Unsurprisingly, Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report doesn’t make for comfortable reading.

In 2018:

• 43% of security breaches involved small businesses
• 52% involved hacking (69% of the attacks proved to be the work of outsiders)
• 33% were through social media
• 28% involved malware.

(Verizon, 2019)

What’s also important to note is that C-level executives were 12 times more likely to be the target of a social engineering incident and nine times more likely to be the target in a breach caused by social engineering. Given this much higher target rate, it’s clear that modern cybercrime organizations are deducing that there’s higher value in a more targeted, high level attack (Barth, 2019).

Unfortunately, for many businesses, and despite the increased risks and chances of hacking, they are still using outdated methods and approaches. What’s worse is that some are even following the same approach to cyber security today as they were a decade or so ago.

As we mention in our Anatomy of a Cyber Attack white paper, that’s simply not going to work in today’s business theater. So much so that

Businesses Should Assume They Have Already Been Hacked and Are Currently Under-Siege

Seriously, that is the best, easiest, and most practical way to look at your security efforts to date.

Suffice it to say that, if information security is something you’ve been lackadaisical with up to now, today’s the day… [you need to change that]. You need to get wise to what’s happening. Before it’s too late.

Yes, there is a lot of information out there (much of it false), and though not having enough information can be fatal, the opposite is also true.  Either one can lead to 3 critical issues:

• ineffective planning
• insufficient mitigation of risks
• inability to recover quickly following a breach.

With that last point, above, you don’t need us to tell you how important your customers are to your business.

In terms of numbers, Bryan Littlefield, CISO of Aviva, said that following a customer data breach, research suggests that of those customers who are thinking of cancelling their account with you, 50% of them actually will (Out-law News, 2015).

That long-standing relationship you’ve been building… destroyed.

That trust level you hold so dear to your heart and have painstakingly nurtured… gone, In an instant.

Cyber Security is Not Something That Only Others Do

Moreover, the days where security was considered to be extraneous or a separate arm of the business are long gone. Indeed, security must work as a  “…flexible and smart strategic asset that constantly delivers to the businesses, and impacts the bottom line.” (Sartin as quoted in Guta, 2019)

We do have more information on cyber-attacks (and you can download our paper at the bottom of this page), but for now we advise you to take this approach:

1. Assume you’re already under-siege. You need to fight back.
2. Work inside out. Adopt a defensive posture, start from the core, and ‘clear and secure your lines’, all the way to the external perimeter of your organization.
3. All the while, rethinking your security approach and how you’re going to make it as hard as possible for the hacker/attacker in the future.

That’s what you need to do.

Naturally, you’re here on our webpage, on our site, so we’re going to offer advice on what works for us (‘us’ being our clients, customers, and partners) and what we ourselves recommend.

Identity Access Management and Zero Trust

We recommend Identity Access Management. In particular, what we call Zero Trust.

Zero Trust follows the 3 fundamental principles of never trust, always verify, and always enforce least privilege. (We have a white paper called Identity is the New Perimeter: Zero Trust is its Firewall where we talk more about that.)

In its simplest form, Zero Trust involves an identity verification and authentication portion. If these are incorrect then the rest fails.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the anatomy of a cyber-attack (if you want to jump straight to the white paper, click here).

Caveat: before we go any further, we’re not for 1 second suggesting that you haven’t been taking security seriously. It’s just that as someone for whom this is our ‘meat and potatoes’ (or bread-and-butter, if you’re British), we know full well how overwhelming security can be.

Not least because of the rate with which the tech is changing, but also because of the myriad of terms and definitions, and all the rest of it.

That’s one of the main reasons we created this white paper. Others include helping you to cut through all that noise, to eliminate that chaff, so you get an easy to read, understand and digest picture off what’s going on.

The Anatomy of a Cyber Attack

The Anatomy of a Cyber Attack white paper covers the following:

• An overview of cyberattacks and how the landscape is changing. One of the problems of today is that “As businesses embrace new digital ways of working, many are unaware of the new security risks to which they may be exposed” (Sartin, 2019).
• The architecture of the modern attack, including phishing and social Engineering
• The danger of local admin privileges and cached passwords
• Attacks to Kerberos and Active Directory
• The consumerization of hacking
• Can we keep the hackers out?
• Assume breach – now what?
• Other tips to discourage hackers. These include preventing users from being local admins, avoid group nesting, and use dedicated secure admin workstations for admin tasks, etc.

