Remote access security has become a burning topic lately, thanks to the global pandemic. Security, risk and compliance managers face a new challenge: How to reinforce the security measures as to access control in remote work conditions. While organizations have realized that working remotely is the only way to ensure business continuity, the remote access threats to IT infrastructure have loomed large. 

Remote Access is especially important for organizations that are spread across different geographies. Different geographies falling under different time zones in turn have different challenges. There is an ambiguity about whom to give the privileged access to which system at what time and for what purpose. As a result, cyber risks are increasing exponentially. Malicious insider threats and third-party IT risks pose serious threats.  

Why do cyber risks increase in remote work conditions?

Remote Access has resulted in various emerging scenarios resulting in increased IT complexities. 

Among them, these are predominant: 

• Weak or inadequate access control policies cannot ensure that all the accesses happening in the enterprise IT environment are authorized. Malicious actors misuse this loophole and compromise privileged accounts.

• Absence of robust end-user validation mechanism like Multi-factor authentication fails to identify authorized and genuine users accessing critical systems in the enterprise network. Suspicious and unreliable third-party users remain unidentified because of this.

• Employees access business-critical applications with ‘always-on’ privileges. There is absence of access control framework such as access based only on ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do’ basis or granular access controls. 

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What could be done?

To get over the IT security risks and challenges in remote work conditions, the global IT security community requires a robust solution that could control and manage every task happening remotely. There is an urgent need for a unified governing engine. A centralized access control framework that could reinforce rule and role-based privileged access control can significantly reduce malicious insider risks. 

To address these emerging challenges, ARCON has developed a robust solution: Global Remote Access (GRA)

This solution ensures a secure enterprise IT environment by reducing the apparently unproductive hours of IT operations like time taken to respond to functional glitches raised by the end-users. Not only that, while permitting users for privileged rights, the hours lost during the transition can be eradicated with the automated GRA tool. Moreover, the privilege elevation happens in a secure manner. It enhances the enterprise IT lifecycle management by managing every possible remote assistance provided to the end-users.

Key Benefits

 Global Remote Access comprises several benefits discussed below: 

• The IT admins can simplify the task of tracking the end-user activities and generate a report of all the remote activities performed on each and every system.

• The IT admins can process a remote session only after an approval and user validation check done by the tool. However, the admins possess the rights to pause or terminate the access rights if any anomaly is suspected. The duration of the elevated rights can be extended if required.

• Any kind of confidential file transfer is always restricted unless the end-users request for it on valid operational ground. It indirectly prevents chances of data loss. Once the process is over, the file access rights are revoked immediately to prevent unnecessary ‘extra-time’ privilege.

• GRA supports generation of video logs of every remote session and thereby helps in session analysis regularly and in audit trails.

• During situation-based requirements, the administrators need not reveal the login credentials to the end-users who are given elevated access rights for any application/ system for a specified time. It helps to follow the principle of least privilege and avoid excessive standing privileges.

• GRA helps IT admins to remotely enable password rotation policy for the end-users frequently. It ensures least intervention and thereby prevents every unauthorized access.

Conclusion 

ARCON Global Remote Access (GRA) solution is an effective solution today for enterprises to manage and control remote users across different geographies. In order to ensure a secured remote connection to their designated desktop or laptop from outside the IT infrastructure, GRA is the best option to prevent the IT risks that arise from Work From Home (WFH) conditions. 

Security has become one of the major concerns for almost all organizations nowadays. They have to undertake a number of measures to ensure their systems remain protected from any threats or intrusions. However, hackers and thieves always find a new way to break the security layer and enter the company’s network. This is where User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) can help companies out.

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard about UBA before. We will learn here about what this concept is, how it helps companies in increasing security and its effects on decision making. Therefore, you will be able to understand UBA in and out. Moreover, you can then move on to implement it for your purpose.

Without further ado, let’s dig into the details and know more about UBA.

What Is UBA?

User Behaviour Analytics as the name itself describes what precisely the method focuses on, i.e., the behaviour of a user in certain situations. Basically, UBA monitors all the activities of a user to interpret any diversions from their usual functioning. This includes observing actions like:

• Network activity
• File accesses
• App launches
• Downloads

It is almost similar to how the firewalls and antiviruses work. Like they detect untrusted entries into the system, UBA identifies unusual behaviour of users in an organization. The significant difference between the two is pattern formation. Where firewalls and antiviruses simply look out for code bits, UBA forms general patterns in the users’ activities. Thus, it is able to quickly catch any abnormal movements within the network or the system.

