Strategy is a message to the whole world about the importance of robust IAM practices in a continuously evolving IT environment. Identity Access Management plays a significant role in managing ever-increasing number of digital identities, addressing emerging threats, improving IT security posture, enhancing digital initiatives, and building a strong compliance framework.

The Context

• Continuous expansion in IT Infrastructure
• Prevention of malicious IT activities
• Ensuring compliance and boosting IT operational efficiency 

Today’s enterprise IT infrastructure is so large and ever-expanding that managing it effectively becomes a challenge. And any sort of malicious or unauthorized IT activity on systems and configuration files, if left unchecked, can have dangerous consequences.

What is File Integrity Monitoring?

File Integrating Monitoring (FIM) is part of a broader Information Security strategy that enables IT administrators to track any approved and unapproved changes made to the configuration and critical system files from the baselines. And if any prohibited deviation is detected, FIM enables IT administrators to roll back changes made to those critical files. Not having File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) in place is one vulnerable area that can have catastrophic effects on any organization. 

FIM for Compliance and Audit

FIM is mandated by multiple global regulatory standards, that require organizations to follow best practices to maintain data integrity, data security, and data privacy.

• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) mandates payment card organizations to have File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) to monitor and detect suspicious changes that happen to the system files regularly.
• The SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Act of 2002 specifies FIM as its core requirement.
• ISO 27001 (International Organization for Standardization) requires real-time FIM as the basis of data security policy.
• The NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), one of the crucial American compliance bodies, mandates FIM capabilities for document security.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) with ARCON 

ARCON’s FIM tool, which can be easily integrated with any SIEM solution, helps track unauthorized changes in configurations and system files made on the user device in real time and roll back the file history if necessary.

Here are some of the highlights of File Integrity Management with ARCON:

• ARCON’s FIM is an automated process that ensures continuous verification of every system file alteration against baseline configuration
• ARCON’s FIM has the File Access Report capability that enables IT administrators to know the access details of each file accessed by the IT user
• The IT user access details extracted by FIM are based on several parameters, such as access patterns, access reasons, and the context behind the access
• The reports generated by ARCON’s FIM provide an assessment of the validity of the changes done to the files at a given point of time
• The reports are customizable and can be downloaded in PDF, MS Word, MS Excel, and CSV formats

Conclusion

FIM is essential for ensuring data integrity, but it is also a requirement to maintain IT operational effectiveness as well. Without FIM, organizations risk facing operational challenges. Think about a typical IT environment. If approved and unapproved changes to critical system files are undocumented or there are no alerts in place, organizations can face untoward risks resulting in IT ineffectiveness and operational challenges.