Month: March 2024

Overview

Be it on-prem or hybrid set-up, organizations continuously face multiple demands from multiple end-users. Once the number of end-users proliferates, the risk of unwanted access magnifies. To manage, control and monitor end-users, endpoint security solutions work as both restrictive and reliable security measures to build a ring-fence around the endpoint privileges. It has been observed that endpoint privilege abuse is the reason behind many IT incidents such as –

• Data breach
• Insider-attacks
• Cyber-espionage
• Application abuse
• Social Engineering

ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) solution in this regard works as a centralized solution to ensure a rule and role-based access to business-critical applications. But there are three standout capabilities that give ARCON | EPM a different edge compared to the traditional endpoint security solutions.

ARCON | EPM – A robust solution for data governance

According to Forbes, 70% of the most successful data breaches originate at the endpoint. As there are more instances of hybrid work conditions, sometimes organizations are forced to allow end-users to perform critical IT tasks from their endpoints with minimum restriction. As a result, the access control risks rise and subsequently data breach threats also increase.

While Data governance refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data used in an enterprise, ARCON | EPM ensures that every endpoint in the organization adheres to the applicable processes, policies, and standards so that enterprise data is managed appropriately throughout its lifecycle. This includes everything from how data is collected and stored to how it is accessed, used, and shared.

These data security traits are seldom discussed while endpoint security is interpreted. Data contextualization and data governance capabilities of ARCON | EPM helps IT security pros with adequate insights of the amount of enterprise data that are exposed to the endpoints. There are three stand-out capabilities of ARCON | EPM that enforce data governance in enterprise IT infrastructure –

• Data Intellect
• File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Data Intellect: Organizations generate gigabytes of business data regularly. Data Intellect builds an impenetrable circumference around data and builds a contextual security layer around the data. It

enables the classification of data, itemization of the exposed data, categorization of the critical data, and understanding of the ‘where’ and ‘what’ of data. With this, it provides actionable insights on data that is useful for forensic analysis and overall information security.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM): The File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) capability of ARCON | EPM can track unauthorized file changes on user devices in real time and processes, track unauthorized changes and keep a track of file history, and roll back if needed. This level of data governance and lifecycle management is unusual in any traditional EPM product and hence, is admired by most IT security pros, especially in the hybrid work environment where there is continuous data flow.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): The whole idea of endpoint security can go haywire if the end-users can easily target confidential business information by using removable storage devices. ARCON | EPM’s DLP feature mitigates security vulnerabilities by restricting mobile devices or even mobile Bluetooth connections and Bluetooth transfers. The USB restriction feature prevents copying of any sort of information/file/folder from the endpoint to USB and vice versa.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) is a complete solution well-equipped with features pertaining to both endpoint security and data governance capabilities. It provides insights to IT admins with critical data classification, and its level of exposure to the end-users so that endpoint restrictions are assessed and enforced.

Overview

Endpoints are primary targets of an increasingly sophisticated set of attacks. This is due to expansion of attack surface created by ever-increasing number of endpoints. It is not just the numbers, end-users working from remote locations also multiply risks.

Today, endpoint security has taken a different avenue as per technology trends. Endpoint security has been there for decades, but transformation in usage of devices and evolution of new threat patterns have triggered the development of new endpoint security techniques. New service providers have emerged with novel approaches to deal with endpoint attacks, while traditional vendors have upgraded their solutions and implemented new techniques to deal with the latest threats.

According to a study by the Ponemon Institute, 68% of organizations have experienced one or more endpoint attacks that successfully compromised data and/or their IT infrastructure. The same report found that 68% of IT professionals found that the frequency of endpoint attacks had increased since 2023. Hence, the crux of endpoint security is worth pondering over.

The essence of Endpoint Security

One of the critical components of data-centric security is securing endpoints. If organizations show a lackadaisical attitude towards endpoint security, the consequences are catastrophic. Despite having several security measures in place to secure their servers and data centers, organizations give inadequate emphasis on endpoints that carry significant security risks as endpoints provide access to business-critical applications. Endpoint privileges are granted to conduct IT tasks by securely configuring, patching, and managing those endpoints’ OSs and applications.

A compromised insider or any sort of social engineering can exploit endpoints to gain critical information. Some wise and cautious steps can enforce endpoint security effectively.

• No Unmonitored Endpoints: Continuous monitoring of the endpoints builds a security cordon around every endpoint that helps IT administrators to detect and identify suspicious activity. It triggers red-flag alerts and draws attention of the administrators to take immediate restrictive measures.

• Endpoint Governance: A centralized admin console for managing multiple endpoints such as Windows, Linux and MacOS is essential to ensure strong governance and security. It builds a rule-based access policy for every critical application and allows IT administrators to segregate users based on their roles.

• Endpoint Governance: A centralized admin console for managing multiple endpoints such as Windows, Linux and MacOS is essential to ensure strong governance and security. It builds a rule-based access policy for every critical application and allows IT administrators to segregate users based on their roles.

• Privilege Elevation on Demand: What could happen if any user requests access to any application to perform any task and the request is granted? To complete a task, there could be risks of unauthorized access. With the help of “just-in-time” privilege elevation, IT administrators can enforce one-time access to any application based on roles and user profiles.

Moreover, the task’s duration can be prescheduled, and privileged access rights are revoked immediately after it is accomplished.

Why is ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) the best fit for endpoint security use cases?

ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) is a robust endpoint security solution that helps organizations to build a comprehensive security layer around endpoints. It ensures that there is adequate IT oversight over the endpoints and business-critical applications are accessed in a restricted and controlled environment. With the help of centralized governance, it ensures that every access to applications is rule and role based.

