the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has taken proactive steps to enforce cybersecurity standards across Regulated Entities (REs). With its Annexure-A mandates, SEBI aims to create a resilient security posture within the securities ecosystem. 

But compliance is no longer just a checkbox. It’s a continuous process of proactive risk management, zero-trust enforcement, and identity security. And that’s where ARCON’s access control solutions become essential. 

What is SEBI and whom it is meant for? 

SEBI is the primary regulatory authority for the securities and commodity markets in India. Established in 1988 and given statutory powers in 1992, SEBI’s main objectives are to protect the interests of investors, promote the development of the securities market, and regulate its functioning.  

The roles and responsibilities of SEBI include:  

• Regulating Stock Exchanges: Ensuring fair practices and transparency in the stock markets.  

• Protecting Investors: Implementing measures to safeguard investors’ interests and investments.  

• Promoting and Regulating Self-Regulatory Organizations: Overseeing entities that regulate their own members.  

• Prohibiting Insider Trading: Preventing unfair practices like insider trading.  

• Conducting Investigations and Enforcing Regulations: Investigating violations and enforcing compliance with securities laws. 

The regulatory authority of SEBI serves multiple stakeholders in the securities market:  

• Investors: SEBI protects the interests of investors by ensuring fair practices and transparency in the securities market. This helps investors make informed decisions and safeguards them from fraudulent activities.  

• Issuers: Companies that issue securities (like stocks and bonds) benefit from SEBI’s regulations, which ensure that they can raise capital in a fair and efficient manner.  

• Intermediaries: This includes brokers, mutual funds, and other market participants who facilitate trading and investment. SEBI regulates these intermediaries to ensure they operate in a fair and transparent manner.  

• Stock Exchanges: SEBI oversees stock exchanges to ensure they function smoothly and maintain market integrity.  

• General Public: By maintaining a stable and transparent market, SEBI indirectly benefits the public by contributing to overall economic growth and stability. 
  

The Need for Robust Compliance in the Securities Market 

Brokerage firms, stock exchanges, asset management companies, and other REs process massive volumes of sensitive financial and personal data daily. To protect this high-value ecosystem, SEBI has emphasized: 

• Implementation of Zero Trust architectures 

• Strong authentication mechanisms 

• Secure data protection and encryption protocols 

• Rigorous privilege management and monitoring 

• Real-time insider threat detection 

Non-compliance may not only invite penalties but also erode investor confidence and business continuity. 

How ARCON Empowers SEBI-Regulated Entities 

ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) plays a crucial role in ensuring compliance with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulations. Here are some key points on how PAM contributes to SEBI compliance:  

• Enhanced Security: PAM helps in securing privileged accounts, which are often targeted by cybercriminals. By managing and monitoring these accounts, organizations can prevent unauthorized access and potential data breaches.  

• Access Control: SEBI regulations require strict control over who can access sensitive information. PAM enforces the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users only have access to the information necessary for their roles.  

• Audit and Monitoring: PAM solutions provide detailed logs and audit trails of all activities performed using privileged accounts. This is essential for demonstrating compliance during SEBI audits and for investigating any suspicious activities.  

• Policy Enforcement: PAM helps in enforcing security policies related to privileged access. This includes password management, session monitoring, and real-time threat detection, which are critical for maintaining compliance with SEBI guidelines.  

• Risk Management: By implementing PAM, organizations can identify and mitigate risks associated with privileged access. This proactive approach helps in maintaining a secure environment and adhering to SEBI’s risk management requirements. 

Conclusion 

Compliance with SEBI is not just a regulatory checkbox—it’s a strategic imperative. ARCON’s cybersecurity solutions offer a comprehensive toolkit for aligning with SEBI’s mandates. With proven capabilities to Predict, Protect, and Prevent, ARCON ensures enterprises’ access governance strategy is future-proof and audit-ready. 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) technology is an indispensable tool for building the foundation for Zero Trust security and critical for ensuring workforce and IT administrative experience. Therefore, it is important to align IAM technology with the latest trends in IT security, necessary to meet the emerging needs and use case requirements. 

While ARCON organizes mindshare programs all over the world with its esteemed customers and partners to understand emerging needs, active participation and interaction at global conferences paves the way to learn, observe, and understand new demands, trends, and expectations from security and risk management leaders.  

Having taken part in some of the biggest events like Gartner Security and Risk Management summits, GISEC event, KuppingerCole’s European Identity Cloud conference among many others, ARCON has identified the top five trends that are shaping the future of IAM technology. 

Let us delve deeper into it. 

(I) Convergence of IAM 

Technological convergence is all about integration, merging or blending of two or multiple technologies to create a new product. It can replace single-function technologies and provide an alternative product offering. 