Now, let’s see why more businesses are nowadays moving towards UBA instead of other security measures.

How can UBA help Businesses?

UBA must be providing some unavoidable benefits to organizations. That is why they have become more interested in this shielding concept. You must learn about these perks of implementing UBA so that you can use it for your purpose and make your business’s network and system more secure.

To understand the benefits, you should first be aware of the current security breach trends. The two main reasons why companies face security violations are:

• Remote Workforce: As more people have begun working from ‘outside the office area,’ they tend to use unsecured networks. Even if the employees secure their home networks, open connections from a coffee shop or a restaurant can’t be guarded. This gives an easy way for hackers to enter into their computers and ultimately to the organization’s system.
• Compliance: Every organization ensures that their employees are following their codes of conduct for security. However, the remote working has put a halt to it. Employees use different devices to access the business’s data. While this makes their work easy, it becomes difficult for the company to assure compliance towards security practices. It again provides easy access for the intruders to enter the systems and get what they want.

Now, these issues can’t be solved with regular inspection because by the time the checking will take place, the hacker would have already done their work. Plus, these intruders look like just another user in the regular records. That is why it will be difficult even for an IT expert to track them.

However, when we talk about UBA, it can conveniently handle both of these problems. It goes deep into the regular activities of every user to create a pattern. Through this, it is able to instantly detect and block an unusual action taken from the profile of that user. In short, the intruders don’t look like a general user to the technology, making it easy to track them.

UBA affecting Decision Making

Every organization has to take several security decisions every now and then. In this case, they won’t be able to take proper actions if they won’t know any intrusion is taking place. Hence, User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) plays a critical role in the company.

This technology can help security experts in decision making by alerting them of all the wrong activities going around the company’s system and network. Here are some of the general decision making advancements that can be seen with the implementation of UBA.

#1 Insider Threats

Insider threats are when someone from the organization itself is involved in the intrusion. It can be an employee or a group of employees. Usually, they either have personal motives, or they get paid to get the information out from the company’s system. Whatever may be the case, insider threat is the most significant danger to any business.

UBA here helps the system in looking after each employee’s actions. So when they access something they usually don’t, the system gets alerted. This way, problems like data breaches, privilege abuse, sabotage, and policy violation can be avoided at all scales. Plus, the experts can decide what to do with that specific employee.

#2 User Creation Or Permission Changes

Intruders sometimes create new “super users” or change the permissions for existing users to make their work more convenient. Any regular employee may not be able to notice it only until the data is gone or the problem becomes significant. But, on the other hand, UBA can easily track these changes and alert the security team about them.

Due to this early warning, the team can take action on time and avoid the intrusion altogether. The experts can even take proper measures to secure their systems from such invasions in the future.

#3 User Accounts Compromised

Employees can be too careless when it comes to security. Even though proper firewalls and antiviruses may be installed on their systems, sometimes these measures aren’t enough. This mostly happens when they themselves install malicious software on the device.

UBA can be of real help here because it can detect the changes in users before the malware creates significant losses. Therefore, security experts will know that one of their users’ accounts have been compromised, and they have to take proper action against it. This risky profile detection is highly beneficial in the current remote working environment.

#4 Access to Protected Data

UBA also keeps an eye on the protected data of the company. It tracks all users who regularly access the files and use them. So if someone new or unauthorized tries to get into the protected data, it will generate alters. This will help the security experts know that their confidential information has been accessed by someone it shouldn’t be.

Here, they can take proper actions and protect the files further so that no such intrusion will happen again. Moreover, they can keep an eye on certain loopholes in the security to keep the system more secure.

Conclusion

Nowadays, no big or small scale company is left hidden from the eyes of intruders and hackers. That is why every organization must take proper security measures to ensure their systems don’t get compromised. Here, the UBA serves the purpose efficiently. It helps the companies in keeping track of their users’ behaviour so that any unusual activities can be caught on time.

This way, the security experts can take the right action on time to avoid any significant damages. Further, the technology will also help them with their decisions made on the security aspect of the organization, ensuring no such intrusion takes place again in the future. Therefore, providing complete protection even against unknown and modern threats to the company.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.