Contact us anytime to know more — Kuldeep K., Founder & CEO CISIN
Developing Cloud Security
Cloud migration has seen rapid acceleration over the years, and cybersecurity measures are still struggling to catch up.
Cloud security concerns continue to escalate rapidly due to vulnerabilities within cloud services as well as accessing them frequently from poorly secured remote work environments - an increasing concern, according to a forecast for 2023-2024 growth of this sector.
Combining Zero Trust With A Vpn
Scalability issues often accompany virtual private networks (VPNs). VPN technology could potentially expose modern hybrid environments to cyber attacks or vulnerabilities; on the contrary, zero trust approaches provide both secure and scalable security - in fact, the US President mandated all government organizations meet zero-trust standards by the end of fiscal year 2024.
Enhancing Supply Chain Infrastructure
Cybersecurity specialists should develop innovative methods of controlling supply chain risks in 2023 as a response to cases of cyber-attacks, state-driven espionage and geopolitical disruption that affect global supply chains - Russia attacked technology that ran critical.
New requirements for Cybersecurity Compliance
Global governments are increasing efforts to safeguard citizens' personal data. According to an estimate, by 2023 65% of humanity will be covered under modern privacy laws (up from 10% in 2020) while five states plan on introducing data privacy legislation within two years.
Therefore, it's vitally important that you stay up-to-date on cybersecurity laws, regulations, and standards so as to stay compliant and protect your own data effectively.
The Rise Of Threat Detection And Response Technologies
Effective defense requires monitoring for suspicious activity within your infrastructure and responding swiftly.
These solutions were specifically created with this goal in mind, with the projection that cloud-based detection tools will become even more sought after over the coming years.
Continue reading for a list of what you can do in 2023 to protect your company from cyber-attacks.
Best 12 Cybersecurity Practices for 2023
Check out our list of cybersecurity best practices and principles for 2023 to help your organization prevent cyber-attacks.
1. Create A Robust Cyber Security Policy
An information security policy provides your business with a detailed plan for improving cybersecurity. Employees and security specialists alike will appreciate having all relevant details together; furthermore, essential practices may also be outlined throughout.
Consider creating an organizational hierarchy of cybersecurity policies within your organization, consisting of both centralized policies and policies tailored to each department in your cyber security company.
A hierarchical policy takes individual department needs into account while increasing overall policy effectiveness and minimizing disruptions to workflow.
Your security policy can also reflect all aspects of cybersecurity in your organization, from access-control policies and remote access policies, vendor management programs and insider threat programs, among other options.
Read our article about 10 must-have policies in information security for every company for more details regarding cyber policies.
2. Secure Perimeter And Iot Connectivity
Organizational boundaries today go far beyond firewalls and DMZs; remote work, cloud environments, and IoT devices have significantly expanded an organization's attack surface.
IoT devices have become an increasing trend - the market will see exponential growth from $384 billion today to over $567 billion by 2027!
Many devices connected to the internet could potentially be exploited for attacks; for example, compromised printers allow malicious actors to gain access to printed or scanned files that have passed through it.
Think carefully about safeguarding your perimeter by installing border routers with firewall protection, creating screened subnets, and isolating sensitive data from corporate networks, - this way limiting its exposure and access.
Zero trust can be implemented alongside traditional protection methods like firewalls or VPNs to provide added defenses against outside potential threats, like hackers and identity thieves.
Zero trust relies on never trusting and always verifying; to implement its principle successfully within an organization, this requires regularly validating users and devices in order to prevent unapproved entry and entry attempts from outside sources.
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3. Use A Security Approach That Is Centered On People
Hackers use humans to gain entry to networks. A technology-centric cybersecurity approach cannot ensure all-round protection - as Verizon's 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report states, 82% of breaches involve human interaction.
People-centric security can help mitigate human-related risks. Employees themselves serve as a key perimeter in people-centric security environments; hence, educating and monitoring employees are among the primary focuses of people-centric security strategies.
4. Access To Sensitive Data
By default, employees have access to sensitive data even if it is unnecessary for their duties, increasing cybersecurity risks for insider threats as hackers gain entry through compromised accounts of employees and gain access to confidential files that way.
The principle of least privilege offers an effective solution: this means granting each user as few access rights as possible and only elevating privileges if needed; if their access rights no longer pertain, these privileges should be removed immediately.
