Is Your Business Protected By Your Cyber Security Policy?

Shield Your Business: the Power Of a Cyber Security Policy

By Tom Seest

Is Your Business Protected By Your Cyber Security Policy?

At BestCybersecurityNews, we help entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, young learners, and seniors learn more about cybersecurity.

A cyber security policy lays out the rules employees should abide by when accessing systems and data within an organization. Doing this helps safeguard organizations against malicious activities, data breaches, and brand damage.
Effective policies promote collaboration, reduce duplication of effort, and guarantee consistency when monitoring and enforcing compliance. They must also be realistic and achievable.

Is Your Business Protected By Your Cyber Security Policy?

Are Your Devices Protected? The Significance of a Device Control Policy

Adopting a comprehensive device control policy is one of the best investments you can make to safeguard your enterprise against data theft, leaks and cyber security breaches. This policy helps keep your data secure by monitoring USB and peripheral ports connected to company endpoints.
Device control provides the capability to restrict or grant read-only access to devices based on specific criteria, such as hardware ID or class. Furthermore, USB storage devices can be encrypted to protect confidential information.
Enforced encryption is a security measure that ensures all confidential data transferred to a USB storage device is encrypted on the device, making it virtually impossible for others to read it. This feature is available on both macOS and Windows computers alike.
Content-aware data loss prevention is another essential data security feature that allows you to apply policies dynamically based on the contents and context of a transfer. This makes it simpler for you to protect sensitive information from leaving the network, shielding your organization against both accidental and intentional breaches.
This device control policy employs a Block Bridged mode that disables wireless and modem network adapters on devices when connected to a physical network. This mode helps greatly reduce the risk of network bridging between corporate networks and non-corporate ones.
Once a policy has been applied, monitor violation logs for all instances where end users attempt to connect devices that were blocked by this policy. This information can help identify what types of devices are accessed and when they are permitted.

Are Your Devices Protected? The Significance of a Device Control Policy

Is Your Business Vulnerable? Implementing an Application Control Policy

Application control is a layer of cyber security that gives you the power to regulate which applications run on managed devices and how they execute. It does this by monitoring specified processes, files, applications, and registry keys for unauthorized activity.
Additionally, it blocks malware that attempts to enter your network through unapproved applications. Doing this makes it much harder for a cyberattacker to use the malware to compromise sensitive information on your system.
Application control is an invaluable tool that can keep a cyberattacker from accessing data in your company. It allows you to monitor network activity in real-time, helping you detect and remediate security breaches quickly.
Another advantage of application control is its ability to thwart cyber attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in an application before they are identified and fixed. This is an essential step in safeguarding critical assets as well as business operations.
Application controls enable you to enable or block certain types of traffic based on an application’s name, publisher, certificate, MD5 hash, file path and other characteristics. This helps guarantee data is authenticated and matched against a specific set of rules; thus enabling identity-based policy enforcement as well as zero trust security measures.
You can deploy these rules through the cloud console or directly onto targeted devices that you wish to protect. Typically, you create custom groups of computers and specify which allowlists and blocklists should apply to those individuals.

Is Your Business Vulnerable? Implementing an Application Control Policy

Is Your Network Secure? Implementing a Network Access Control Policy

Network Access Control Policy (NACs) enables businesses to keep unauthorized devices and users out of private networks. They also grant restricted access to compliant devices that adhere to the organization’s security protocols.
NAC systems enable organizations to adhere to government policies and industry-specific requirements regarding data security, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
A NAC policy requires two essential steps: authentication and authorization. Authentication verifies a user’s identity through their credentials, while authorization ensures they comply with the organization’s policies before being allowed access to the network.
Another essential feature of NAC is role-based access control, which assigns specific roles to devices and end-users based on their job function. This ensures that users only have the access necessary for performing their duties effectively.
Most NAC solutions focus on policy management and enforcement, but some provide better visibility into and analytics of visitors who have accessed the network. This can help differentiate guests from employees in wide area networks or VPNs where IP addresses may not always correspond to physical coordinates.

Is Your Network Secure? Implementing a Network Access Control Policy

Is Your Company’s Web Access Control Policy Putting You at Risk?

Access control is a fundamental security measure that establishes who has access to apps and data, under what conditions, and at what expense. It’s indispensable for organizations that allow employees to work remotely while needing to protect their sensitive data.
Organizations typically create policies at the site level, and each site may have unique security regulations tailored to its unique requirements. The policy could be based on an organizational hierarchy or specify what access is granted to certain groups of users.
Many systems for web access control rely on the identity of a user to determine whether they should be granted permission to view a website. This makes it challenging to grant access to those users who cannot be authenticated by servers within an administrative domain.
This specification outlines a method for servers to display client access privileges on resources by including an HTTP header field called WAC-Allow, which lists all access modes allowed by a permission group in a comma-separated format. Clients should be able to discover access mode information from this header field value by making HTTP GET or HEAD requests to the target resource and checking its corresponding value in the response.
The server then maintains an association between a resource and an ACL resource, applying Authorization rules to requested operations on that resource. The authorization conditions are defined by the ACL ontology as access modes such as read/write and append/control.

Is Your Company’s Web Access Control Policy Putting You at Risk?

Is Your Company’s Security at Risk? Implement a Vulnerability Assessment Policy

The Vulnerability Assessment Policy is a crucial step in the cyber security process that empowers organizations to detect, understand and mitigate vulnerabilities within their environment. It assists companies in creating a security posture that minimizes cyber risks while giving them insight into their assets so they can make informed business decisions to safeguard operations and data.
The vulnerability assessment process involves a comprehensive examination of vulnerabilities and their impact on information systems and other resources. It then assigns severity levels to discovered flaws, suggesting remediation or mitigation measures when necessary.
A vulnerability assessment is an integral component of an effective cybersecurity policy and should be conducted for all organizations. This process gives organizations a detailed overview of their network, helping to guarantee all resources are safeguarded against potential cyber threats.
Additionally, ITSM allows organizations to monitor and respond to security threats, providing a robust defense against attacks on their systems. The process combines automated scanning and monitoring of devices connected to the network with manual analysis and repair of vulnerabilities.
All systems and applications connected to Duke University or Duke Health networks must take part in routine vulnerability scans conducted by the IT Security Office and Information Security Office. All administrators responsible for these systems must review, respond to, evaluate, test, and mitigate operating system and application vulnerabilities appropriately.

Is Your Company’s Security at Risk? Implement a Vulnerability Assessment Policy

Are Your Website Access Controls Putting Your Company at Risk?

Website access control policies govern how information is accessed on a web server and guarantee that only authorized users can view certain pages or functions. This is especially essential for sites handling sensitive data or systems, such as banking websites.
Many websites depend on various access control mechanisms, such as user IDs and roles that a site administrator can create. But if these aren’t configured properly, attackers have free reign to do whatever they please.
One of the most widespread access control issues is command injection. These exploits can use URLs, system calls, shell commands or other input to access files and systems that a website might normally deny.
Another potential flaw is path traversal, which utilizes relative path information (e.g. “../target_dir/target_file”) to attack web applications. Alternatively, an attacker could utilize a malicious browser extension or application to circumvent security checks and get past security measures.
It is essential that a website access control policy be clearly documented and strictly enforced. Otherwise, the site could become vulnerable to cyber-attacks, leading to significant downtime and additional expenses.

Are Your Website Access Controls Putting Your Company at Risk?

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