Understanding what constitutes a cyber-attack is just 1 weapon that you will need in your arsenal: it’s only one of the steps you must take. I hope you’re like me and, when you see people reminiscing on or about the good old days, you smile. I’m happy for them–seriously happy. From my own perspective, life outside of cyber security must seem a trifle mundane. Admittedly, I don’t dwell long, because what we’re seeing and experiencing in cyber security now is unprecedented. Sure, today might be a great day, but let’s use that time wisely and prepare for tomorrow, too.

Click on the link below to download the white paper:

Download the White Paper\

“They came on in the same old way – and we defeated them in the same old way.”

Though it could easily be used today, that quote does have rather more deep-rooted origins. The speaker was Arthur Wellesley (though you may know him by his more common titles of The Duke of Wellington and, later, Prime Minister of Great Britain). He spoke those words after his and Field Marshall Blucher’s combined Allied forces had just defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

Without going into the details of the battle itself, the outcome was quite significant in several ways:

• Napoleon’s tactics at Waterloo were both out of date and inflexible
• His battle plan lacked finesse, consisting only of repeated ‘in your face’ brute force attacks
• The outcome of this helped shape the future of Europe for almost 100-years
• Given ‘The Battle of Waterloo’ was in 1815, it does, in fact, predate the on-going debate about RBAC v ABAC which still persists today.

Okay, that last point is stretching a little white lie (a hint of a joke, as it were). But If you’ll permit me, I’ll tell you 2 specific reasons why it does fall flat on its face:

• The RBAC v ABAC debate is now in its 22nd year (yes, it began in 1997)
• Like Napoleon at Waterloo, if you honestly expect to win today’s battle with yesterday’s tactics then you’re going to lose.

Unfortunately, and we know this firsthand, some companies still are using old systems, old methods, and old tactics.

(Please tell us this isn’t you, though?)

Your Attacker is Getting Cleverer

One glance at the news tells you that your attacker is getting cleverer. (It might also be a concern to know that there are a lot more attackers out there since hacker tools became more commercialized. If you want to learn more, then click here to get our The Anatomy of a Cyber Attack white paper.

Make no bones about it, your attacker is getting cleverer, more devious, and increasingly skillful–they’re evolving. And though steam rolling in with brute force methods might be just one part of their plan, unlike Napoleon on that fateful day, we both know they’ll adapt and move on to other means as soon as necessary.

This isn’t hyperbole, either.

You’ve likely seen or heard all of the scare tactics, the dire threats, the ‘end of the earth as we know it’ (if you haven’t, let us know and we’re more than happy to fire some your way).

But here at EmpowerID, where cybersecurity, RBAC and ABAC, and your security is concerned, we prefer to stay a little more grounded. A little more pragmatic.

The Cyber Threats Are Real

But make no mistake…

Don’t think for a minute that the threats aren’t real–because they are.

You and I both know, full well, that your attackers’ plans are evolving continuously.

Unfortunately, the very nature of cybersecurity is that they’re likely to be evolving far faster than you or any of us can ever react.

However, it isn’t all 1-way and isn’t all doom and gloom. There are steps we can take to mitigate this. To limit the chances of them being successful.

We can’t stop them from selecting us as their target, but our goal here, of course, is to make it so difficult that they move onto easier pickings. They turn their attentions and efforts elsewhere.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, though…

What Is Your Battle Plan?

A question for you:

When the attackers’ beady little eyes do eventually turn to and focus on you, what exactly is your battle plan?

At Waterloo, Wellington had surveyed that ground years 2 or 3 years before.

We both know we’ll never ever have that luxury.

Then what?

“But we’ll be okay,” said every single security consultant or manager in the world ever. (All the while secretly praying that they’re okay.)

And then they weren’t, of course (okay, that is).

Reading this, you, may very well think that we’re wrong.

If that’s the case, then tune into the media and watch or listen. Turn on your TV or radio, or tune in via your PC, whatever it is you use.

Because if the next security breach is not all over the news today, then it’ll be tomorrow or next week.

It’s only a matter of time.

As realists, we both know it’s coming.