If someone no longer needs access to sensitive data, this should also be suspended immediately.
An on-demand access control strategy offers more granular user privilege control. Incorporating the principles of least privilege and zero trust, employees only access the system if they make the request at a specific time with valid justification for doing so.
Utilize these strategies to administer access within your organization.
Pay special consideration when accessing remote infrastructure. Protecting remote workers requires taking various measures, such as increasing visibility over employee actions and properly configuring networks.
With our article covering the top ten security mistakes officers make protecting remote workplaces, you will learn how to avoid these common missteps and ensure an uninterrupted workplace.
5. Use Passwords Carefully
Cybercriminals can gain direct access to sensitive business data by exploiting employee credentials. Social engineering, brute force attacks, or any number of techniques may be employed without your employees even realizing it.
Organizations use password management solutions to safeguard against attacks, providing control of employees' credentials while decreasing the risks associated with account compromise.
Do your best to opt for password management software with passwordless authentication, one-time passwords, and encryption features.
Consider including these recommendations in your cybersecurity policies if employees still choose their own passwords.
Use a unique password for every account
- Separate accounts for business and personal use
- Use capital letters, special symbols and numbers to create long passwords
- Remember long passwords using mnemonics and other techniques
- Password generators and managers are useful tools.
- Do not share your credentials with anyone else
- Change your passwords every 3 months.
6. Monitor The Activity And Privileges Of Third-Party Users
Privilege users or third-parties with access to your infrastructure could steal sensitive data without anyone realizing.
They could cause security breaches even without intending to.
Consider these measures in order to lower risk from third parties and privileged users:
Monitoring third-party and privileged user activities within your IT environment is an effective way of protecting sensitive information.
User activity monitoring provides greater visibility, detects malicious activities quickly, and gathers evidence for subsequent forensic investigations.
UAM solutions offer valuable insights into who's doing what in your organization, with screenshots or information like visited websites, keystrokes typed, or applications opened providing invaluable details of user activity.
Read More: Top Five Cyber Security Trends
7. Enhance Data Management And Protection
Your organization's privacy and security depend upon how its data are managed.
Documenting the information management process through a policy on data management can be an excellent place to start.
Include details regarding data collection, processing,and storage, as well as who may access it and when its deletion should take effect.
An effective data protection policy should also form part of your information security measures, so be sure to build them around key principles:
- Confidentiality - protect your information from unauthorized access
- Integrity - ensure that unauthorized users cannot modify data at any point in the life cycle.
- Availability - Ensure authorized users have constant access to the data they require
To manage security risks, you can also use solutions such as insider risk management or data loss prevention. Managed file exchange platforms allow you to securely share data with others.
8. Use Biometric Security
Biometrics provide fast authentication, secure access management, and accurate employee identification services for organizations.
Biometrics can also be used to authenticate users and grant access to valuable assets - an indispensable asset that contributes to security within any business and contributes to why the biometrics industry has seen exponential growth over time.
Biometrics provide more secure multi-factor authentication. Not only that; security officers can utilize biometrics to detect compromised accounts in real time.
By assessing user activity and monitoring how people interact with input devices, this application helps secure user activity by monitoring unusual or inappropriate user interactions and notifying security officers immediately of any irregular behavior that needs to be corrected immediately.
These biometric factors are employed for analyzing user and entity behaviors within User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) systems.
Keystroke Dynamics -- Monitors typing speed and the tendency to make common mistakes with certain words. Creates user behavior profiles
- Mouse dynamics -- measures the time between mouse clicks, the rhythm and speed of the cursor's movement, and the style.
9. Use Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication adds another level of protection against hackers by adding multiple factors as forms of identification - not only passwords but also other elements like phone calls, fingerprint scans, and security tokens as authentication factors.
When enabled, malicious actors won't even be able to gain entry by having your password alone - they would require other factors like an additional phone call verification code from you, a fingerprint verification scan, or a security token in addition to having it.
MFA may seem simple, but it is one of the best tools for cybersecurity protection. Many regulations - General Data Protection Regulation, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and SWIFT Customer Security Programme among them - require MFA as part of cybersecurity safeguarding, while Google and Twitter actively encourage their users to utilize MFA.
