Month: October 2020

The sudden technological rise has enabled enterprises and agencies to conduct business and communicate like never before. However, this has made cyberspace an increasingly belligerent environment, with hackers constantly trying to break into the business networks and systems. The goal is simple – extract data and sell it to the highest bidder. Our world runs on data today, and if the systems are compromised, it can wreak havoc on businesses. Billions of dollars are on the line to protect company data, but with increasing cyberspace vulnerabilities, experts and businesses are facing the daunting reality. This is where the need for a technological prodigy comes into consideration.

With the intensifying cyber-attacks in our rapidly digitizing world, a new generation of cutting-edge AI technology is giving business leaders the ability to guard against hackers, cybercriminals, and rogue agencies.

Artificial intelligence and cybersecurity seem like they are meant to be used together. But what the current nature of AI technology states? What are the challenges faced by businesses and governments with cybersecurity? How immersive is AI for cybersecurity? And what the future holds?

We will be breaking down the factors that solidify the need for robust cybersecurity measures and how it has led to the development of next-gen artificial intelligence technology.

Why should your organization invest in ARCON | PAM on priority?

Challenges Faced in Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is a set of rules or a series of protocols designed by an organization that must be followed to ensure information sustains its “ICA” – integrity, confidentiality, and availability. But there are certain loopholes that compromise the security measures and protocols. Overcoming this is a big challenge, and cybersecurity experts are doing everything in their power to find a suitable solution for that. Nevertheless, the following are some of the biggest challenges faced by cybersecurity:

• Reactive nature of cybersecurity A threat can only be resolved or prevented from occurring once it has already occurred. The challenge lies in predicting future threats and preventing it before it causes any form of harm. Security experts simply
  cannot predict cyber-attacks, and therefore, it is extremely hard to create a robust strategy. Since cyberspace is ever-evolving, attackers are constantly developing new ways to breach data. One cannot just predict what their next move will be, and before the experts come up with the solution, it can be too late.

• Geographically distant IT systems Another biggest challenge lies in overcoming infrastructure differences. Since the servers and networks are spread over a geographic distance, it is not possible to manually track any form of cyberattack, whether big or small. This makes businesses vulnerable to cyber threats. To prevent any future threats, the incident occurred need to be monitored. This is a huge infrastructure investment and also requires a lot of IT talent, which is something an organization is not ready to bear, yet.

• Hackers constantly hiding and changing their IP addresses Hackers and cyber attackers are extremely intelligent individuals or organizations that know how to hide in plain sight. They have all the knowledge and access to tools and equipment that help them in staying anonymous and undetected. For example, Tor browsers, Proxy servers, and Virtual Private Networks (VPN), among others, are all they need to hack into your system and steal confidential information without getting caught. So, it is extremely important that you have state-of-the-art security systems and firewalls to protect your company data from malicious hackers. Even it can be an inside job. So, you really can’t tell what went wrong. Experts in cybersecurity need to overcome this challenge one way or the other in order to reduce incidents.

• Manual threat hunting Manual threat hunting is another aspect that needs improvement. It is not only expensive but time-consuming as well. By the time you fix an issue, you may realize that another attack has happened. Automatic systems have to be in place that can monitor the networks and identify any malicious activities.

How Can AI Help?
It is safe to say that traditional approaches to combat cyber-attacks are no longer of any use. Given the scale and nature of cyber-attacks, it is not easy to detect and overcome the challenges using traditional methods. Sure, the use of technology can be expensive, but it can reap lifelong benefits. Cybersecurity experts have understood that they have to be prepared more than the hackers in order to stop breaching firewalls, access controls, and compromising secured networks.

With the inclusion of AI into the systems, it is helping the professionals stay ahead of the threats. Artificial intelligence can broaden the reach of enterprises and organizations when it comes to cybersecurity solutions and pave a new path for developing new and smarter ways to curb issues. Here is how AI is helping safeguard the cybersecurity industry:

• Network Security AI can be of great help for businesses to learn about the network traffic patterns to establish robust network security policies and understand network topography. A network security policy clearly defines the difference between legitimate network links and links that are susceptible to malicious activities. Since there are thousands of networks, it can be a real challenge to establish network policies. But with AI, you can implement a zero-trust security model. Topography, on the other hand, is the physical characteristics or attributes of workloads and applications. Using AI, cybersecurity experts don’t have to spend time deciding what workloads belong to the specific applications.

• Data Centers AI can be implemented in the operations of a data center to optimize and monitor critical processes like the use of bandwidth, internal temperatures, power consumption, cooling filters, and backup power. AI can continuously monitor and calculate the operational values to provide insights into what can be done to improve overall performance, efficiency, and security. Most importantly, artificial intelligence can send you maintenance alerts for hardware, thereby reducing the overall maintenance cost.

