Why is Data so Important for Businesses?

To reinforce the importance of guarding against the security risks to database systems, it’s helpful to refresh our minds about why data is such an important asset for businesses. The following are some of the main ways companies benefit from data:

• Improved decision making—Businesses of all sizes generate data, and they can use that data to make better decisions about ways to find new customers, social media platforms to focus marketing efforts on, and much more.
• Solving problems—Marketing campaigns performing poorly? The data typically has the answers you’re seeking and you can rectify problems based on this knowledge.
• Refining performance—Analytics data helps refine performance in different areas of importance to your business, such as deliveries, or eCommerce experience.
• Understanding customer behavior—Data helps you glean crucial insights about who your customers are, what content they interact with, and what marketing channels they prefer.
• Increasing business efficiency—Analyzing data helps your business eliminate inefficiencies that cost time and money.

Security Risks to Database Systems

Bearing in mind the value of data, it’s no surprise that hackers want to access it. One of the main methods for accessing data is to take advantage of security flaws or weak points in the software you use to manage your data. Here are five of the main security risks to database systems.

Aggregation Attacks

SQL in the main language that business professionals use to query organizational data stored in database management systems (DBMS) such as MS Access, SQL Server, and MySQL. A common SQL operation is aggregation, in which information from multiple tables is combined.

An aggregation attack is an insider attack that occurs when a malicious employee uses aggregation functions to piece together different pieces of non-sensitive information that when combined, become sensitive. The best prevention method is proper control over the permissions granted to database system users.

Inference Attacks

An inference attack is closely related to an aggregation attack. It involves a malicious insider obtaining highly sensitive information from a database without necessarily having the highest access privileges to see that data.

While aggregation attacks depend on the use of aggregation functions to piece together information, inference attacks use the deductive capabilities of the malicious party to piece together information about sensitive data.

Again, proper access control is an information security department’s best friend when it comes to preventing inference attacks.

Lack of Encryption

A surprising number of exploits on database systems arise due to organizations not encrypting sensitive data. While attacks targeting encrypted data do occur, they require far more sophistication than simply accessing unencrypted data. This security risk arises from poorly implemented infosec processes rather than underlying security issues in database management systems.

It’s a good example of the benefit of the tools at your disposal depending on how you use those tools as much as the tools themselves.

The procedure for encrypting an unencrypted database depends on the DBMS your company uses. As an aside, if you store sensitive data in the cloud, it’s always prudent to make sure it’s encrypted. Here is a link to the Oracle page on transparent data encryption, which described how to encrypt an Oracle database.

Injection Attacks

An SQL injection attack is one of the main types of security risks to database systems. Injection attacks typically exploit the interactions between web applications and database systems. A programmer building a web application writes insecure code that is easily exploitable by hackers using valid SQL commands.

Databases store usernames, passwords, and even credit card information belonging to users of web applications. The hacker injects valid, yet malicious SQL commands into entry fields and can gain privileged access, alter data, or view entire databases of sensitive information.

The likes of Sony, Talk talk, and Yahoo have fallen victim to SQL injection attacks. They are a perfect cybersecurity storm of being easy to execute and devastating when successful.

Prevention comes from proper coding—using parameterized statements when constructing the code that passes inputs into SQL statements for database access. From an infosec perspective, web application firewalls and vulnerability assessment tools can detect SQL injection attacks.

Unpatched Exploits

A DBMS like Oracle is a software package that, much like any other software, is vulnerable to exploits. When security loopholes are found in a particular program, the owners of that program scramble to implement fixes as quickly as possible.

Despite the speed at which patches for security exploits are released, a shocking number of data breaches occur because of companies failing to apply patches to their software on time. According to a 2019 survey of IT professionals conducted by Tripwire, unpatched vulnerabilities caused data breaches at 27 percent of organizations.

The obvious solution is to use proper patch management and update all software on time, including database systems. A good vulnerability scanning tool is the friend of any infosec department and should be used frequently.

Closing Thoughts

As with many areas of infosec, the security risks to database systems arise from a combination of human and software weaknesses. Prevention and mitigation of all of these issues is possible and recommended if your business wants to safeguard its important data.