It offers convenience to users and admins, saves time, and energy. For business owners, understanding technological convergence can increase their organization’s competitiveness. 

The convergence of Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a significant trend in the cybersecurity landscape today. It matters a lot to both the enterprises and vendors because of – 

• Blurring Boundaries: Extensive remote workforce and cloud adoption has blurred the lines between ordinary users and highly privileged users. As a result, practices from PAM are migrating to IAM space creating demands for mergers. SRM leaders want a single pane of glass for administering IAM, PAM, IGA, MFA and SSO use cases.  

• Enhanced Controls: IAM solutions now rigorously monitor user activity, enforce least privilege principles, and experiment with just-in-time access. So why not just merge with PAM? 

• Mandatory Authentication: One of the top security and monitoring features of PAM – Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is becoming a standard in IAM deployments resulting in mergers. 

• Zero Standing Privileges: Some IAM implementations grant no permanent special permissions, ensuring all access to sensitive areas is just-in-time (JIT) access. 

ARCON solution: Converged Identity 

(II)  Endpoint Privilege Security 

The endpoint security is no longer confined to detecting malware on endpoint but also to controlling and monitoring endpoint privileges. The attack surface increases significantly if there are no role and rule-based controls to regularize access to business-critical applications from endpoints. The challenge increases since the rising number of remote workforce access applications and cloud resources outside the perimeter of an organization. Against this backdrop, SRM leaders are looking to complement PAM with an added layer of Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) security.  

ARCON solution: Endpoint Privilege Management 

(III) Hassle-free On-boarding/ Deboarding for Privileged Accounts  

It is a common administrative process to create privileged accounts and onboard privileged identities whenever necessary. However, managing these privileged accounts has been challenging due to the proliferation of the number of privileged accounts. Reasons like “domino” effect or shift of jobs (transfer), or new use cases, the number of dormant accounts pile up, so do privileged identities. It poses huge risks to the enterprise data assets as ungoverned accounts could be the source of a data breach, data abuse or cyber espionage. 

As a result, demand for automated and hassle-free onboarding and deboarding have gained momentum. Most of the SRM leaders look for automated onboarding of all privileged accounts from all IT environments such as: 

• Microsoft Active Directory   

• Amazon Web Services  

• Azure Active Directory  

• Google Cloud Platform 

Automated onboarding of privileged identities process involves the use of technology to streamline the integration of privileged accounts into an organization’s security infrastructure. This process typically includes the discovery, management, and monitoring of privileged accounts to ensure they are securely managed from the moment they are created. 

By automating the onboarding of privileged identities, organizations can reduce administrative overhead, minimize the risk of human error, and ensure that no system is left unmanaged. It is a crucial part of a robust identity governance strategy, especially in complex IT environments. 

ARCON solution: Privileged Access Management 

(V) Automation 

Automation in the IT security industry refers to the use of technology to perform recurring security tasks with minimal human intervention. It is designed to improve efficiency, reduce human error, and enhance the accuracy of security operations. Hence, there is an escalating demand for it in the industry, especially because infrastructures and networks grow both in size and complexity. 

The rise of automation in IT security is driven by several factors. Here are some key reasons: 

• Defensive Capabilities: Automation focuses on enhancing defensive capabilities, such as security operations center (SOC) countermeasures. By automating repetitive tasks, security teams can respond more efficiently to threats and incidents. 

• Identity and Access Management (IAM): Labor-intensive activities like IAM and log activity reporting have huge benefits from automation. It streamlines processes, reduces manual errors, and ensures consistent enforcement of access controls. 

• Changing Attack Patterns: AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning are used to stay ahead of evolving attack patterns. Automation helps security professionals adapt quickly to new threats and vulnerabilities. 

(V) Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) 

The industry leaders continuously try to stay updated so that they can offer the best of the best IT security infrastructure to their organizations. However, vulnerabilities are unpredictable. Hence, to stay unaffected by any unprecedented incident, organizations are now looking for robust ITDR (Identity Threat Detection and Response) mechanisms. It is one of the evolving trends as there is a massive sprawl of identities that includes employees, third parties and vendors. Hence, the source of threat is always unpredictable. 

To build a proactive security posture, ITDR is emerging as one of the top requirements. Organizations are looking to move a step ahead of conventional IAM practice and embrace ITDR capabilities. Embedding ITDR capabilities with IAM and PAM systems helps security pros to identify real-time security risks and mitigate threats. The reasons behind the same are: 

• ITDR comprehends the zero-trust approach once embedded with IAM and PAM systems, and it allows IT security professionals to verify anomalous profiles (IDs) within the network continuously.  

• Implementation of ITDR capabilities helps to mitigate identity-based threats. It identifies identity-centric threats in real-time and takes adequate measures to build a proactive security posture which ensures business resilience. 

