Safety First

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Enterprises, and consumers alike, need to take safety measures to ensure their data is protected from cyber criminals. Vibin Shaju, Director, Pre-Sales, McAfee tells The Integrator about the various safety measures that can be taken at each step to safeguard and maintain data integrity

Q1. What security measures can enterprises adopt for transitioning to cloud environment?

A1. Cloud is an extension to enterprise network and so is the security. Organisation is responsible for securing cloud workloads not the cloud provider. Security planning should be in line with the cloud adaptation plans to tackle cyber risks.

Q2. What possible security solutions should enterprises consider for smarter incident response?

A2. Above the solutions, it’s the readiness of the people which is key for incident response. Stakeholders needs to be trained on how to respond to an incident by constant practice like table top exercises, mock drills, etc. Solutions should complement these tasks, making the process faster.

Q3. To enhance endpoint security, what steps should enterprises take?

A3. Endpoint security has gained a lot of traction recently with more attacks targeting end users. Enterprises should add additional modules like machine learning, static analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI) complimenting the traditional engines for detecting targeted malwares. Intelligent sharing is key across endpoint, to share the threat data across enterprise, making the solution smarter and faster overtime. Securing fixed machines while listing solutions is also highly recommended.

Q4. With Big Data comes big security concerns. How can enterprises safeguard data integrity?

A4. Data Integrity will always be a critical part of data management. We have a field term Garbage In = Garbage Out. Therefore, data Integrity should be enforced at the source to the greatest extent possible, to avoid unnecessary work at the end.

Q5. How can enterprises identify the security gaps and take remedial actions?

A5. Knowing your organisation is the key in identifying the gaps. Pushing the logs and vulnerability information to a correlation engine will give indicators of abnormal activity. Having this data mapped against threat intelligence feeds will enrich the information. A threat hunter, with an AI tool to assist, can identify the gaps and issues faster to take proactive measures of security. There are various ways, but the key is to have the processes in place to have them running continuously.

Q6. With consumers connected 24/7 through smartphones, how can identity and privacy protection be ensured?

A6. Mobile threat is on the rise. McAfee Labs detected over 16 million mobile malware infestations in the third quarter of 2017 alone, nearly double the number we saw a year earlier. Being aware of the apps to use and the permissions to be granted is the place to start. Vendors like McAfee provide consumer mobile protection solutions that assist users to take the right decision and protect from mobile malwares that can potentially compromise the devices. While connecting these devices to the enterprises, it is key that proper checks be enforced before granting permission to the critical network; and keeping business data separate from personal data.

Q7. How will GDPR impact cyber security and data privacy/integrity?

A7. The EU GDPR marks a turning point in the policymaking arena due to one fundamental premise. Under the GDPR, individuals have the right to privacy and to control what happens to their data. This means all personally identifying information (PII), that a company uses, is now under the control of the individual and companies must comply with all requests and permissions regarding an individual’s PII. It is quite clear that GDPR is touching the fundamentals of data handling, whether it is protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss, destruction or damage of data. GDPR reinstates the fact that cybersecurity is the business enabler.