Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 11 | Page 81

FINAL WORD 5 Manage your vulnerabilities • Have a scanning solution for every network, system, and software type; don’t limit yourself to externally facing IPs. • Scan inside your network, and do black box and static code analysis of your apps. Layer your tools, because no single tool can universally find everything. • Scan, test, and scan again. Have a continual testing process aligned to your development cycles and patch releases of your vendors. • Implement a consolidated reporting platform that tracks all vulnerabilities by system and can produce valuable improvement metrics over time. • Prioritise web application vulnerability management. You can get extremely good guidance from the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Top 10, which describes today’s most critical web application security risks and how to mitigate specific types of attacks. • Automate web application vulnerability management. Allow web application firewalls (WAF) to patch a vulnerability automatically. A WAF requires routine attention by an experienced engineer. Many organisations are opting for managed WAF services versus hiring in-house expertise. • Patch everything monthly, including desktops, laptops and servers, and especially if you are running Windows. Don’t skip important patches, as they will ultimately be required later in a queue chain of dependencies. • Keep it updated. Don’t allow end-of-life software or hardware in your network. • Force updates to Adobe Flash, Oracle’s Java, and don’t allow old “Applications and user identities form around 72% of today’s IT attacks, yet this is not generally reflected in IT budget allocations.” www.intelligentcio.com versions of Internet browsers to run on company computer assets. 6 Ensure you have the required visibility You can’t manage what you can’t see. It’s particularly important to make sure you have the visibility you need into your critical data. It’s important to properly architect, implement and continually manage intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), security information event managers (SIEM), data loss prevention (DLP) systems, and others. These systems need to have access to all parts of your network, systems, data, and data centres, and encrypted and non-encrypted traffic. Pay special attention to visibility within new virtualisation software. “In this new, borderless security landscape, it’s important to know your company’s threat profile.” 7 Consider embracing the dark side, at least briefly If you have an application that could cause significant harm to your business if it were compromised, it’s worth hiring an engineer to try to hack it. If hiring a hacker doesn’t sit comfortably, implement a public bounty programme. 8 Use the experts to help you Compliance and incident response are two key areas for using the guidance of experts. • Security as a Service is a great option for effectively managing high-risk controls that require immediate response by highly-skilled engineers. • Test the effectiveness of your controls and control operators. Don’t let poorly designed controls or inadequate operators become the culprit. • Get help in the event of a breach. Get the professional experience you need after a breach so that they can “Few organisations today have the internal resources required to fight cyberthreats on their own.” make the important decisions that could have a material impact on the outcome of the incident. 9 Have a DDoS strategy The DDoS attack landscape has shifted rapidly. No longer are complex, expensive attacks launched only at high-value targets. Today’s reality includes bots with plug-and-play attacks that criminals can rent at low cost, as well as IoT botnets that are easy to make and capable of launching terabyte-per-second attacks. Having a DDoS plan is critical. 10 Tell the ‘big shots’ about the likelihood and effect of a breach Communicate the possibility and subsequent effect of a breach to your board of directors, senior management and others who need to be in the know. They need to be armed with this information rather than being hit with the reality of a breach that they never imagined. Properly done, this should also support your budget requests. Anton Jacobsz, Managing Director at Networks Unlimited, a value-added distributor of F5 in Africa, concludes, “Few organisations today have the internal resources required to fight cyberthreats on their own. They need intelligence from outside sources, and this is where the Networks Unlimited partnership with F5 can help. F5 was founded 20 years ago and understands applications and the network at the deepest levels. Together with its threat research and intelligence team, F5 Labs, the company works to provide the security community with threat intelligence about current cyberthreats and future trends to help them stay abreast of the security landscape.” n INTELLIGENTCIO 81