• Vulnerability Management Enterprises experience a vast number of vulnerabilities on a daily basis, out of which only a few are tackled. Hackers use this opportunity to exploit the vulnerabilities at high risk. Implementing AI and machine learning can help resolve vulnerabilities. For example, UBA or user behavioral analytics is an AI-based system that analyzes server baseline, endpoint, and user account behaviors to detect any anomalous changes signaling a zero-day attack.

• Threat Detection As discussed earlier, traditional cybersecurity safety techniques only work well for threats that are previously experienced. But with AI, it is possible to detect threats that are not yet discovered. AI can be incorporated in pattern and signature-based techniques that can raise threat detection rates to 95%.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Cybersecurity
Limitations of AI for Cybersecurity

• Cyber threats are constantly evolving
• Cybercriminals are also using AI
• AI systems are not 100% accurate. You will get an explosion of false positive

Use Cases of AI in Cybersecurity

• Email monitoring
• Security operations centers with AI
• Security orchestration, response, and automation
• Endpoint protection
• Intrusion detection
• Malware detection
• Data protection and compliance
• Scoring risks in networks
• Behavior analysis

Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is redefining every aspect of cybersecurity. It can go both ways if cyber experts fail to harness AI’s potential in the right direction. But one thing is clear that the future of cybersecurity lies in the hands of AI. With developments in AI, it can be easy for organizations to predict threats and take precautionary measures before it happens.

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.

In association with Softcell, ARCON conducted an exclusive webinar on 16th October, 2020 to discuss “Decoding Cybersecurity with User Behaviour Analytics”.

Mr. Lalit Popli, COO, ARCON, was the speaker of this webinar and he highlighted the modern aspects of cybersecurity and how ARCON’s advanced solution User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) is taking a front seat to manage cyber risks. Today, while the entire world is struggling with complex IT security, ARCON | UBA enables IT administrators to take control of the situation. Below are some highlights of the session along with key takeaways.

In the current IT environment, most of the organizations are experiencing doubling of data storage, doubling of bandwidth, doubling of users across the IT periphery. Global IT users have expanded to more than 75 million and e-commerce transactions have risen up to 18 crores due to the pandemic. Considering the Indian perspective, we can truly say that the Indian economy is marching the E-way. Simultaneously, in cyberspace, as we all know, the dangerous intrusions and attacks have increased dramatically. It has led to a lot of exposure to sensitive personal and business-critical information. It is also creating disruption in many critical IT operations of the organization. As a result, higher IT security costs are affecting the enterprise budget as well. Needless to mention, protecting all the cyberspace critical infrastructures from attack, damage, misuse, or espionage has become ‘need-of-the-hour’ for all IT security practitioners.

• BFSI being the major targeted industry of all industries, today we see new IT challenges appearing for sectors like Government, manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, postal & shipping, transportation, energy & utilities, food & agriculture and what not? But what are the predominant challenges today? Mostly, traditional IT infrastructure, architectural loopholes, inherent vulnerabilities, uncontrolled rise of IT users, innumerable access points are the major reasons behind unprecedented threats. With the advent of AI ML, removing 100% malicious elements is highly challenging at this point of time, especially when the entire world is managing day-to-day operations remotely.

ARCON | User behaviour Analytics (UBA)

Almost 70% of data breaches happening worldwide are due to malicious insiders. The figure must have risen up during the post-pandemic era. ARCON | UBA is transforming the way Information Security is approached today. It essentially runs with the policy ‘do what you want but we will assess and monitor you seamlessly’. The AI-ML component, which understands the behavior pattern of end-users or a deviation from the baseline activities, considers it as anomalous behavior, and flags to the administrator. For example, if a user downloads 10MB of files every day but suddenly downloads gigabytes of files, the system would detect it as an anomaly and alert the admin immediately.

Why is it required?

UBA is required to reinforce the enterprise security framework, primarily from the end-users perspective. It helps the enterprises to implement secured access control. The IT security team can monitor remote users, especially in this pandemic situation where all of the employees are working from home and chances of data misuse is too high. Not only that, the organization might stay unaware of the breach incident which might inspire the malicious actors to proceed with the further wrongdoings.

What are the key features?

In ARCON | UBA there is a lot of analytics, good reporting dashboards, alert mechanism, and there is also an AI ML engine behind it, which profiles the user.

• Session Monitoring: It enables recording of all activities performed by an end-user on the desktop along with a screen capture through a web-based engine that stores and analyzes user behaviour.
• User Restriction: It is useful for restriction of any specific activity (apparently irrelevant and suspicious) of any IT user.

• Privilege Elevation: It mitigates malicious insiders and prevents data breach risks by discarding a large number of privileged users. It provides flexibility to enterprises with on-request admin rights for a designated period so that the end-users can access the critical applications after a valid approval.
• Productivity Enhancements: It enables to boost overall productivity as it helps to generate performance reviews whether there are any security violations or suspicious activities. It allows an enterprise to safeguard against any anomaly at the end-user level.