ARCON | EPM is a 2-in-1 solution for enterprise data protection capabilities and flagging red alerts of any and every malicious user. Here is a set of features that address both simultaneously and continuously.

Get Anomalous Activity Alerts through ‘Reporting’ and ‘Alert Trends’: ARCON | EPM provides audit trails of each endpoint privileged activity and generates reports whenever there is any audit requirement. It helps the SRM (Security and Risk Management) team to be audit-ready by providing customized and detailed analytics of every endpoint access to the target systems. As a result, the managers and auditors can assess the organization’s regulatory compliance status at any given time. At the same time, it monitors endpoint privileges and triggers red-flag alerts in case of suspicious activity.

Protecting Confidential Enterprise Data through multiple DLP features: The endpoint security can be compromised if the end-users can easily target confidential information using any removable storage device. ARCON | EPM’s DLP feature mitigates security vulnerabilities by restricting personalized devices from connecting any system in enterprise network.

ARCON | EPM assists the IT security team with MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) that prevents unauthorized access and prevents data misuse. It also builds Just-In-Time (JIT) privilege elevation measures that help to administer endpoints as per roles and requirements.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, ARCON’s Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) solution seamlessly manages and controls ‘n’ number of endpoints prevailing in enterprise networks that access multiple systems/ applications regularly. ARCON | EPM does risk assessment (unauthorized access/ espionage) of suspicious insiders and prevents data breach/ data exfiltration round the clock.

Brief Background

Many organizations manage their IT operations not just with their internal end-users, but also with external users such as third-party vendors, partners, contractors, technicians, or other external IT staff. Quite often the organizations do not have a choice but to allow the external users to access critical systems for essential business functions that include remote privileged operations. Such scenarios are quite predominant in the post-pandemic era and thus security concerns have proliferated.

• Who is accessing the business-critical database?
• Why is the user accessing it?
• When did the user access it?
• How long did the user access?
• Does the user access it remotely regularly?

… and the questions go on. Such questions linger lots of doubt and discomfort in the minds of the IT administrators because these users often use their own personal endpoint devices, that are not (or may not be) compliant with the organization’s IT security policies. This doubles the security concerns, especially if the remote user is a privileged user.

Now, how does the security is compromised?

The malicious actors always consider remote privileged users with unmanaged devices as their prime targets to compromise privileged credentials and breach confidential data. On worse conditions, they can even compromise those devices to install dreadful malware and look for more privileged credentials to stealthily access other enterprise assets. Inadequate or bad privileged access management practice is another cause behind such untoward incidents.

The strong reasons behind remote security compromise are:

• No password policy and no vaulting of critical credentials
• Weak or inadequate authentication mechanisms
• Unmonitored and unmanaged devices

VPN-less approach for Secure Remote Access

The remote security approach of many global organizations took a different form in the post-pandemic times. Most inbound connections that used to originate at their employee’s home networks, or other remote locations started to be considered as ‘risky’ because the malicious actors turned active to breach those. There are different technologies that provide security for the users working remotely such as endpoint security, VPN (Virtual Private Network), NAC (Network Access Control), SSO etc. However, none can be considered as a comprehensive one that can address all the challenges that arise from remote access. ARCON’s Global Remote Access (GRA), in this regard, has been acknowledged by global SRM (Security and Risk Management) leaders for its holistic approach towards remote security. ARCON | GRA provides security to enterprise IT infrastructure along with maintenance and support in the most secure way without the hassles of implementing VPNs or any other additional installations (which is more typical). It just allows IT administrators to establish a secure remote desktop connection and helps end-users control their own systems remotely.

ARCON’s Global Remote Access (GRA), in this regard, has been acknowledged by global SRM (Security and Risk Management) leaders for its holistic approach towards remote security. ARCON | GRA provides security to enterprise IT infrastructure along with maintenance and support in the most secure way without the hassles of implementing VPNs or any other additional installations (which is more typical). It just allows IT administrators to establish a secure remote desktop connection and helps end-users control their own systems remotely.

Moreover, ARCON | GRA is an automated tool which is why the time taken in raising requests for privileged rights (through traditional methods) by end-users is zeroed down. This privilege elevation happens in a secure manner and enhances the enterprise identity lifecycle management. From an administrative perspective, it allows enterprise IT security admins to control the end-users’ systems/ applications remotely and help them to elevate admin rights, grant permissions, or change of credentials, in secure manner.

Above all, ARCON | GRA is built on a Zero trust security framework which elevates the process of identifying and preventing anomalous users from doing anything in the IT ecosystem. Some distinctive benefits of this tool are:

• It removes data breach possibilities by revoking unnecessary and risky ‘always-on’ privileges immediately after the completion of any assigned task because it follows the principle of ‘least privilege’ and prevent excessive standing privileges.
• With this, the IT administrators can remotely elevate access rights of the end-users temporarily based on requirements without sharing the credentials, that ensures security of the IT assets.
• It provides real-time monitoring on the users and creates video logs of every remote session happening in the enterprise network and thereby helps in constant session analysis. It also generates reports of all remote activities performed on each system.
• It offers unified governance framework through rule and role-based access to the critical systems (through granular level controls)
• It ensures administrative ease with a dynamic dashboard that offers complete visibility of the remote users, their remote sessions and status of those sessions. With this holistic view, the administrators can even control data transfer by accepting/ rejecting it.
• It helps organizations to follow the global regulatory compliance requirements round the clock.

Conclusion

Remote Security concerns are going to escalate in the coming days considering the trends of hybrid work environment and flexible working hours. A robust and enterprise-level remote access security tool like ARCON | GRA helps organizations to secure their confidential business assets by authorizing and authenticating remote users with their devices anywhere, anytime.