Monthly Archives: February 2024

Meeting PCI-DSS 1.1.7 with MachineTruth Global Configuration Assessments

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Explanation of PCI-DSS requirement 1.1.7

The process for reviewing firewall, router, and network device configurations and rule sets every six months involves several steps to ensure compliance with PCI DSS Requirement 1.1.7 and maintain network security controls and router configuration standards.

Organizations can effectively conduct these reviews by utilizing services such as MachineTruth™ Global Configuration Assessments to analyze the configuration settings of firewalls, switches, routers, applications, and other network devices. By conducting regular audits and involving key personnel from the IT and security teams in the review of the results, organizations can ensure that their network device configurations and rule sets comply with PCI DSS Requirement 1.1.7 and maintain strong network security controls.

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Conequences for failing to meet PCI-DSS 1.1.7

Compliance with PCI-DSS is crucial for maintaining the security and integrity of sensitive payment card information. Failing to meet the requirements of PCI-DSS can have significant implications for a company, including legal and financial consequences.

One specific requirement of PCI-DSS is 1.1.7, which addresses the need to test security systems and processes regularly. Failing to comply with this specific requirement can result in severe penalties, including hefty fines and potential legal action. Companies may also face damage to their reputation and loss of customer trust. In some cases, non-compliance with PCI-DSS requirements may lead to the inability to process payment card transactions, causing significant operational disruptions. Ultimately, the consequences of failing to meet PCI-DSS 1.1.7 can have far-reaching impacts on a company’s bottom line and long-term viability. Therefore, businesses must prioritize and invest in maintaining compliance with PCI-DSS to avoid these detrimental consequences.

Importance of securing inbound traffic

Securing inbound traffic is critical for maintaining the cardholder data environment’s security and integrity, as PCI DSS Requirement 1.2.1 mandates. Organizations can effectively prevent unauthorized access and potential security breaches by limiting inbound and outbound traffic to only what is necessary for the cardholder data environment. Traffic restrictions are crucial in controlling and monitoring data flow into the network, ensuring that only authorized and necessary sources and protocols are allowed entry. This helps to minimize the risk of unauthorized access and potential security breaches, as any unnecessary or unauthorized traffic is blocked from entering the network. By implementing and enforcing these traffic restrictions, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of data breaches and maintain compliance with PCI DSS standards. Therefore, organizations must prioritize and effectively secure their inbound traffic to safeguard their cardholder data environment.

Importance of securing outbound traffic

Securing outbound traffic is paramount for protecting an organization’s sensitive information and preventing potential risks such as data breaches, exposure to malware, and unauthorized access to critical data. Unsecured outbound traffic can lead to data leaks, theft of intellectual property, and compromise of confidential information, causing significant financial and reputational damage to the organization.

Implementing egress filtering, encryption, data loss prevention, and threat detection measures can help mitigate and/or minimize these risks. Egress filtering is the single most powerful tool in preventing data exfiltration. By implementing best practices around all network traffic leaving the network or segments, most data exfiltration can be disrupted. Encryption ensures that data transmitted outside the organization’s network is securely ciphered, preventing unauthorized access and data breaches. Data loss prevention tools enable organizations to monitor and control the transfer of sensitive data, thereby reducing the risk of data leaks and unauthorized access. In addition, threat detection methods allow real-time visibility into outbound traffic, enabling prompt detection and response to unauthorized or malicious activities.

By securing outbound traffic through these measures, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of data breaches, exposure to malware, and unauthorized access to sensitive information, thus safeguarding their critical assets and maintaining the trust of the card brands and customers.

Description of MachineTruth Global Configuration Assessment capabilities

This assessment leverages MicroSolved’s proprietary analytics and machine learning platform, MachineTruth, to review device and application configurations in mass at a global scale. The assessment compares device configurations against industry standard best practices, known vulnerabilities, and common misconfigurations. It also allows organizations to ensure control homogeny across the enterprise, regardless of using different vendors, products, and versions.

Adopted security standards and security policies can be used as a baseline, and configurations can be compared holistically and globally against these universal security settings. Compensating controls can be identified and cataloged as a part of the assessment if desired.

Various analytics can also be performed as a part of the review, including trusted host hierarchies, reputational analysis of various sources for configured rules and access control lists, flagging of insecure services, identification of deprecated firmware, log management settings, protocols, encryption mechanisms, etc. MachineTruth can hunt down, flag, and provide specific mitigation and configuration advice to ensure these issues are fixed across the enterprise, architectures, and various vendor products.

If needed, the MachineTruth platform can verify network segmentation and serve as proof of these implementations to reduce the compliance scope to a subset of the network and data flows.

How MachineTruth helps organizations meet PCI requirements

MachineTruth Global Configuration Assessments help organizations simplify the process of meeting PCI-DSS 1.1.7 and other relevant regulatory requirements. By working across vendor platforms, and reviewing up to several thousand device configurations simultaneously, even the most complex networks can be reviewed holistically and quickly. Work that would have taken several man-years to perform with traditional methods can be accomplished quickly and with a minimum of resources.

Multi-level reporting also provides for an easy, prioritized path to mitigation of the assessments, and if you need assistance, MicroSolved’s extensive partner network stands ready to help you make the changes across the planet. The output of the assessment includes technical details with mitigations for each finding, a technical manager report with root causes, and suggestions for improvement across the enterprise, as well as an executive summary report that is designed to help upper-level management, boards of directors, auditors, and even business partners performing due diligence, understand the assessment outcome and the state of security throughout the organization’s networks. The reporting is excellent for establishing the true state of network compliance, even on a global scale.