• Meeting Compliance: ARCON | UBA empowers enterprises to meet various compliance requirements (eg. EU GDPR, PCI-DSS, SOX, HIPAA, SWIFT among many others) by offering real-time threat alerts over any misused privilege.

• Behaviour Analytics: This tool enables to identify any malicious elements in the enterprise network by detecting any kind of deviation from the configured baseline activities.

• Live Dashboard: Live dashboards benefit IT administrators to keep control over IT operations and governance. The all-encompassing reporting mechanism raises immediate alerts on live dashboards.
• Dynamic Report: ARCON | UBA’s programmatic approach strengthens security and compliance framework by generating dynamic reports to keep a real-time track on the misuse of privilege access and odd internet access hours, extensive printing activities etc.

The Bottom line
Today cyber incidents have become so sophisticated in nature, that the root-cause of any breach incident remains undetected resulting in ‘no solution’ situations. In a remote environment, it is absolutely impractical to monitor hundreds or even thousands of end-users in a typical IT setup. Hence, organizations count on modern user behavioral security tools to predict and prevent risks. According to Gartner, UBA is expected to be the solution for 80% of cyber threat prediction inside enterprise networks of global organizations by 2022.

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.

As insider threats and cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated and devastating due to illegitimate privileged access, organizations are adopting stringent IT security policies and practices to ensure the security of privilege accounts. A robust Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution, hence, has become a burning topic of boardroom discussion, especially after the global pandemic raised new security concerns. A recent survey unveiled that 72% of global organizations agree that the security of privileged identities is an area of concern. ARCON, in an exclusive webinar “The ‘Privilege’ is all Yours” on 7th October 2020, emphasized on why end-to-end security of the privileged identities is need of the hour and how it can be attained and maintained.

Why should your organization invest in ARCON | PAM on priority?

Mr. Anil Bhandari, Chief Mentor of ARCON, took us through an exclusive session with a detailed presentation of why and how Privileged Access security tops the list of IT security across the globe. The session not only offered ways to identify vulnerabilities in privileged access environments but also discussed how these can be overcome. Essentially, if organizations are mindful of important components required for robust privileged access management then securing privileged access could be a cakewalk.

• Managing Privileged IDs: Who are the privileged users? In any organization, database administrators, system administrators, data center managers, application developers, IT security officers, IT auditors among many other forms of admins are the privileged users who are responsible for sensitive data management and administrative tasks. Hence it is imperative that organizations must put all the security mechanisms in place to protect the privileged identities. These IDs provide complete control of the system. Attackers always try to gain access to these Ids to compromise confidential business information. Therefore, onboarding privileged users, user administration, governance and privileged accounts discovery should be a part of the overall Identity and Access Management practice. 

• Reinforcing security layers to mitigate data breach threat: Almost 71% of organizations surveyed suffered unusual activities in the IT ecosystem and data breach attempts. Till today data breaches or data breach attempts have posed as a major cyber risk globally. While we go digital, it becomes imperative that we secure our data assets with protective layers like credentials vaulting, authorization and real-time analytics of privileged sessions for safeguarding systems.

• Fortifying Remote Access: Remote work condition is the ‘new normal’ globally. While organizations are practicing WFH (Work From Home) culture, security has become a top priority for all. To mitigate malicious insiders and compromised third parties in remote environments, a rule and role-based access policies with deep levels of granular control and session monitoring is highly advisable.

• End-point user analytics amid too many devices: The number of devices is exploding due to an increasing pace of SaaS/cloud computing. Amid the pandemic, 15 billion devices have been duplicated and the number is expected to reach 50 billion in the next few years. Hence, the global IT community must shift its focus from device-centric security to user behaviour-based security because the time is not far when restrictive access to devices might turn into a herculean task.

• Effectively controlling cloud & hybrid Infrastructure: Today 47% of global organizations manage and store their data on the cloud, third-party servers or hybrid environments that expand the threat surface. Both on-prem and cloud infrastructure today are prone to cyber threats. Multi-Factor authentication, password vaulting and centralized policy to control and manage virtual machines and cloud resources are critical components to secure cloud and hybrid infrastructure.

• Just-in-time privileges to support password-less approach: Access control mechanisms like Biometrics, OTP (SMS/ email), facial recognition, mobile soft token are being increasingly adopted to mitigate passwords related threats. However, to ensure secure virtual access, ARCON recommends the Just-In-Time privilege approach, a robust security practice that ensures that the right person is accessing the right systems at the right time for the right purpose.

And Finally

“The ‘Privilege’ is all Yours” webinar ended with a note where Mr. Anil Bhandari invited all the global thought leaders to participate in ARCON’s exclusive platform ‘Mindshare’, an IT security discussion platform. For the past two years, ARCON has been brainstorming ongoing IT challenges with prominent IT security heads and finding out how to address emerging use case challenges.

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.