by Rebeca | Mar 17, 2021 | Resources, soffid
The rapid digitisation across the world in 2020 has paved the way for companies to adopt new models in how they secure and manage the identity of their users.
As businesses move from largely reactive measures last year to now putting in place policies and processes to permanently adapt to the new normal, a modern identity and access management (IAM) system is critical to manage access across multiple operating systems, devices, locations and applications, based on what a user should be able to do and what they will need over time
IAM encompasses a complex set of functions that touch nearly every aspect of your business and have a measurable impact on your bottom line. Leaving an outdated IAM system in place — whether you’re managing the identities of employees, business partners, or end customers — is both costly and dangerous.
Modernising Identity Reduces Maintenance Costs
Businesses that are reluctant to invest in IAM are often unaware of how much money they’re already spending on it. Maintaining an outdated, decentralised IAM system is usually a full-time job for at least one developer. In addition, dealing with identity-related issues such as lost passwords takes up the majority of your support desk’s time.
The maintenance costs of in-house Identity are high even if we only define “maintenance” as keeping the existing system running so users can log in and access resources. When businesses improve their custom IAM systems, those costs skyrocket. Auth0 customers regularly report that if they attempted to build our features themselves, it would take an entire team of developers.
Identity Is Critical to Legal Compliance and Security
If you don’t invest in a sophisticated, secure identity solution, then you’re essentially budgeting for regulatory fines and the myriad costs associated with data breaches. Given the rise in global data privacy laws and cyberattacks, the chances that you will be impacted are only increasing.
Identity-based attacks are a pervasive threat. Today, hackers the world over use authentication as their preferred gateway to attack. Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Report found that the most common forms of data breaches are identity-based: phishing and attacks using stolen credentials. These broken authentication attacks mean huge expenses for businesses, in the form of application downtime, lost customers, and IT costs. The Ponemon Institute reports that a company that falls victim to a credential stuffing attack stands to lose an annual average of US$6 million. Thwarting these attacks requires IAM features such as brute force protection, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and rigorous access control.
IAM Unleashes Innovation
For better or for worse, your company’s IAM platform will impact your ability to innovate. This happens in two ways. The first is simple: Every hour your developers spend on authentication is an hour they’re not improving your core product.
Most companies are familiar with this logic when making other decisions about building vs. buying microservices. For example, Auth0’s research found that when companies need to incorporate a payment tool in their app, only 26% build it themselves. The other 74% use a software-as-a-service SaaS solution like Stripe or Paypal. The same logic holds true for authentication.
Aside from freeing up resources, an IAM system can drive innovation. For example, consider the impact of centralised Identity on improving analytics and customer outreach. When a single IAM provider handles user authentication across devices and integrates seamlessly with every other system, it de-silos data to create a single source of truth about users. This idea is the heart of an omnichannel approach to retail and marketing.
Identity Is Central to Your Business
It’s always important to make sound investments in technology, and particularly in a moment of global uncertainty. But having a secure and extensible IAM solution is one of the best defenses against that uncertainty because it makes businesses more capable of adapting to change.
A modern IAM solution can provide both a quick business win and long-term value by decreasing costs, increasing revenue, and making businesses more adaptable in a shifting technological and legal landscape.
Shall we talk about your project? Soffid 3 is a more intuitive and user-friendly version that will fit your needs.
Sources:
(1) Digital Security Magazine
(2) Frontier Enterprise
by Rebeca | Mar 11, 2021 | soffid
Leveraging the full potential of a modern IAM platform is the first step towards eliminating your legacy headaches. Today many organizations are looking at cloud based solutions to accelerate their programs, reduce future operational requirements, and future proof their investments.
It is a pleasure to invite all our clients, partners and interested ones to the first of our webinars we are celebrating next 23rd March.
During the webinar we will discuss about the new trends in Identity and Access Management and Single Sign On to meet the challenges of protecting today’s complex enterprise networks.
At the end of the conference, all participants will receive a link to download Soffid 3.
Would you like to get the most of your cybersecurity system? Join our next webinar
When?
23rd March – 16.00-17.00
Who is leading the webinar?
Our CTO: Gabriel Buades
by Rebeca | Mar 11, 2021 | Definitions, soffid
A compliance audit is a comprehensive review and evaluation of a business or organization’s compliance with a voluntary compliance framework (e.g., SOC 2) or a regulatory requirement (e.g., GDPR). The scope of a compliance audit depends on which framework/regulation the auditor is evaluating against and, for some frameworks, what type of information the organization stores and how they utilize it.