• ITDR helps to identify anomalous behavioral profiles in both on-cloud and hybrid work environments and enables security leaders to take an appropriate measure by remediating risks. ITDR offers 360-degree threat insights over all identities that deviate from the sanctioned baseline activities.  

Hence, the demand for ITDR is skyrocketing. Implementing ITDR capabilities amidst more digital identity-based threats is important to reinforce a robust IAM posture. 

ARCON solution: Privileged Access Management 

Conclusion 

Following trends in IT and IT security industry is crucial to inspire innovation, have competitive advantage, and meet customer expectations. The above-mentioned trends identified by ARCON, if followed judiciously and strategically, can control, manage, and mitigate IT security risks in the long run. 

The requirements for having a holistic Identity and Access Management (IAM) approach have increased significantly in the recent past. Decentralized IT setups with distinct human and non-human digital identities, zero trust adoption, and the proliferation of SaaS applications and multi-cloud environments as well as complex identity-based functional use cases that can lead to insider and third-party threats, have all led to the construction of robust perimeter security around each digital identity. 

Every IT infrastructure, such as on-prem, hybrid, private/public clouds, and multi-clouds, are continuously accessed by numerous and distinct identities during different hours for different purposes. Therefore, improving IAM infrastructure is no longer an option but is mandatory to ensure adequate control of identities, i.e.  every digital identity accessing business and infrastructure assets at the right time for the right purpose. Because different identities constantly interact with critical applications, secrets, and information of critical importance, including the network and infrastructure devices, a holistic IAM practice is a must to thwart identity misuse and abuse related threats. 

In this context, building an identity fabric goes a long way towards providing the framework for secure and seamless IAM practice. A well-architected identity fabric provides complete visibility into the identity system and provides adequate safeguards against IT threats like account takeover, insider attacks, and third-party risks.

Let us find out what are the 5 key components to build an identity fabric

• Centralized engine to manage multiple and distinct digital Identities

In a typical IT setup, organizations must control and manage numerous kinds of digital identities. There are:

•  Human Identities (Named and shared identities)
•  Non-human identities (for software bots, workloads on cloud and various automated services)
• Cloud identities (DevOps toolchains, SaaS applications)

It becomes a herculean task for IT administrators to administer and govern hundreds of identities in a distributed and complex IT environment.  Adding to woes, the fragmented IAM approach, i.e., standalone IAM, PAM, IGA solutions to administer access management use cases results in decentralized controls and decentralized polices. 

Therefore, the first requirement, to build a holistic IAM approach, and construct identity fabric is to have a centralized mechanism in place that can administer all kinds of digital identities. So, it is important for IAM pros to move towards the converged IAM approach.  Convergence of Identities builds a comprehensive and centralized approach towards the major functional areas of Identity Access Management (IAM) space. It nullifies the necessity of multiple solutions to manage distinct identities available in an IT setup and combines all the different dimensions and requirements of identity and access management in one platform. It includes identity access policy framework, identity governance, and even seamless monitoring.

• Policy Enforcement

The “who, what, where, when, how, or why” parameters build the base of a secure policy in an IT environment. Before enforcing a policy in the IT setup, it is important to define the policy, explain it to the users, apply it to the respective users and build a secure IT environment. A standard identity fabric is built by enforcing a standard and desirable IT policy for every digital identity available in the IT environment. Occasionally, IT policies that are applied to a group of identities, are categorized automatically as per roles and access limitations of the users.

Identity access control policy includes the below parameters:

• Creation of identities (auto onboarding of digital identities from source of truth such as HR application, active directory, Azure AD, AWS EC2 instance, GCP) 
• Categorization of identities
• Monitoring the identities
• Interaction with the identities
• Execution of rules with the identities

Policy enforcement of digital identities may also address specific technical interactions or requirements such as which protocols to accept, which ports to use, or details about connection timeouts.

• Entitlement Management

Entitlement management of digital identities is a mechanism that administers, allows, enforces, and revokes digital identity access permissions. In a standard identity fabric, the privilege authorizations, access rights, and permissions are the prerequisites of identity entitlement management.

The purpose of entitlement management is to execute the predefined IT access policies for the structured/unstructured data, devices and servers. This can help eliminate potential human errors, especially while ensuring the right users have right access to the right systems, networks, applications, and devices. At the same time, it manages what the users should be barred from.

Due to the continuously changing workflow, the user access rights and requirements keep on altering. While it is essential for the users to have access to the systems and applications for uninterrupted IT operations, at the same time security cannot be ignored to prevent any unauthorized access. In fact, with a standard identity fabric, organizations can manage identity access of both insiders and outsiders. Entitlement management systems in identity fabric can:

• Define user roles
• Manage end-user hierarchies and workflow management 
• Define and manage permissions of users (granular controls, just-in-time access)
• Allow and revoke user privileges based on requirements
• Manage complexities of allowing and denying access control mechanisms
• Implement different access control paradigms, e.g., data-driven approaches, role-based approaches etc.

• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

Authenticating users before allowing the desired access is one of the basic IT security steps followed by the IT administrators in a distributed IT environment. To protect confidential data assets and critical servers from unauthorized and suspicious access, authentication mechanism plays a pivotal role. Every category of identity in an IT setup requires some kind of authentication to remain ‘authorized’ before any desired access. This authentication mechanism could be categorized based on the criticality of the identity. For example, 

• A general non-privilege user can have two-factor authentication
• A privileged user with a privileged identity can have multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• A cloud identity with access to highly confidential cloud resources require adaptive authentication mechanism to predict and prevent sophisticated attacks

To be precise, Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) provides additional and adequate layers of protection to the critical systems and applications. It verifies the authenticity of the identity in multiple layers before allowing access to the desired server, application, or target device.

AI-based adaptive authentication mechanism, on the other hand, is based out of the experience of past user behaviour which mostly happens through geo location, IP address and typing speed. These aspects determine whether the user activity has happened through an authentic environment. This is more beneficial for the organizations that follow hybrid work models where too many users remotely access critical systems and applications for seamless IT operations.

• Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

Poor governance of identities is one of the reasons behind the increase of identity-based threats in the recent past. Every identity in the IT infrastructure has its individual role and thus governing them continuously can build a comprehensive IT security infrastructure. A standard identity fabric with the help of identity goveranance can ensure the right user access to the right resource at the right time for the right purpose. Thereby, it maintains a secure access control framework in every layer of IT setup and protects the confidential IT assets from breaches and unauthorized access. 

          IGA ensures provisioning and deprovisioning of identities: For example: 

• Running on-demand and detecting all digital identities
• Corelating with existing on-boarded users
• Classifying accounts into local domain/ privileged/ non-privileged
• Deprovisioning dormant accounts
• Handling transfer use cases

Conclusion

The IAM functional needs are evolving continuously. As a result, the necessity for a holistice IAM approach is gradually increasing. These five key components discussed above build an identity fabric that not just ensures complete control of the identities but also enables seamless administration.

The first quarter of 2023 witnessed large scale layoffs in the technology domain across the globe. More than three hundred thousand people were handed over pink slips. And there can be few more numbers that may be unaccounted for as such massive layoffs lead to “domino” effect.

Such incidents lead to mental stress and uncertainties among the employees and their family members. For few it results in frustration and for another few it results in a revengeful attitude. Employees may feel left out, unrecognized and turn their frustration into vengeance.

But the bigger risk is Identity-based threats

While the objective of layoffs is cost reduction and increased profitability, it could turn out to be counterproductive exercise for an organization if the Identity Access Management (IAM) mechanism is fragile.

Let’s consider some scenario-based risks due to poor IAM implementation

• Think of the risks and uncertainties that linger around the enormous number of digital identities that are no longer active in the IAM systems. Daily hundreds of identities interact with hundreds of cloud applications, including legacy applications. If those identities are not deprovisioned on time, that could result in account take over, social engineering and other forms of insider threats. 
• On the other hand, if this enormous number of identities are deprovisioned manually, there could be chances of human errors and it could be time-consuming, eventually leading to utter chaos.
• Risks multiply if there are dormant accounts or any orphaned account that remain undetected for longer period and any disgruntled insider out of vengeance misuses the accounts. Unless the provisioned accounts are not deprovisioned on time, malicious insiders, suspicious third-parties or even hacktivists can misuse them for compromising IT assets.
• Adding to the woes, if any of these identities are privileged identities, then the outcome can be catastrophic. There are many privileged entitlements on cloud, for example, administrative access to cloud consoles, critical applications, DevOps tool chains among other cloud resources. In addition, in on-prem IT set-up, there are many administrative privileged identities that have to access to network devices, databases and servers. Any sort of misuse or abuse of such identities can bring the entire IT operations to a standstill.
• Lastly, it’s not just data loss or financial loss. The organization could face non-compliance financial penalties from the global IT standards and regulatory compliance bodies that demand secure and authorized logins to every critical account. 

How to Mitigate the Risks?

Automation is the key to mitigate the security threats from orphaned accounts, and deprovisioned accounts. This is the age of automation and organizations are continuously transforming their IT infrastructure to hybrid models or/ and adopting SaaS (Software as a Service) models. As a result, provisioning of user accounts for multiple applications happens regularly to enhance productivity and operational efficiency.

However, too many user accounts create complexities in managing large and distinct identities. It requires utmost attention when it comes to ever-increasing number of SaaS applications because of its vulnerabilities and most of the time unmanaged identities become the intrusion doors for anomalies. Similarly, while laying off employees, especially those working remotely, organizations tend to take unlimited time in deprovisioning their identities. It increases the numbers of dormant/orphan accounts and the chances of compromising those accounts.

