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Category: Startups

acess-control
April 30, 2020

How does access control protect data?

Who should access the company’s data? How to ensure those who attempt access have actually been granted that access? Under which situations to invalidate access to a user with access privileges?

To strongly protect the data, the organization’s access control policy must address these and many other questions.

What is access control?

Access control is a procedure of ensuring that users have the appropriate access to company data or in simple words a selective restriction of access to data.

Authentication is a method used to verify that someone is who they claim to be. Authentication isn’t sufficient by itself to protect data. What is needed is an additional layer, authorization, which verifies whether a user should be allowed to access the data or make the transaction they’re attempting.

Mostly during a data breach, access controls are among the first policies investigated.

If the data could be of any value to someone without the proper authorization to access it, then the organization needs strong access control, especially for businesses with employees who work remotely out of the office and require access to the company data resources and services.

Access control policy: Key considerations

Many of us work in different various environments or say hybrid environments where data moves from on-premises servers or the cloud to offices, homes which can make enforcing access control difficult.

A cultivated access control policy can be adapted dynamically to respond to evolving risk factors.

Based on the risk factor access control rules must be updated, which means that organizations must establish security analytics layers that sit on top of the existing network and security configuration. They need to identify threats in real-time and automate the access control rules correspondingly.

4 Types of access control

Organizations must determine the significant access control model to adopt based on the type and sensitivity of data they’re processing. Legacy access models include discretionary access control (DAC) and mandatory access control (MAC), role-based access control (RBAC) is the most common model today, and the most recent model is known as attribute-based access control (ABAC).

  1. Discretionary access control (DAC)

DAC is a method of assigning access rights based on rules that users specify. Here data owner decides on access. 

  1. Mandatory access control (MAC)

Here people are granted access based on an information clearance. MAC is an approach in which access rights are assigned based on regulations from a central authority.

  1. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

RBAC provides access based on a user’s role and implements key security principles, such as the least privilege and separation of privilege. Thus, someone attempting to access information can only access data that are esteemed necessary for their role.

  1. Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)

In ABAC, each resource and user is assigned a series of attributes. Here, a comparative assessment of the user’s attributes, including the time of day, position, and location, are used to make a decision on access to a resource.

It’s upto organizations to decide which model is most suitable for them based on data sensitivity and operational requirements for data access.

Access control solutions

A number of technologies can support various access control models. In a few cases, multiple technologies may need to work together to achieve the desired level of access control.

Most data spread across various cloud service providers dictates the need to orchestrate a secure solution. There are various vendors providing privilege access and identity management solutions that can be integrated into a traditional Active Directory. 2-way Multi Factor authentication can be a component to further enhance security.

Why authorization remains a challenge

Authorization can still be challenging to determine and perpetually monitor who gets access to which data resources, how they should be able to access them, and under which conditions they have granted access, for starters.

Access control must be continuously monitored, in terms of compliance with the corporate security policy as well as operationally, to identify any potential security gaps. Organizations need recurring vulnerability scans against any application running access control functions and should collect and monitor logs on each access for violations of the policy.

Conclusion

Access control must be considered as a technology infrastructure that uses the most advanced tools which reflect changes in the work environment such as increased mobility, identifies the devices we use and their inherent risks, and takes into consideration the rapidly increasing movement towards the cloud.

April 30, 2020
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April 20, 2020

Why Proxy-Based Firewalls Are Not Enough?

Proxy acts as a gateway between client and server, basically, it is an intermediate server separating end-user from websites on the browser proxy server provides ‘n’ number of functionalities like security, privacy depending on the use case.

If we are using a proxy server, the request made by the end-user is redirected to the proxy server first, and then it is forwarded to the appropriate server. While recording a response, the response is first received by the proxy server and then it is redirected to the end-user.

Most of the users wonder, why to bother a proxy server? Why not directly access the website and record responses.

The reason is, Modern proxy server does much more than forwarding the end-user’s web request all under the name of data security and network performance. Proxy servers act as a firewall and web filter, provide shared network connections, cache up the data for performance. Lastly, the proxy server can high up the speed .

Risks of proxy firewall

We need to be cautious as proxy firewall servers come with huge risks

  • Free proxy server risk:

Using free proxy servers as a firewall can be risky as most of the free proxy servers use ad-based revenue models. Free proxy server firewalls aren’t investing heavily in backend hardware and encryption this leads to performance and security issues. There can be a risk of malware be infiltrated which is intended to steal sensitive information like credit card, system IP, etc

  • Browsing history logs:

Proxy server has your original IP address, and web request information probably unencrypted saved locally, and need to make sure if proxy server is not logging that information or saves this data locally.

If we are using a proxy server with the intent of privacy and all our web request are getting stored possibly in unencrypted format then our main motto of using a proxy server for privacy is lost

  • No encryption:

If we are using proxy servers without encryptions, that is all our web requests are sent to plain text. That is really easy for any cyber-attacker to retrieve sensitive information like user_names and passwords, we need to make sure whatever proxy servers we are using make sure that proxy servers have encryption capability, and strictly adhere to encryption policies.

  • Lack of DNS security mechanism:

In most cases, proxy-based firewalls do not provide a security mechanism for DNS(data server names).it is easy to send infected data embedded in the user’s URL this will ultimately be sent to DNS by proxy ending up infecting DNS securities.

Conclusion:

As primarily proxy-based firewalls are designed to inspect a limited number of protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and DNS this means that there is a possibility of loopholes in traffic and inability to identify threats on nonstandard ports and across multiple protocols. While using proxy we cannot guarantee that DNS queries are directly sent by the client. This also implies that DNS security has to be provided and proxy-based firewalls are not enough for security.

April 20, 2020
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April 1, 2020

Malware detection Methodologies

What is Malware?

