Category Archives: Security

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Tips for Preventing Virtual Shoplifters

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E-commerce business models have many advantages over brick-and-mortar retailers, including lower overhead, more flexibility in product and price testing, and more opportunities to manage inventory at optimal levels based on shopper behavior and current web analytics. However, an e-commerce business can’t escape all the realities of merchants with physical storefronts—including shoplifters.

Here are six tips for preventing virtual shoplifters:

Safeguard your platform. An open-source e-commerce platform could make you more vulnerable to hackers. Ensure that you host your site with a platform that uses object-oriented programing language. Ideally, the administrative portions of your site should be completely inaccessible to anyone outside of your organization.

Maximize your SSL strategy. Use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates have become commonplace in online transactions that involve sensitive data. As Rick Andrews from Symantec recently advised in a CIO Magazine article, however, their opportunities can be further maximized—and it may even translate into conversion improvements at customer checkout. “Integrate the stronger EV SSL [Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer], URL green bar and SSL security seal so customers know that your website is safe,” Andrews said.

Additionally, mandate consistent business processes to ensure someone in your company is tasked with staying abreast of the latest changes in the world of online security, and keeping systems current in light of them. In mid-April, for example, the Payment Card Industry Standards Security Council (PCI SSI) announced it found vulnerabilities in the current SSL and TLC (Transport Layer Security) methodologies, exposed in part by Heartbleed and Poodle. Although merchants have until June 30, 2016 to revise their SSL protocol to remain PCI compliant, a business is vulnerable to hackers who are well aware of the opportunities to take advantage of such security “holes,” until the security updates are in place.

Follow PCI compliance standards. In addition to incorporating PCI-compliant secure payment gateways into your e-commerce site to process transactions, confirm that you aren’t storing sensitive customer data (also prohibited by PCI standards)—even if you do so to streamline return procedures.

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While it may extend the length of your checkout and return processes slightly, what your business stands to lose in the form of risk exposure due to stored sensitive data outweighs potential efficiency gains.

Verify card information with addresses. Although e-commerce transactions inherently include “card not present” scenarios, you can still take steps to reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions. Implement address verification systems to detect potential information discrepancies between card information and the customer. Require that the customer input security information shown on the physical card, like the three- or four-digit card verification on the back or front of the card (in the case of American Express).

Set alerts—and pay attention to them.

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Security alerts can detect suspicious activity before it spirals into a full-scale cybertheft—but only if you take them seriously. In the case of the Target data breach, Bloomberg reported that the merchant’s security alerts did sense suspicious activity well before the data breach was underway, but that the threats weren’t taken seriously by technology staff. At minimum, every e-commerce business should have alerts to detect unusually high activity originating from a single IP address, and to flag customers who order multiple times using different cards, in a short period of time.

Install “patches” as soon as they are available.  Your software and operating systems are only secure if they’re current. When new versions of software are released, install them as soon as possible—and immediately, if the update involves a patch developed because a vulnerability was detected.

If you operated a brick-and-mortar business you wouldn’t leave your cash registers unattended or doors unlocked after business hours—but gaps in online security are akin to doing just that when you have an e-commerce business.

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Establish processes and security procedures to ensure that you remain aware of changes in security standards, potential threats and areas of vulnerability. While you may not stop virtual shoplifters and fraudulent transactions entirely, optimizing your site security is your best line of defense.

Malware Threats from Unlicensed Software: The Critical First Step for Cyberrisk Management

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Waking up to find your company on the front page news and at the center of a data breach is every CEO’s worst nightmare—and for a number of businesses, it has become reality. Today, the threats from cybercrime are real and frightening, and the risks are extraordinary. Cybersecurity is an incredibly complex issue and business leaders are grappling with how to best protect their businesses, understand the new business vulnerabilities, and identify what steps they can take to protect themselves and their customers from becoming a victim of cybercrime.

There is a strong case for organizations to put protection from malware at the top of their risk agenda. In the past year, 43% of companies experienced a data breach. The average organization experiences a malware event every three minutes, and the costs of dealing with that malware can be astronomical. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that enterprises spent $491 billion in 2014 as a result of malware associated with counterfeit and unlicensed software.

A threshold step to mitigating risk is gaining an understanding of your own network and if the software you are using is genuine and fully licensed. Unfortunately, many businesses are failing to take this basic and critical first step to protect themselves.

It has long been suspected that there is a connection between unlicensed software and cybersecurity threats. A new study commissioned by BSA | The Software Alliance and conducted by IDC confirms this as fact.

The study compared rates of unlicensed software installed on PCs with a measure of malware incidents on PCs across 81 countries. Given that 43% of the software installed on PCs globally in 2014 was unlicensed, it’s clear that many businesses are at risk. The findings were sobering. The correlation between the use of unlicensed software and malware is even higher than the correlations between education and income, or that between smoking and lung cancer. The implication for governments, enterprises and consumers is clear: assessing what is in your network and eliminating unlicensed software could help reduce the risk of cybersecurity incidents.

Fortunately there are proven best practices available to tackle the challenges around software licensing.  The world class standard for Software Asset Management is ISO/IEC 19770-1:2012.

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The importance of implementing internal controls for legal use of technology, including software, has become so critical that COSO now recommends it in its revised Internal Control – Integrated Framework.