Modern enterprises seek an automated solution that can provision and deprovision all types of identities including human identities, machine identities, and privileged identities without human intervention.

Converged Identity Approach

Not just privileged identities, modern IAM infrastructure equally demands utmost security of any named identity, shared identity, machine identity, bot identity, API identity, and cloud identity. Converged Identity platform offers comprehensive visibility over all sorts of identities and is believed to be the future of Identity Access Management (IAM) initiatives.

So, considering the above scenarios, what today’s IAM pros need is a single glass pane that shows the status of every identity in real-time. ARCON’s Converged Identity platform helps to give an overview of how many different identities are there in an IT setup at any point of time. The IT administrator can have a clear overview of:

• Total number of digital identities (both human and non-human)
• Total number of active identities
• Number of privileged identities
• How many dormant identities
• Total number of disabled users & suspended users
• Number of departments and user groups
• Total number of business assets & infrastructure assets
• Overall login records
• Day & month-wise login records
• Most accessed resource/ application

In short, CI (Converged Identity) offers comprehensive mapping of all sorts of identities. 

In the current mass scale lay off scenario, as discussed above, most of the organizations seek a holistic and comprehensive IAM security approach in the most easy-to-use and secure manner. The future of IT security stands tall with ARCON’s Converged Identity approach because the solution: 

• Manages every identity from a centralized location to detect and prevent unauthorized access
• Provisions/ Deprovisions both business assets (e.g. Web applications), infrastructure assets (e.g. OS or network devices) and the users
• Ensures role-based access only and thereby eliminates the chances of unnecessary privilege access
• Possesses the ability to integrate multiple solutions under one roof and improves operational efficiency
• Eliminates the requirement of manual intervention due to automated approach
• Maintains lifecycle of every identity starting with creation of identities, modifying their access rights, and even disabling/removing their access rights
• Authorizes end-users with access certifications, entitlement management and makes proper segregation of duties to prevent unauthorized activities
• Helps to meet regular audit and standard compliance requirements

Conclusion

Converged Identity approach is the new age mantra for Identity Access Management (IAM) initiatives that administers overall access management and comprehensively helps to manage the lifecycle of distinct digital identities.

The traditional perimeter security isn’t as effective in today’s distributed data center contexts. The concept of a data center boundary has vanished, necessitating the controlled management of human and machine identities from any location and in any hosting model. 

Explanation

In today’s hybrid data hosting models, businesses and organizations generate more and more data. The IT security staff not just have to secure cloud resources and legacy applications but also a host of other IT assets. Management of Machine Identities, enforcing access control around APIs, ensuring role-based access to command-line interfaces (CLIs) are some of the other daily use-cases. 

Secondly, there are hundreds of end-users, third-party users, partners and suppliers who continuously require access to the critical systems to perform daily tasks. It is the responsibility of the IT security team to ensure that enterprise data is accessible only to the authorized end- user; notwithstanding the location or hosting models (on-premises and on-cloud environments)

Businesses and organizations under these changing circumstances are facing more challenges. Against the backdrop of a large number of dispersed identities that require day-to-day access to systems, the practice of identity and access management (IAM/IDAM) ensures controlled and restricted access to the IT environment where each identity is administered and governed.

IAM ensures Compliance

Almost every organization has to follow regulations as to data privacy, data integrity and data security. Complying with regulatory mandates becomes very easy as the IT security staff can move forward swiftly and build a security baseline with Identity & Access Management (IAM/IDAM) solution. Businesses and organizations can have effective policies that protect end-user accounts, conduct regular audits and revoke rights of an identity if any anomalous activity is found. 

An IAM solution enables an organization to take control of the management and monitoring of all the identities to comply with the access control requirements consistent with regulatory standards. Identity and Access Management is critical for organizations seeking to strengthen their compliance standards.

IAM enhances Productivity

The IT staff and end-users all like to enhance their productivity, and a good IAM solution can accelerate the digital transformation by enhancing IT productivity. 

IT administrators find it very complex to administer and govern digital identities when the number of end-users in an IT environment increases gradually. It not only has an impact on the IT administrative experience but also increases the risk of identity abuse/misuse.

By deploying an IAM solution, the IT security staff can address the problem statements by automating the end-users’ identity lifecycle management. The solution ensures Identity Lifecycle Management through provisioning and de-provisioning of end-users, offering an intuitive workflow matrix, and providing role and rule-based access to systems among other access control capabilities. 

Conclusion

ARCON | IDAM is the best-in-class solution that addresses enterprise access control use-cases in vast and distributed IT environments. It ensures secure access at granular levels to all elements of IT infrastructure. As a result, IT processes remain uninterrupted, which boosts productivity. It ensures business continuity.