MFA allows for improved access control by helping to differentiate among users of shared accounts.
10. Regularly Conduct Cybersecurity Audits
Regular audits help you assess your organization's security and make necessary adjustments. During audits, you can detect:
- Cybersecurity vulnerabilities
- Gaps in compliance
- Suspicious activities of your employees, third-party vendors, and privileged users
The completeness of data in various sources, such as audit logs and user session records, is vital to ensuring the quality of an audit.
Why do you require an Audit trail?
UAM security logs can provide detailed information about user and privileged user actions, including activity metadata, screenshots, and any additional pertinent details.
With such knowledge at your disposal, root cause analysis for security events becomes possible, as does pinpointing any vulnerabilities within your cybersecurity infrastructure.
When selecting a UAM solution, look for solutions that offer reports detailing specific actions, security incidents, and users.
Reports can help speed and simplify audit processes.
Best Practices For Building Secure Applications
We want to show you how to look at security in a holistic way and provide you with a variety of options to make sure that your application is as secure as possible, while also constantly improving.
Let's begin with number one.
1. The OWASP Top Ten
Recently, in my blog post, we discussed this subject further. It's vitally important that we all remember OWASP's Top Ten list - an amalgamation of web application security flaws identified by experts worldwide - when making decisions regarding security in web apps.
These vulnerabilities target developers, users, and the confidentiality of an application. Attack vectors include injection attacks, authentication/session management issues, misconfiguration issues with security settings, and exposure of sensitive data.
Understanding our applications' inner workings and using secure code are keys to creating secure applications that stand a better chance of protecting user data, helping avoid being listed among hackers' hit lists at year's end or in top breaches.
Surprisingly, this list remains relatively unchanged from year to year despite increasing security awareness within the developer community.
Unfortunately, similar issues continue to plague this industry year after year, despite efforts made to make solutions more secure.
As much of an advantage as they may be, vulnerabilities present a double-edged sword: You should regularly test your app against potential vulnerabilities; since most are unlikely to change much over time.
Here is our most up-to-date list of the top 10 web application security flaws.
2. Receive An Application Security Audit
Assume you are taking the OWASP top ten seriously and that all developers possess an insistence upon security; that they self-test regularly in order to check that no vulnerabilities exist in your apps; and that there may be security experts on staff who provide regular evaluation.
These steps provide excellent foundations, yet they may still fall short due to filters and biases in your team's analysis process.
Every day they work closely on maintaining code; over time your team's analysis may become increasingly subjective as their focus becomes limited by being immersed in the code they maintain.
That is why having an impartial reviewer look over applications is crucial, because this way they will not form any biases or assumptions regarding how the code should function.
Professional application security consultants must also possess extensive professional application security experience and understand how to identify both obvious and hidden security breaches.
In addition, they will remain up-to-date with current security issues while being knowledgeable about those that are not yet widely known.
What we suggest is conducting an application security audit on your application, as this can serve as an excellent starting point to make improvements and strengthen security.
As your organization embarks upon its security journey, audits may seem intimidating, but they can help accelerate application creation more rapidly than otherwise.
By setting aside anxieties around security audits, audits could accelerate app development to meet compliance sooner.
3. Implement Proper Logging
After conducting a security assessment and developing an initial baseline of security for your application, as well as making necessary modifications based on the findings, it's time to step back.
Let's now turn our focus to external factors influencing software security; particularly log management.
Unavoidably, something will go awry. Even if an issue was previously overlooked or ignored as not serious enough for immediate attention, that vulnerability will eventually be exploited, and exploiters may use that vulnerability against you.
To respond swiftly and prevent situations from getting out of hand, proper log keeping must be implemented.
Information gathered through these methods will give a complete picture of what took place, its causes, and any concurrent suspicious events occurring at that moment in time.
According to one old saying: preparation is key.
First and foremost, make sure your application is suitably instrumented. Tools and cyber security services such as Tideways Blackfire and New Relic may come in handy depending on what software language you're using.
Second, you need a way to store data so it can be parsed quickly and effectively at the appropriate moment. There are multiple solutions for doing this, such as Linux Syslog log files; ELK stack (Elasticsearch Logstash Kibana), or SaaS solutions like Loggly, Splunk, and PaperTrail.