We sincerely hope they’re not talking about you.

White Paper: Identity is the New Perimeter: Zero Trust is its Firewall

To learn more about constructing your organization’s defenses and laying out your battle plans, we have a white paper called ‘’Identity is the New Perimeter: Zero Trust is its Firewall.

In it, we talk about how identity and Zero Trust are where the 21^st century battle will occur. Zero Trust is founded on 3 fundamental principles:

• never trust
• always verify
• always enforce least privilege.

Quite simply, when a user attempts to access to your system, they have to verify and authenticate themselves. If they fail either, then they’re denied access.

Click here to download the Identity is the New Perimeter: Zero Trust is its Firewall white paper

Citizens of Turkey woke up Monday with the knowledge that a Citizenship Database has been publicly dumped for anyone in the world to download and view.

The dumped database included:

• National Identifier (TC Kimlik No)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Mother's First Name
• Father's First Name
• Gender
• City of Birth
• Date of Birth
• ID Registration City and District
• Full Address

This database leak underlines why it is important to encrypt data at rest.  Most IAM projects implement 443 for access to the product, secure DMZ firewalls and Role Based Access Controls but neglect to implement encryption for the identity warehouse.  EmpowerID fully supports encryption of information in our identity warehouse and has been able to validate our latest release 2016 using these same encryption methods.

EmpowerID utilizes transparent data encryption (TDE) which provides full database-level encryption. TDE is the optimal choice for bulk encryption to meet regulatory compliance or corporate data security standards. TDE works at the file level, which is similar to two Windows® features: the Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker™ Drive Encryption, the new volume-level encryption introduced in Windows Vista®, both of which also encrypt data on the hard drive.  This means that the identity and attribute information stored within EmpowerID will stay secure even if someone gets access to a backup of the database or gets access to the flat files from a server.

To learn more about how EmpowerID can utilize a fully encrypted database just click below.

The SharePoint 2013 People Picker is the tool you use to find and select users, groups and claims to grant someone a permission to a site in SharePoint.  The SharePoint 2013 People Picker is heavily dependent on how authentication is configured for your site so you need to ensure your SAML or claim provider is intelligent.

All claim providers created equally!

Today the most common issue SharePoint administrators find with an authentication claim provider is that any name you type in the People Picker, SharePoint will accept.  Even worse, with a typical claims provider you can type nonsense and you will see two results, neither of them valid!

Credit:Kirk Evans Microsoft Blog

This is not because the SharePoint People Picker needs to be fixed, it's working as designed, it is a result of the claim provider.

The EmpowerID SharePoint Manager solves this problem, we have created the most intelligent claim provider in the market today.  In doing so we set out to do 4 things which will have a huge impact on the day to day operations of your SharePoint site.

1. Create the most intelligent claim provider in the world.  We didn't stop at providing intelligent responses to the query, we also segregate the data so that delegated administrators can only view results for data that they can see.  This is a very important point, if a business partner administrator wants to grant someone rights to a site the EmpowerID data filtering and masking is still maintained.

2. Provide SharePoint "web parts".  This is technology that allows users to find new sites and request access to it.  It also allows site administrators to approve site access, all directly within SharePoint.
3. Fully support federated or claims based authentication into SharePoint.  Users can authenticate with EmpowerID, bring their own social identity or use another.

4. Answer the "Why" question.  Why does someone have access and when was it granted?  The other side a SharePoint claim provider is tracking these finer details.  EmpowerID includes full certification and attestation for SharePoint access, this provides your enterprise with a host of risk controls not previously available.

Want to know more?

Watch a previously recorded webinar that discusses these points here

click the button to request more information.

Internal employees continue to pose biggest risk in security breaches.

Latest Experian security forecast - Cost of breaches in the healthcare industry could reach $5.6 billion annually.

How will the next identity spill happen?  The latest Experian data breach industry forecast points to your employees being the biggest threat.  Stronger external authentication and tighter protocols continue to miss the mark.  Employee negligence will continue to be the leading cause of security incidents in 2015.

Experian goes on to state that Healthcare breaches will continue to grow this year.  With the huge challenge of securing such a significant amount of data, the problem becomes even more serious when organizations are faced with a shortage of internal expertise.  With the majority of breaches originating from inside company walls, the report clearly indicates business leaders need to fight the root cause of data breaches rather than buy the latest security widgets.