To prevent cyberattacks, many small-scale organizations are using an identity and access management tool on their infrastructure. It, in turn, helps them in finding any suspicious behavior on their network right away.

Nonetheless, using only a single tool is not going to help you out in this aspect. Besides, you will also need to know about cyber-attack-related trends as well. Here, we are going to talk about ten such facts to keep you on the radar.

1) Cybercrime is Extremely Profitable

A cyberattack can affect an organization in several ways. It can affect the network, security system, and overall infrastructure of a company massively. Besides, if the attacker has stolen even a small amount of classified data, the corporation has to pay them.

According to an IBM report, the average cost of a data breach can be around USD 3.9 million. Moreover, in the case of stolen data, the business will also have to pay almost USD 150/data.

Thus, if you want to avoid such a calamity, then be sure to integrate an access management system in your infrastructure.

2) Phishing E-mails are More Common Than You Know

The usage of phishing e-mails became extremely popular during the year 2018, and it has been prominent in 2020 as well. According to a report, around one person out of three tends to open a phishing mail. However, most people usually avoid clicking on the malicious link in the email. Only 12% of individuals become the victim of an actual phishing attack.

3) Cyberattacks are More Common Among the Millennial

According to a report, the millennial are more commonly affected by the cyberattacks. As they are technologically savvier, they tend to be more casual regarding their smartphone or PC’s security system. As per reports, almost 53% of millennials have encountered the issue of cybercrime in 2019.

4) Cybercrime is More Common in Indonesia

Amongst others, the small country of Indonesia had experienced the highest number of cyberattacks in 2018. Around 59% of the nation’s population was affected by this global issue massively. Pasiekite viršūnes su SEO paslaugomis SeoPaslaugos.com

Hence, if you belong to Indonesia and want to keep your company’s data well-secured, employing UBA becomes imperative. Also known as User Behavior Analytics, this tool can help you monitor and evaluate your end-users’ profiles.

This way, it becomes easier for you to find out the culprit even before cybercrime gets committed.

5) The Prominence of Data Breach

According to Accenture, around 130 data breaches occur amongst the prominent organizations in the world annually. The number of the same also gets increased by almost 27%, which sounds even more alarming.

6) Financially Interested Attacks are More Prevalent

Almost 1 billion of data was exposed in the year 2019 through breaches. Among them, only 25% were constituted through spying on the network system of the organization. But, around 71% of attacks were done purely based on financial acquirement.

7) Hacking Issues Occur More Frequently than Other Forms of Cyberattacks

Among the data breaches that occurred in 2019, almost 52% of them were done by hacking. On the other hand, around 32%-33% of attacks were employed through social engineering and phishing. Lastly, the remaining ones were made through the deployment of malware.

8) The Malicious File Extensions Hide in the Plain Sight

The commonly-used applications, such as MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, consist of the most malicious extensions. Aside from this, the official website of WordPress, too, is vulnerable to these malware-based tools.

9) The Consumers Despise Data Breach

When getting connected with an organization, most consumers tend to provide their credentials. Thus, in case a data breach occurs, their private information will get hurt as well.

Thus, as per reports, around 71% of people have said that they will leave a company if a data breach occurs on the scene.

Due to this reason, it becomes imperative to integrate PAM (Privileged Access Management) into your system.

With it, you can control all of your privileged or crucial accounts and protect your management system proficiently.

10) Android Platforms are More Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

The android platform usually offers access to almost any program or app available out there. This, in turn, makes it susceptible to cyberattacks. Moreover, as smartphones generally do not feature any integrated security system, it becomes quite difficult for the user to prevent cyber assaults.

Conclusion

All-in-all, the issue of cyberattacks has become quite prominent in the last few years. Thus, it becomes crucial for you to use a proper security system to keep your infrastructure safe and secure.

Meeting/ Brief Training: It is extremely important for an organization to provide details about the changes employees are going to face. Each and everyone working in the team should be aware of the IT security risks, do’s & don’ts of the action, what restrictions should be taken while accessing privileged accounts, what IT administrators should minitor. Today, organizations can’t depend only on Anti-Virus or Firewalls to prevent data theft; instead robust risk preventive and risk predictive solutions like Privileged Access Management (PAM) is required for advanced security. Most of the times it is seen that organizations ignore this training part and directly announce the functional changes which creates ambiguities among the employees.

Assurance for betterment: At any cost, organizations should provide complete assurance about the benefits of the changes to the employees. Which role would be excluded/ included; what would be the advantage; which new system they will have to adapt to – all these factors should be made clear so that the employees should be assured about their work and career. Once new IT security solution is implemented by the security team, organizations should ensure a session on the advantages of the solution and how it can ensure betterment of the entire IT operations. Not only that, the administrative efficiency which can be enhanced by the deployment of new IT security solution (like PAM), should be explained to the employees in details so that they know the importance of a change.