If you enjoyed this article and you’d like me to write an engaging, well-researched article or blog post for your business on any technical IT topic, you can email me now by clicking the below button:

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Information Risk Management

Keeping information secure is crucial for any organization. The costs of damage to or disclosure of sensitive data can catapult a company into a precarious financial situation from hefty compliance penalties, litigation fees, and a damaged reputation. The cost of a minute of downtime on critical IT systems is thousands of dollars per minute. 

Proper risk management helps companies develop a robust information security posture with well-implemented security governance and appropriate due diligence. You can reduce information security risks to an acceptable level by understanding the seven key elements of information security risk management. 

1. Identifying Assets

Assets, in the context of information security, are systems, services, and data essential for specific business processes and tasks. For example:

• An inventory database is an asset that allows a business to properly manage its stock. 
• An internal network service (intranet) is important for allowing employees to easily communicate and share information.
• A web server is an asset that ensures a company’s website is online.
• An eCommerce application is an asset that allows a business to sell goods online. 
• A white paper is an asset that helps a business generate leads or solve a problem.

Businesses need to protect their information assets. Any item deemed valuable needs protection, and the first step of risk management is to identify all your assets.

To consider whether something is an asset, ask what would happen if the asset was lost, exposed, or damaged? The answer will often be an undesirable business outcome, such as compromised security, monetary loss, or loss of competitive advantage. 

2. Valuing Assets

With your information assets identified, it’s important to remember that not all assets need the same level of protection. A breach of archived non-sensitive information is not as costly as a breach of personal customer data. 

Asset valuation is a complex topic in its own right, but it, in essence, attempts to assign a dollar value to all of your information assets. 

3. Threat Awareness

Threats to information security are actions that can cause unwanted consequences for your assets. Such unwanted consequences include data exposure, lost files, and systems crashing.

Threats aren’t only external actions, such as cyber attacks. Threats can be internal from disgruntled employees. Furthermore, threats to information security include accidents, such as fires and human errors.  

4. Understanding Vulnerabilities 

A vulnerability is either a direct weakness in an asset or in an organization’s IT infrastructure that can be exploited. A vulnerability could be a software loophole, an administrative error, or the absence of proper protection for assets, such as an endpoint security solution that protects endpoint devices.  

5. Know Your Exposure

Exposure is the susceptibility of a particular vulnerability to being exploited by a threat within your IT infrastructure. In other words, exposure is the existing potential for harm to your IT assets. An intuitive example of exposure is leaving an Amazon S3 bucket open. The information inside the bucket is open and accessible, however, it’s not actively being exploited yet. 

Good visibility into your organization’s exposure enables you to reduce the surface of possible attacks and put in place the right defenses to mitigate risks. Furthermore, knowing your areas of information exposure is a prerequisite for achieving compliance with regulations, including ISO 27001 and PCI DSS.

6. Measuring Risk

Risk is the likelihood that a given exposure will actually happen, leading to some form of negative outcome for your IT assets. It is a probabilistic assessment that boils down to a simple formula of multiplying a threat by a vulnerability. 

With that formula in mind, you can work on managing risk by either neutralizing the threat or protecting against the vulnerability.

7. Implementing Safeguards

Implementing safeguards is the meat of what many laypeople often consider to encompass cybersecurity. A safeguard is a security control, countermeasure, or defense mechanism that either protects against a threat or removes a vulnerability. Safeguards reduce, mitigate, and/or eliminate the risks from particular information security threats. 

Some examples of safeguards include:

• Putting in place a Security Information and Event Monitoring (SIEM) solution. 
• Applying automated patch management to software
• Reconfiguring your account access controls
• Using anti-virus software

The Cycle of Information Security Risk Management

The distinct elements of information security risk management (assets here are a combination of identification and evaluation) together make up a complete information security risk model. You can view the model as a cycle starting from your assets and making its way back to your assets via all the other elements, as in the below diagram:

Closing Thoughts

The most important thing is to understand these elements and how they interact to make up your organization’s information security risk profile. Implement appropriate information security safeguards and defenses suitable for different assets and their threats, and you’ll achieve the best balance of protection and cost-efficiency. 

