In the world of security, authentication, and authorization methodologies are foundational aspects of defense. Authentication techniques protect against unlawful entry to systems through the verification of a user, and authorization either grants or denies the verified user’s access level. For example, if an employee from the finance department...

Identity governance, also known as access governance, is an integral part of any enterprise data protection and compliance framework. Seamless and timely access to required systems or resources can significantly increase employees’ productivity and performance. However, excessive privileges or unmonitored user access can often lead to internal and...

Recently, Tripwire held its Energy and NERC Compliance Working Group virtual event. Tripwire has customers spanning the entire energy industry, including small, medium, and large city municipals, cooperatives, and investor-owned utilities and energy companies. The information shared in these sessions offered valuable insights for both very mature...

In the business world, compliance means making sure that companies of all sizes are meeting the standards set by regulatory or oversight groups in various laws and standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, and GDPR. Sometimes, an organization will self-impose its compliance by adhering to guidance and frameworks from organizations such as NIST, ISACA,...

In response to increasing societal concerns about the way businesses store, process, and protect the sensitive data they collect from their customers, governments and standardization organizations have enacted a patchwork of regulations and laws. Some of these are generic regulations (CCPA, GDPR), while others are industry specific (SOX, NERC, HIPAA...

Change detection is easy. What is not so easy, is reconciling change. Change reconciliation is where most organizations stumble. What was the change? When was it made? Who made it? Was it authorized? The ability to answer these questions are the elements that comprise change management. Historically, the haste of accomplishing a task consisted of...

Have you ever walked up to an ATM after another person finished with the machine only to find they left it on a prompt screen asking, “Do you want to perform another transaction?” I have. Of course, I did the right thing and closed out their session before beginning my own transaction. That was a mistake an individual made by careless error which...

In the past, teams incorporated security testing far after the development stage of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Security testing would influence whether the application would to proceed to production, or get passed back to the developers for remediation. This process caused delays while teams worked on remediation or, worse yet, it...

Penetration testing is something that more companies and organizations should be considering a necessary expense. I say this because over the years the cost of data breaches and other forms of malicious intrusions and disruptions are getting costlier. Per IBM Security’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021,” the average cost of a breach has increased...

We all know that it is a question of when you will be compromised and not if you will be compromised. It is unavoidable. The goal of CIS Control 17 is to ensure that you are set up for success when that inevitable breach occurs. If an organization is neither equipped nor prepared for that potential data breach, they are not likely to succeeded in...

The way in which we interact with applications has changed dramatically over years. Enterprises use applications in day-to-day operations to manage their most sensitive data and control access to system resources. Instead of traversing a labyrinth of networks and systems, attackers today see an opening to turn an organizations applications against...

Enterprises today rely on partners and vendors to help manage their data. Some companies depend on third-party infrastructure for day-to-day operations, so understanding the regulations and protection standards that a service provider is promising to uphold is very important. Key Takeaways from Control 15 Identify your business needs and create...

Earlier this year, I wrote about what’s new in Version 8 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). An international consortium of security professionals first created the CIS Controls back in 2008. Since then, the security community has continued to update the CIS Controls to keep pace with the evolution of...

Users who do not have the appropriate security awareness training are considered a weak link in the security of an enterprise. These untrained users are easier to exploit than finding a flaw or vulnerability in the equipment that an enterprise uses to secure its network. Attackers could convince unsuspecting users to unintentionally provide access...

Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. People, processes, and technologies should be in place for monitoring, detecting, logging, and preventing malicious activities that occur when an enterprise experiences an attack within or against their networks. Key Takeaways for Control 13 Enterprises should understand that...

Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. These networks are comprised of many types of components that make up the networks’ infrastructure. Network infrastructure devices can be physical or virtual and include things such as routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless access points. Unfortunately, many devices are...

Data loss can be a consequence of a variety of factors from malicious ransomware to hardware failures and even natural disasters. Regardless of the reason for data loss, we need to be able to restore our data. A data recovery plan begins with prioritizing our data, protecting it while it is being stored, and having a plan to recover data. Key...

With the continuing rise of ransomware, malware defenses are more critical than ever before with regard to securing the enterprise. Anti-Malware technologies have become an afterthought in many organizations, a technology that they’ve always had, always used, and never really thought about. This control serves as a reminder that this technology is...

Web browsers and email clients are used to interact with external and internal assets. Both applications can be used as a point of entry within an organization. Users of these applications can be manipulated using social engineering attacks. A successful social engineering attack needs to convince users to interact with malicious content. A...

Audit logs provide a rich source of data critical to preventing, detecting, understanding, and minimizing the impact of network or data compromise in a timely manner. Collection logs and regular review is useful for identifying baselines, establishing operational trends, and detecting abnormalities. In some cases, logging may be the only evidence of...