No matter which storage option you select, make sure information can be quickly and efficiently retrieved when required.
4. Real-Time Monitoring And Protection Of Security
Apps cannot be protected without both traditional firewalls and Web application firewalls in mind.
As we recently wrote, firewalls may provide effective application protection but are far from comprehensive application security solutions.
Warfare Application Firewalls, commonly referred to as WAFs, aren't very useful due to a host of reasons; among these are producing numerous false negatives and positives while being costly to maintain - although they still offer some protection for your application.
If you are considering employing a WAF, we recommend pairing it with Runtime Application Self-Protection tools (RASP) or Application Security Management platforms, which offer RASP modules as well as WAF in-app modules tailored specifically for you to provide real time monitoring and protection of applications in use.
Protect both internal and external aspects of your application by employing these solutions.
Read More: Why Cybersecurity is Important for eCommerce Business
5. Encrypt Everything
Now that your application has been instrumented and protected by firewall solutions, let's discuss encryption. By this we mean more than simply HTTPS/HSTS; rather we mean encrypting everything imaginable.
Encryption should be utilized as part of an overall approach to protecting applications holistically. Although it might appear ornate, encryption needs to take all angles of protection into consideration rather than only what appears obvious.
Let's Encrypt makes HTTPS more accessible than ever, rewarding sites using it with increased Google rankings - but that alone won't suffice!
At rest, all data must remain encrypted - as HTTPS makes Man In The Middle attacks almost impossible.
If someone gains entry to your server - whether through an ex-staffer who may become hostile, a questionable system administrator, or a government agent - and accesses or removes drives, all other security measures become moot.
Do not think of security in isolation - consider both data at rest and in transit when looking at its protection holistically.
6. Harden All The Things
What about hardening all systems now that all data and traffic is encrypted? You need to harden everything, from operating systems to software frameworks.
It is impossible to cover this topic in the space available for this article. Let's instead consider a list of concise suggestions for both operating systems and frameworks.
- Does your web server use modules or extensions your application does not need?
- Does your software language use modules or extensions it doesn't require?
- Does your programming language allow for remote code execution, such as exec or proc?
- What is the maximum script execution duration set at?
- What is the access that your language has to the file system?
- Where is session data stored?
- Can the configuration files for servers, services, software languages (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis), and services be modified?
- Do your servers use security extensions like SELinux and AppArmor?
- Does the incoming and outgoing flow of traffic have a restriction?
- How are users allowed to access the servers, and is this access managed?
7. Update Your Server Regularly
Do you know if your operating system is up-to-date? Even though its core may have been upgraded, individual packages could still contain outdated content, which poses cyber security threats.
As soon as a security update has been released, update only those packages relevant for that release - not all at once!
You have the choice of automating this process or reviewing and authorizing each update individually.
You can use the following to install automatic security updates:
- Unattended Upgrades for Debian and related distributions
- yum-cron with "update_cmd = minimal-security-severity:Important"
- Automatic Updates in Windows
Please refer to your operating system documentation if you don't use one of the above.
8. Update Your Software
As part of keeping up-to-date, your application framework, third-party libraries, and operating system must also remain up-to-date.
Some might balk at the concept of using structures. We will not discuss their relative merits here - suffice it to say both have their place and can save both time and energy when used appropriately.
As with operating systems and frameworks, third-party libraries also contain vulnerabilities that need to be patched quickly if properly supported; it is therefore recommended to always use the most up-to-date stable version if available.
Package managers exist for almost every programming language imaginable - both dynamic ones like PHP, Python, and Ruby, as well as static ones such as Go.
These tools simplify deployment processes while making managing external dependencies simpler.
Take advantage of these offers and stay current with all the newest releases!
9. Keep Up To Date With The Latest Vulnerabilities
It can be challenging to keep pace with all the attack vectors used today - from Cross-site Scripting, SQL Injection, insecure direct object references, and Cross-site request forgery, to name but a few.
Life requires us to stay aware of current world and time events so as to create secure applications in today's society and environment.
There are various methods by which this information can be acquired and easily digested.
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Conclusion
This is a list of 10 best practices for protecting web applications. No article could ever hope to cover every topic adequately given how quickly the security landscape changes.
Use these 10 best practices to build secure applications. Be sure to consider security just as much as performance and testing when developing software applications.