Many companies still do not appreciate the interconnection of security and compliance. Both are often considered cost centers, and that paints a scowl on the face of many Chief Financial Officers. However, there is a different way of looking at compliance (or its negative counterpart, non-compliance).
We can divide compliance into the categories of obvious and not-so-obvious costs.
The obvious costs are easy to understand:
- Track – Keeping a close watch on the requirements to maintain compliance
- Mitigate – Correcting any deficiencies
- Fines – Monetary penalties for compliance failure
Some of the hidden costs include:
- Additional internal audits – To verify that everything is in order as well as the costs of reworking
- Business disruption – Due to a regulator lockdown of a business unit or the entire organization,
- Productivity loss – The time employees need to focus on remediation
- Brand loss – Due to bad media coverage, and this leads to customer erosion
These costs ensure that your organization is equipped with the correct resources that are required to maintain and confirm there are no compliance slips. The biggest hidden cost, though, is the loss that is not accounted for due to non-standardized operating procedures and a lack of standardized control.
In information technology, this is known as secure configuration management. An organization may be operating at lower efficiency without being noticed until regulatory compliance audits unravel the cracks in the IT ecosystem. This is the “close to broken” setting mentioned earlier.
Fortunately, the journey to compliance need not be a burdensome task. For example, in the banking industry, digital checking mechanisms enable institutions to track all the risks and ensure compliance by applying the appropriate controls. Comprehensive dashboards are used to ensure that banks can effectively monitor and mitigate compliance issues before they cross into non-compliant territory.
To reduce business risk by ensuring systems are properly configured or hardened to meet with your internal regulatory and legislative compliance standards, Secure Configuration Management is a must.
A secure configuration management tool combines network monitoring and Endpoint Protection methodology to compare monitored systems against an approved configuration baseline or a golden image. Deviation from this baseline, known as test failures, can usually be corrected with little or no human intervention. Secure configuration management is truly a need-to-have based solution.
Secure configuration management offers benefits to organizations, not only from the cost-avoidance standpoint of non-compliance but also from increased organizational efficiency and agility.
Attacks
It is important to note that while many vulnerabilities are “common,” there is a more critical aspect of maintaining compliance to protect your organization. The largest segments of attack types are targeted. This type of attack means your organization is singled out, and the attacker has a specific interest in your business or your intellectual property.
A targeted attack takes time and planning, sometimes months, to lay the groundwork and prepare. Attackers still use commodity techniques to probe the systems in your organization, looking for the best path to exploit, but their methods are specifically tailored to your infrastructure, your processes and your personnel. The main reason that targeted attacks are effective is because organizations struggle to follow basic security practices and properly institute measurable security policies.
Could you imagine how much less risk your organization would have if you could eliminate 99.99% of attacks?
How Soffid Can Help
Soffid makes compliance to security standard easier with the broadest set of compliance and security policies that accelerate securing your infrastructure and knowing where the weak points are. We update these policies as standards change and allow you to customize the test and assessment results to better meet your individual needs, as you get a giant head-start on your security policy and framework as well as the flexibility to make it your own.
Sources:
(1) Security Boulevard
(2) Forbes
by Rebeca | Mar 3, 2021 | News, soffid
Intranets offer more than just avenues for communication within your company. They also present employees with a treasure trove of content and services, enabling them to perform better and become more effective.
On the contrary, when employers are forced to deal with unwieldy intranets, be it for lack of features or a cluttered UI, to manage their daily tasks, the negative impact on the company’s bottom line can be huge.
As such, implementing a robust intranet solution can give companies a competitive advantage. In fact, Deloitte research shows that companies with strong internal social and work networks are 7% more productive.
Yet, not all intranets are created equal, and some might not give you as many benefits as other, more consolidated, options.
Intranets were created to increase productivity in the physical workplace, but 2020 showed us that the workplace isn’t tied to a single location. The workplace has now become a concept rather than a specific site.
Yet, there is still the need for a centralized hub where employees can access company information and improve their communication. When employees don’t have access to a neural center to find what they are looking for, the company suffers. Plus, without an intranet, employees will start using their own tools, resulting in data silos and incompatible technologies.
These are some of the features you need to look for in a modern intranet in 2021:
- Intuitive user experience: Intranets shouldn’t look different from other applications and software, and they need to be easy to use.