While putting controls in place may sound simple, many businesses are missing this first step.

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Only 35% of companies have written policies requiring the use of properly licensed software. For CEOs, now is the time to start implementing best practices that will help mitigate security risks and avoid your business becoming tomorrow’s news headline. For more information on additional steps you can take, visit BSA’s website.

BSA Global Software Survey

Cyberattacks Targeting Big Companies Up 40%

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Five out of six companies with more than 2,500 employees were targeted in cyberattacks in 2014, representing a 40% increase last year, according to Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Report. But by no means does that imply big businesses are the primary target: 60% of all targeted attacks struck small- and medium-sized organizations.

The spear-fishing and fraudulent email scams deployed in these hacks have also become more effective. Overall, 14% less email was used to infiltrate an organization’s network, yet 2014 saw a 13% increase in attackers as the cause of a data breach, and the total number of breaches rose from 253 in 2013 to 312 in 2014. This notable increase in precision is a clear indication that companies are not updating their defenses to match current threats.

Fortifying against cyberbreach continues to demand even more concerted effort as malicious actors grow more sophisticated, introducing more and better malware to their campaigns. “While advanced targeted attacks may grab the headlines, non-targeted attacks still make up a majority of malware, which increased by 26% in 2014,” Symantec reported. More than 317 million new pieces of malware were created last year, meaning almost a million new threats were released daily.

Changes in the top causes of data breach offer both good and bad news. While 13% more cyberbreaches were caused by attackers and breaches due to insider theft increased 3%, Symantec found that 15% fewer were due to accidental exposure, theft or loss.

Check out the infographics below for more of Symantec’s findings and insights on how hackers operate:

Symantec 2015 Internet Security Threat Report

Symantec Path of a Cyber Attacker

 

Data Protection in the Cloud: Planning for Data Loss and Downtime

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As we brace for another season of tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes and floods, all businesses should be asking, “Is our data protected should disaster strike?” Or more simply, “What happens if we lose our data?”

Sadly, despite the fact that significant portions of the country are at risk for severe weather and other natural disasters, not all businesses are thinking pragmatically about catastrophic data loss and downtime, which can lead to staggering financial losses and impact productivity, reputation, regulatory compliance, and ultimately the bottom line.

According to a global data protection study released in December, enterprises are losing as much as .

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7 trillion annually through data loss and unplanned downtime. Data loss is up 400% since 2012, and two-thirds of the 3,300 organizations surveyed had experienced data loss in the last 12 months. Researchers found that although a high percentage of organizations had disaster recovery plans in place, surprisingly few had implemented data protection practices and fewer than half employed remote, cloud-based data protection. Seventy-one percent of organizations were not fully confident in their ability to recover after a disruption.

If your business is unprepared for a disaster, then act now to improve your resilience and mitigate risk. Plan for natural catastrophes and man-made disasters alike (such as theft, hardware failure, human error, system failure, computer viruses, power failure and accidental deletion).

Disaster preparedness begins with a business continuity plan. This serves as your playbook for staying in business following a disaster and it enables you to restore operations and communications systematically while helping minimize risk. Ask your IT department to incorporate the steps needed to safeguard your IT infrastructure from disaster, including backup and recovery measures.  In today’s highly-regulated environment, having a secure backup and recovery solution that meets the stringent requirements defined by Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, HIPAA, FISMA, PCI, ISO and other regulatory standards is expected.

During this process, develop a clear understanding of where the cloud fits in and how it can help save time, money and resources.

Businesses are increasingly backing up their data and apps in a secure, off-site cloud environment (not in the physical office), because the cloud is faster than other options and typically offers the most protection at the lowest cost.

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Recovery in the cloud requires no travel and no extra hardware, and it offers extreme levels of reliability.

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Should disaster occur, a cloud solution allows the continuously backed up systems to be restored as virtual machines. All of the cloud’s benefits speak to why highly regulated businesses protecting sensitive data are finding that virtualization technologies make it simpler to comply with stringent security and compliance regulations governing electronic storage and access to data.

Here are seven steps to help businesses plan for data loss and downtime:

  1. Identify the risks. List and categorize all natural and man-made threats and their impact on various systems. Ask what would it take to knock out our entire network and how much unplanned downtime can our business sustain?
  2. Inventory IT assets. Which are most critical to maintaining business continuity? What’s our tolerance for loss of those assets? The cost of the response should be balanced against your tolerance for system downtime.
  3. Define goals. In a worst case scenario, how long can our business shut down? Does it need to recover off-site? Define goals in terms of RPO (Recovery Point Objective, “How much data can we lose?”) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective, “How long can we be down?”).
  4. Develop a plan. Include “IT Assets Inventory,” data protection procedures and contingency plans, notification/activation schedules, a list of roles and responsibilities, a list of resource requirements, and details about training provisions. Good plans include maintenance and backup/recovery testing schedules.
  5. Understand the cloud’s benefits. Virtualization technologies make backup and disaster recovery vastly faster, cheaper and easier. The combination of the cloud and the right backup and disaster recovery solution allows for continuous data protection (so the backups always run 24/7/365) as well as consistent compliance and security.
  6. Implement the plan. If executives understand clearly the consequences of system disruptions, you will win their support and funding for contingency policies.
  7. Test the plan. Continuous testing and plan updating helps ensure business survival.