Resolve Confusion & Conflicts quickly: It is highly imperative to inculcate a good team spirit among the employees which can erase conflicts and confusions in a better way. During the transition period, the personal anxieties that arise among the employees can be resolved in an effective way if the other members (who have understood the benefits of transition) in the team take initiative to make things clear. Frequent team meetings and team bonding sessions help to understand and appreciate each other in a better way, especially if the transparency of the transition is conveyed systematically.

Remain Positive, Supportive & Trustworthy: It is highly essential for organizations to support and edify a positive leader who inspires free thoughts, galores creativity and encourages honest communication for the development of the team. Employees normally expect team leaders or managers to handle the functional changes. Inspirational positive leaders create a habit where changes are accepted as challenges and the zeal to perform germinates. It even increases the confidence among the employees that the changes would offer better security to the enterprise assets.

Inculcate a Learning Attitude: Everything in the world changes. It is inevitable and unavoidable. Thus, resisting changes is indirectly resisting the reality. Organizations can take initiative to inculcate the learning attitude among the employees which can eventually help them to accept anything new. Thus it is said, “When a surfer gets tense riding a wave, he falls; when a leader gets tense adapting to change, he fails.” Hence, a learning mindset is the key.

Counselling: This would require during extreme situations where employees resist changes in a nasty way and it influences the rest of the operations badly. In a way, organizations should take the initiative of changes in a logical pattern so that this situation does not arise at all. The suggestions mentioned above once implemented can refrain the organization from falling into such situations when counselling would require.

Bottom Line: Resistance to changes is prevalent in human blood. Changing this notion is almost a herculean task. Hence, instead of allowing the employees to reach that state of mind, organizations should concentrate on the above mentioned steps to smoothen the business processes and ensure the security of enterprise assets.

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.

While the competency of Privileged Access Management (PAM) is widely acknowledged by the management, it often gets stuck due to dislike from IT administrative staff. More than dislike, people presume that it might increase their workload extensively. As a result, successful implementation of PAM project faces hurdles and adoption of new technology gets stuck. While the top management (CIO, CISO) prefers it from security & compliance perspective, resistance from IT administrative staff hinders the change of security policies and procedures.

Changes are inevitable in every sphere of life. However, humans, by nature, are never comfortable to any changes in their life/ work, thinking of the apparent hidden challenges. People react to changes in different ways – some may respond with fearful acceptance while others respond with complete denial. This can definitely be controlled if we can get to know the reasons behind this resistance. Be it individual change or organizational change, there are a number of reasons why people resist changes.

• Employment security: It is a very common concern which most of the employees have in any organization. Any implementation of new technology forces the employees to presume that their job might be at stake.
• Lack of communication: Many times, changes happening in organizations are not communicated properly, which creates lots of confusion among the employees. Deployment of PAM thus inherently creates a notion that the change won’t be suitable.
• Extent of change: Employees remain unsure about the extent of technological changes that are going to occur in the system once a PAM is implemented. Thus, they can not be apprehensive.
• Fear of losing control: Employees get scared of losing the grip of work skills if the changes are technologically advanced and require less human interference.
• Influence of group decision: This happens in most of the organizations. Along with the management, even if some of the lower admin staff is apprehensive about any change, he/she changes his/ her mind if the peers or rest of team stick to the resistance.
• Competence concern: If anyone is highly compatible to any particular workflow, then he/ she can resist changes because of performance worry. They remain indecisive because they fail to acquire knowledge of how PAM can ensure better security and not affect anybody’s performance.
• More work pressure: Employees presume that introducing PAM would increase their work-load.

All the above points, as we observe, are mostly human presumptions which dominate the hindrance of technological progress. Today, cyber threats are getting sophisticated in nature and it requires a highly advanced solution to secure information assets from malicious actors. While organizations have no other option but to strengthen their IT security infrastructure with a robust and advanced risk-control solution, resistance to changes stops it from any kind of development.

(In the next part of this blog we will share how to overcome this situation… keep posted)

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.

The ramifications happen due to malevolent activities done by insiders are much more widespread comparing to that of outsiders. The basic and obvious reason behind it is that any privileged employee is expected to be more aware of the whereabouts of the location of confidential data, sensitive records and privileged credentials. Organizations normally take more time to detect these frauds since it happens internally, that too from officially approved and legitimate accounts.

The major reasons behind these unscrupulous activities are unmonitored accounts, multiple third-party access, poor password management, no authentication methods etc. Who can forget the infamous incident of sabotaging software systems by a trusted employee of a reputed automobile company at the beginning of 2018? It took the organization quite a long time to find out the root cause of infiltration. Ultimately, the security officers had to face numerous obnoxious questions of why better control systems were not in place to keep vigilance of the privileged account activities.