- Integration with third-party applications: Modern intranets need to integrate with both corporate and consumer applications of all kinds.
- Availability as a mobile application: Modern intranets need to be available as native apps or PWAs to reach employees truly.
- Support for cloud office solutions: Be it Microsoft 365 or Google G-Suite, an intranet needs to work with the office suite your company uses.
- Personalization-ready: Modern intranets need to be able to personalize messages for both departments and users at a granular level.
Intranets connect all of an organization’s teams, systems, and networks elevating your operations to a whole new level. But why open source? Simple, because you need a platform with flexible information architecture. A platform you can tweak as per your company’s needs and unique workflows.
The main benefits of an open source platform for intranets include:
- Lower costs: Open source platforms tend to be more cost-effective than proprietary software.
- Extensibility: An open source intranet can be built into and can be extended to maximize growth.
- Integrability: The open source architecture enables developers to integrate with other platforms without the constraints of a proprietary solution.
- Powerful search: A modern intranet needs powerful search capabilities to be able to sift through all the data enterprise businesses have.
Our new Soffid 3 provides the most intuitive and user-friendly interface, making the transition smooth and convenient and offering advantages for your team.
Shall we talk about your project?
by Rebeca | Feb 24, 2021 | Resources, soffid
After the issuance of movement restriction policies by the government to avoid the spread of coronavirus, organizations had no choice but to send people home. Most were in a hurry to get people up and working from home such that most resulted in advising some people to use their own devices. It is also highly likely that most overlooked the importance of cybersecurity.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals never rest and they are always looking for such opportunities to attack. While you had the IT department take care of cybersecurity issues when working in the office, the problem could have fallen squarely on you now. Not to worry, though, here we enlist 5 tech tips for cybersecurity as you work from.
Presented below are the top three cyber risks that organization need to address:
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- Use of Unsecured Wi-Fi Networks – Employees accessing Company networks using Wi-Fi from popular locations (such as a coffee shop) can be more susceptible to cyberattacks.
- Lack of Cybersecurity Awareness and Training – Ensuring that there is a training program in place for best practices on security is Paramount in defending against cybersecurity threats.
- Lack of Physical Security or Personal Use of Laptops – Leaving work devices in the open, letting non-employees, such as family and Friends, borrow devices for personal use, or using corporate devices to answer personal emails, shop online or visit social media pages, are all examples of risky behaviour that employees may engage in whilst working remotely.
There are a number of ways in which your employees can ensure they stay safer when working out of the office. Make sure you inform your employees of these home cyber security tips.
- Avoid Public Wi-Fi. A lot of people like to work in cafes which have public Wi-Fi. This is a very dangerous way of working because it means that hackers can target your computer if they are on the same network. If your employees work in public places, make sure your employees use personal hotspots or encrypt their web connection. Encrypted web connections help to protect your traffic.
- Use adaptive and multi-factor authentication:
- Device encryption ensure that if a laptop is stolen or lost that hackers can’t get into it. They also help to protect your online accounts.
- Make sure you and your remote working employees use long passwords with multi-characters.
- Add multi-factor authentication processes is also a great way to stay safe.
- Do not use your corporate passwords with third party systems.
- Use Security Protection. If your organization owns laptops that your employees will take home, make sure that good and up-to-date security protection is installed on it.
- It is a good idea to have firewalls, antivirus, device encryption, web filtering, and any other preventative software.
- If your employees are using their own laptops or desktops, then make sure your employees have these security protections on their laptops too.
- Encrypted Emails. Encrypt your emails so that hackers can’t read your business emails. Install applications that ensure the protection of your emails.
- It is also a good idea to ensure your employees know how to spot cyber threats, such as phishing emails, so give them some training on cybersecurity.
- Hide Your Work. If your remote employees are working at a coffee shop, make sure they know to hide their work. Don’t let the people around you see what you are typing or your screen.
- Always keep your work with you, even if you just go to the restroom, because hackers can easily access your information in a matter of minutes.
- Download our free cybersecurity reportto find out about the most critical IT security protections your business needs in place.
Protecting your business from hackers and cybercrime is extremely important, so make sure you implement our 5 cybersecurity tips now.
Remember to ensure your remote employees follow physical security tips too, such as not leaving a laptop in plain sight in their car.
Looking for effective IT solutions? Learn more about how we can help you by contacting us now