A software intent to infect a computer or do any fraudulent activities is called malware. There are various categories that fall under the umbrella of malware, like spyware, ransomware, viruses, worms, and trojans. The code of this software is typically designed by hackers or cyber-attackers who are intended to cause substantial damage to systems or to gain unauthorized access to a network to perform fraudulent activities. Malware is delivered from a link or a file attachment in an email.

Top 5 malware in 2019

  1. Zeus: Modular banking trojan which was designed to record keylogging, and compromise victim’s password.
  2. TrickBot: This is a trojan from the banking domain, and it is dropped by emotes. TrickBot is also known to download the IcedID banking trojan.
  3. Dridex: This is a banking trojan, which uses malicious macros in Microsoft office, with either embedded links or attachments.
  4. Gh0st: This is a RAT used to control infected endpoints. Gh0st is dropped by other malware to create backdoor entries in the network, to get full control.
  5. WannaCry: This is a ransomware crypto worm using the EternalBlue exploit to spread via SMB protocol, which stops the encryption process.

Malware detection Methodologies.?

  1. Virus Definitions: This is the first method conventional antivirus software utilizes to identify the virus. The program looks for signatures to detect new malware. The new malwares are studied for signatures, once the new signatures are confirmed and logged into the database. These signatures are used for future scans to identify viruses.
  2. Heuristic-based detection: This is a common form of detect system algorithms to compare the signs which are logged at the previous stage of analysis, but this can also give incorrect matches or negative matches, i.e software may report it is infected file but actually it is not.
  3. Behavior-based detection: Once the above tests are completed, the system then checks for the behavior of the program running on the system. The software notifies a warning message if the program begins to perform in the listed fashion:
  • Settings of other programs are changed
  • Dozens of files are modified or deleted
  • Remotely connecting to computers

  This is a useful method for finding viruses or any other type of malware that attempts to steal or log information.

  1. Sandboxing.

Sandboxing is a technique where a computer program is restricted to have access to critical system resources and files running on the system. This will act as a secured layer to avoid harming the system by malware. Without sandboxing an application may have unrestricted access to all system files and user data on the system, the software can only have access to files that are available in the same sandbox. If any access is needed to the file which is not present in the sandbox then that permission has to be provided explicitly.

On the other hand, there are drawbacks to this technique, as we can see the change in the performance of software due to limited access to system resources.

Conclusion

From above we can understand what is malware, and how they are segregated in categories, each malware category intended to have different goals. Some are used to choke up the bandwidth of the system, some are for creating loopholes for more malware to enter, some to infect files, etc. And these are really a substantial risk for business and Cyber World and hence it is really important to know malware categories and symptoms of each category for proper actions to be taken against it. It is also important to understand malware so that the necessary precautions should be taken against malware.

April 1, 2020
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March 26, 2020

Why consider using Gitlab over Jira?

This blog gives you a high-level idea about different terminologies used in Jira and GitLab and how we can use the free GitLab features to manage the project.

Below is the mapping of Agile Artifacts to GitLab features –

Process for creating a new project in GitLab

1] Go to Projects -> New Project

Create the Project. E.g. ‘Project1’

2] Go to Boards-> option under Issues.

  1. Click on the ‘Switch Boards’ dropdown
  2. Click on “Create New Board”
  3. Create Issue Board (Release) E.g. ‘Project1 Rel 1.1 Board’

3] Create 2-week Milestone (Sprint)  E.g. ‘Sprint 1’

4] Add current User Stories into this Sprint and start the sprint

5] Configure the Issue Board Columnsto ‘TO DO’, ‘IN DEV’, ‘IN QA’ and ‘DONE’

HOW TO ARRANGE ITEMS ON BOARD (RELEASE WISE)?

1] Go to Boards under Issues

2] Select the Release from the dropdown on Boards

3] In “Search or filter results” text area, you need to type Milestone,

click on =  option.

4] Click on the appropriate Milestone (Sprint) of your project

E.g. Sprint 12

5] Hit enter key – It will filter out the Issues (User Stories) with respect to the Milestone (Sprint)

HOW TO ARRANGE ITEMS ON BOARD MILESTONE (SPRINT WISE)?

1] Go to Labels under Issues -> New Label

2] Go to eachIssue (User Story) and add the Label. 

     E.g. Rel 1.1

3] Go to Boards-> Select the Release from Switch Board drop-down

4] In “Search or filter results” text area, you need to type Label, click on

label:~label option.

5] Press enter – It will filter out the Issues (User Stories) based on the Label

NAVIGATION TO SEE THE BURNDOWN CHART IN GITLAB – 

1] Click on Milestone under Issues- It will show all the Milestones (Sprints) be it Open or Closed.

2] Click on the Milestone (Sprint) you will see the Burndown chart.

Note – If your project is Private then you will land on the page below – 

Workaround – Just make your project as PUBLIC for a few minutes and then again follow step 1, it will load the Burndown chart for you.

NAVIGATION TO MAKE THE PROJECT AS PUBLIC / PRIVATE – 

1] Go to Settings -> General

2] Scroll down, you will see the option “Visibility, project features, permissions”

3] Select the Project visibility drop-down to select the visibility option

E.g. Public, Private, Internal

CREATE THE WIKI PAGE

Just like Confluence, you can create the Wiki pages in GitLab. 

1] Go to Wiki option in the left-hand side pane

2] Click on Create your first page

HOW TO KEEP A TRACK OF PROJECT ACTIVITIES? 

1] Go to Project Overview -> Activity

It gives you the option to see ALL activities, Push Events, Merge Events, Issue events, Comments, etc

Conclusion

This is a quick walkthrough of Gitlab. This is the best solution for companies who want to save the additional cost on the tools to manage the project.

March 26, 2020
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