If you enjoyed this article and you’d like me to write an engaging, well-researched article or blog post for your business, you can email me now by clicking the below button:

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When you store data or run applications in the cloud, your business is essentially renting computing infrastructure from a cloud vendor. You access the infrastructure through either the Internet or a private network connection. A cloud service provider could have watertight security, but if there’s a lapse or error in your own security processes, there’s a good chance you’ll lose data or get hacked.

This article provides actionable tips for safe cloud storage and more robust cloud security for businesses.  Areas covered include encryption, security configurations, account credentials, and replication.

Tips for Safe Cloud Storage

It’s imperative you keep your sensitive business data secure when using cloud services. You need to secure data as it moves to the cloud (data in transit) and when it’s at rest in the cloud.

Safe cloud storage deserves its own section because backing up data to the cloud is one of the most common use cases of cloud services. Furthermore, most of the major cloud security breaches that make news headlines happen in cloud storage services.

Most reputable cloud vendors provide strong storage controls when the data is already in their systems. However, bear in mind that you can still be vulnerable to data breaches to data at rest in the cloud resulting from poor access controls or bad cloud configuration. A number of high-profile cloud security incidents have occurred because of companies leaving entire buckets of sensitive data open and unencrypted.

Two tenets of cloud data security are confidentiality and integrity.

Encryption is the main method used to achieve data confidentiality. Sending unencrypted files across a network or storing data unencrypted is a recipe for a third party to intercept and/or access the data. Encryption changes the data so that only those with access to a secret key can read the data.

Data is less secure when it’s moving, such as when you’re sending information from on-premise systems to cloud storage services. Encryption needs to be enforced for data in transit using secure network protocols and the latest cryptography standards. You also need to manually enable default encryption for data at rest in cloud services like Amazon S3 to avoid costly and embarrassing data breaches.

Data integrity is all about whether you can trust the data. Digital signatures can be used to ensure data integrity. A digital signature is essentially a stamp that verifies the authenticity of information sent over a network. There are several digital signature services, such as SignNow, that can integrate with your cloud workflow and ensure data integrity on cloud systems.

When using public cloud services, which are normally accessed over the Internet, consider switching to a  dedicated VPN network that lets you securely and privately connect your enterprise network directly to the cloud provider’s network.

5 Best Practices for Cloud Security

1. Proper Account Access Controls

Proper account access controls should include disabling or removing unused accounts. Default cloud accounts used for initially provisioning a cloud service should be deactivated because seasoned cybercriminals typically know the usernames for these accounts. If they know the username, they already have 50% of the information needed to log in to the cloud service.

2. Use the Least Privilege Principle

Another cornerstone of prudent account access controls in the cloud is being aware of the risk from employees unintentionally deleting data they shouldn’t have access to. The principle of least privileges only gives each employee access to the data and resources needed to carry out their duties. The point of using the least privilege principle is to avoid incidents in which someone internally to the organization compromises the privacy or integrity of data.

3. Automate Cloud Security

Automation helps your organization become much more efficient in its cloud security. With the number of cloud services used by companies continuing to grow and the environments becoming more complex, it quickly becomes impractical and even dangerous to do everything manually.

Cloud security automation uses scripting and tools to perform repetitive tasks automatically and on-schedule. Using automation frees up resources, enabling security professionals to focus more on proactive defense measures. Examples of cloud security tasks you can automate are:

• Disabling accounts
• Cleaning up security settings for virtual machines
• Setting up alert severity levels for cloud security tools
• Monitoring configuration files to detect user privilege escalations

4. Segregate Duties

Segregating duties in the context of cloud security means dividing the responsibility for sensitive tasks among two or more individuals. The point of segregating duties for such tasks is to implement internal controls that prevent one person from compromising sensitive data or disrupting business-critical applications. For example, don’t have the same person in charge of multiple aspects of your cloud security administration, such as configuring accounts and security alerts.

5. Defend Against Availability Attacks

Data isn’t the only important business asset at risk in the cloud. A number of types of cyber attacks target the availability of critical business applications and operations, such as company websites.

DDoS attacks are the most well-known availability attacks. Subtypes of DDoS attacks include ping of death and ping flood attacks. You should definitely consider using a cloud DDoS protection solution, such as Cloudflare to defend against availability attacks.

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