The role of Privileged Access Management (PAM) and User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) is highly crucial to get rid of these unexpected disasters like data breaches. This enterprise level security solution monitors each and every session happening in the network and sends alert notifications in case any suspicious behaviour is observed. It even gives real-time report of the activities happened in the network which helps the CTOs, CIOs and CISOs to analyze and mitigate cyber risks.

Lastly, Information Security and Access Control are the two most essential components for a robust IT environment. Thus, it is undoubtedly a critical hour for most of the organizations, irrespective of small or large, to adopt adequate and necessary steps to protect their digital assets. Moreover, security guidelines provided by regulatory bodies (like GDPR, SWIFT, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX etc.) are forcing the organizations to strengthen the situation.

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.

As the wave of digitization sweeps across the nation, it is terribly crucial for the organizations, irrespective of large or small, to take adequate security measures for protecting their huge amount of data generated every day from various sources. The CISOs, CTOs and CSOs are ceaselessly on their toes to curb the chances of any hack or data breach incident that might push them towards big irrevocable losses. This scenario of insider threats is considered to be one of the most sinister reasons for digital disaster.

Identification of Insider Threats

The implications of insider threats largely go to the administrators and other privileged users, who are commonly

identified as the most suitable position holders who can both suffer and carry out numerous malicious activities stealthily. Their mistakes or negligence have the most severe effects. These malefactors are normally followed by contractors, consultants or even temporary workers, whose loyalty are questioned most of the time.

Precisely, insider threats take familiar forms, but the effects are augmented because they come from within and have smooth access to the organization’s official network along with sensitive credentials. Moreover, lack of data protection strategies by the management also forces them to chalk out plans sitting within the network. The best protection however can be a strong organizational focus on network/ data security basics.

Reasons of Insider Threat/ How to reduce the chances

There are several insider threat vulnerabilities that are mostly ignored in organizations.

1. BYOD process
The abundance of BYOD/ CYOD policy inherits the risk of cyber threats. The organizations do require thoughtful and comprehensive approach towards implementation of this policy. There has to be a detailed possibility assessment of whether BYOD implementation is feasible in the organization, depending on the type of industry. The employees should be trained repeatedly to make them avoid the risks of public Wi-Fi with a VPN or hotspot, and minimize the risk of lost information by keeping confidential business files in a secured cloud and not in personal devices. In this process, privilege access management plays a key role in securing the data.

2. Recruitment
Insider threats can be tackled from the recruitment process itself. The HR leaders should have thorough background checks, and pry into the prospect’s history to assess susceptibility to bribery or unfaithfulness. This can be done by scrutinizing credit history of the candidate or any debts that could be used as leverage.

3. Lack of management visibility
It is surprising to see how few organizations have little or zero visibility when it comes to network monitoring practice. However, when it comes to insider threats, organizations normally lack the ability to be sceptical or even withstand suspicious user behaviour and file movement. While chalking out a proactive insider threat plan, the CISOs, CTOs and CSOs need to be clear about the amount of network visibility in the organization. Now there are technologies like Privilege Access Management that can establish baseline activity control for users, monitor for anomalies, or even automate relevant actions. Thus it’s just wise to take advantage of the ability to be aware of what is going on in the business network.

The sly insider threats can originate on numerous fronts, and monitoring them can be a daunting task. Meeting the challenges of information security requires stringent organization policies to cultivate values and invest in Privilege Access Management (PAM) to support that value. After all, the privileged identities hold the master-keys to an organization’s network of devices and databases.

4. Leadership
The CISOs, CTOs and CSOs mirror the security management in organizations. Their strategic decision making right on time drives the organization towards a secured network periphery. Nevertheless, securing an organization requires alertness and co-operation from the entire team and not just the CSO or CIO. Cyber security policies are often considered as barriers towards progress of any organization. Unfortunately, securing an organization against insider threats requires utter cautiousness from the entire leadership team, and not just the CSO.

In a nutshell, insider threats are one of the burning issues in the cyber world. Recently, a London law firm has confirmed that the number of High Court cases in which crucial corporate data has been stolen by ex-employees or disgruntled employees has increased by 25% annually. The malicious insiders deliberately breached customer and client databases, confidential financial information and more. The ubiquity of smart phones has made it quite simpler without raising any suspicion.

ARCON provides state-of-the-art technology aimed at mitigating information systems related risks. The company’s Privileged Identity Management / Privileged Access Management solution enables blocking unauthorized access to ‘privileged identities’, while its Secured Configuration Management solution helps to comply with Governance, Risks, and Compliance (GRC) requirements .

Need a solution for safeguarding critical IT assets? Please contact us.