What are some steps that you can take in your organization to prevent the next identity spill?

• Perform regular certification or attestation of application or role access.
• Implement automated provisioning and deprovisioning of identities
• Implement Role Based Access Control and Attribute Based Access Control
• Control  access to applications via a central identity provider
• Provide Self-Service password reset
• Implement strong authentication, regardless of the application

Preforming regular certification/attestation of access – At any time you need to be able to snapshot the access granted to a resource by roles, locations and person accounts.  Security assignments should be automated, but access should be certified and routed to an appropriate authorized person for review.  This review should verify the access and certify if it is valid or not.  A tool like EmpowerID makes certifications easy for the organization with scheduled certification and attestation policies that can be run and audited.

Implement automated provisioning/deprovisioning – Role based or attribute based access needs to be automatically and immediately provisioned or deprovisioned.  When an employee’s role changes, the resultant set of access needs to be calculated instantly.  Some application and resource access will be taken away and some will be granted.  Absence of role based deprovisioning is a root cause of an employee having too much access.  EmpowerID takes provisioning to the next level by allowing you to provision and deprovision based upon roles in the organization.

Implement RBAC & ABAC controls - You need an RBAC/ABAC engine to continuously evaluate how much access someone should or shouldn't have.  EmpowerID uses a hybrid approach with RBAC and ABAC adding in rules and even Separation of Duties enforcement.

Control access to applications via a central identity provider - Having users log into apps with a separate username and password is a recipe for disaster.  An IdP allows you to centrally validate someone’s identity and then assert that identity into applications wherever they are.  The EmpowerID IdP allows employees to search for applications that are granted for their role, removes ones that are not granted and provides the SSO into the application.

Provide Self-Service password reset - Let's face it, this not only tightens up security, but saves a lot of money.  EmpowerID provides full detailed audit trails of anything account related such as who changed the password, who approved it and more.

Implement strong authentication, regardless of the application - There are a lot of ways to get into your network.  The VPN, the email server and SaaS applications are all exposed entries into the protected network.  Do they all have the same authentication capabilities?  You need an authentication service that supports all the protocols, not just those most used.  EmpowerID can step up authentication at any level for any service.  The VPN, the routers, the SaaS apps, SharePoint, it doesn't matter.

The bottom line is this, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.  According to Experian the average cost per lost record is just under $200 dollars, with average total impact cost to your organization just under $4 million.  Click through below and let us show you how easy it is to automate access and control privilege in your environment.

“Organizations need to have the tools to manage these new access silos,” he told the opening session of the 2015 European Identity & Cloud (EIC) conference taking place in Munich.

During his Keynote discussion on day 1 Patrick identified the many limitations when managing new access silos in AWS and Azure.  

During day 2 Patrick discussed the role of IAM in hack prevention highlighting the recent Sony Pictures hack.

If you're around on the 7th you can catch his IAM best practices discussion from 12:00-13:00 PM or stop by for a discussion or deep dive demo to see what makes empowerID the best IAM Suite in the market today.  For those unable to attend in person empowerID will be sharing the presentations in the near future.

Everyone's heard of Single Sign On or SSO.  By helping your end users get through their day, it allows them to first validate their enterprise identity and then seamlessly get into all of their enterprise applications.

The ugly secret of the SSO landscape is the lack of any real access control.  If you need to provide access to an application like Salesforce you have to add them into an Active Directory group.  That is simply not something that scales and will instantly become an administrative burden.  Let's not even get into what happens when that person moves to a new department, are you really going and removing them from the groups they shouldn't have access to anymore?

EmpowerID has created the world's first integrated Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and SSO mechanism that allows you to assign resources like salesforce.com to a business role not a group.  This gives you unprecedented flexibility to assign resources to things like SharePoint, Salesforce or whatever the application is.

With EmpowerID you can assign resources to specific roles, like the example above where bank tellers in will be part of different active director groups but they can all be assigned the "Teller Business Role" and as such be allowed to access common resources for that role.  We've made it simple for you as an administrator too, manage these rules right through the EmpowerID WebAdmin console like you see below.

Reach out and we can walk you through how to add intelligence into your SSO engine today.