This not only allows organizations to easily and rapidly meet PCI-DSS 1.1.7, but also allows them to quickly harden their networks and increase their security posture at a rate that was nearly impossible in the past. Leveraging the power of AI, machine learning, and analytics, even the most complex organizations can make solving this compliance problem easy.

How to Engage with MicroSolved, Inc.

To learn more about a MachineTruth Global Configuration Assessment or the 30+ years of security expertise of MicroSolved, Inc., just drop us a line at info@microsolved.com. You can also reach us at +1.614.351.1237. Our team of experts will be more than happy to walk through how the platform works and discuss the workflow and costs involved with this unique option for meeting PCI requirements and other relevant regulatory guidance. While MicroSolved is a small firm with more than 30 years in business, some clients prefer to work through our larger partners who are likely already on established vendor lists. This is also possible, and the protocols and contractual arrangements are already in place with a number of globally recognized professional services firms. Whether you choose to work with MicroSolved directly, or through our partner network, you will receive the same excellent service, leading-edge insights and benefit from our proprietary MachineTruth platform.

Ransomware-Proof Your Credit Union: A Checklist of NCUA Guidance

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In today’s digital landscape, credit unions face numerous cybersecurity threats, including the rising risk of ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities in their information and communications technology supply chain. To help credit unions protect themselves against these risks, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has compiled an FAQ. This checklist covers the essential steps to safeguard against ransomware attacks, additional resources for cybersecurity, understanding supply chain risk management, developing effective practices, mitigating risks associated with using a Managed Service Provider (MSP), and other insights based on their FAQ. By following this checklist, credit unions can enhance their overall security posture and minimize the potential impact of cyber threats.

1. Protect against ransomware attacks:
– Update software and operating systems regularly with the latest patches.
– Avoid clicking on links or opening attachments in unsolicited emails.
– Follow safe browsing practices.
– Replace equipment running older unsupported operating systems.
– Verify the security practices of vendors and third-party service providers.
– Maintain complete and tested backups of critical systems and data.

2. Additional resources for cybersecurity:
– Use the Ransomware Self-Assessment Tool (R-SAT) from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.
– Read the Center for Internet Security white paper on ransomware.
– Visit the cybersecurity pages of the National Security Agency Central Security Service and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. (CISA)
– Refer to the Treasury Department’s advisory on potential sanctions risks for facilitating ransomware payments.

3. Understand Technology Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM):
– Recognize that technology supply chain vulnerabilities can pose risks to the entire institution.
– Consider the risks associated with third-party vendors and the entire technology supply chain.
– Identify vulnerabilities in all phases of the product life cycle.

4. Develop an effective Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Practice:
– Build a team with representatives from various roles and functions.
– Document policies and procedures based on industry standards and best practices.
– Create a list of technology components and understand their criticality and remote access capability.
– Identify suppliers and verify their security practices.
– Assess and evaluate the SCRM program regularly.

5. Risks associated with using a Managed Service Provider (MSP):
– APT actors actively attempt to infiltrate IT service provider networks.
– Conduct proper due diligence and ongoing monitoring of MSPs.
– Understand the risks of centralizing information with an MSP.
– Recognize that compromises in an MSP’s network can have cascading effects.

6. Mitigate the risk of using an MSP:
– Manage supply chain risk by working with the MSP to address security concerns.
– Implement architecture measures to restrict access and protect networks.
– Use dedicated VPNs for MSP connections and restrict VPN traffic.
– Ensure proper authentication, authorization, and accounting practices.
– Implement operational controls, such as continuous monitoring and software updates.

7. Additional references for Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management:
– Refer to guidance from the NCUA, NIST, and CISA.
– Evaluate third-party relationships and outsourcing technology services.
– Learn about supply chain threats and cyber supply chain risk management.

Note: This checklist is a summary of the information provided. For more detailed guidance, refer to the full content on the NCUA website.

 

* We used some AI tools to gather the information for this article.

Is Your Organization Following Best Practices for Resisting Ransomware Attacks?

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Every week I see more news about organizations that have fallen prey to ransomware attacks. It just illustrates the fact the ransomware is a lucrative tool for cybercriminals and is therefore going to be plaguing us for the foreseeable future. To be proactive in protecting your organization from this threat, you should ensure that you are following the latest best practices guidance available. So, in this paper I’m going to summarize the best practices recommendations found in the #StopRansomware Guide published by the CISA.

Ensure you have complete knowledge of all of your IT assets, and that you manage them securely.

  • You should maintain comprehensive inventories of all hardware, software, firmware, operating systems and data on your systems.
  • You should know where all of these IT assets are located at all times, including data.
  • You should know the relative value of these assets to your organization and protect them accordingly. This means conducting business impact analyses.
  • You should map trust relationships among systems, and you should also map how data flows into and out of these systems. These maps and diagrams should be comprehensive in scope, well protected and stored in multiple locations and forms.

Ensure that the principle of least privilege is strictly applied across your organization. This means that all users should have access to only those IT assets that are necessary to perform their job functions. Those with high-level access to systems such as system administrators should employ very strong access controls and should be highly monitored.

If you use virtual systems, you should ensure that all hypervisors and associated IT infrastructure, including network and storage components, are updated and hardened to the latest best practices recommendations.

Ensure security settings are enabled and applied in cloud environments. Ensure you understand which security responsibilities are yours and which security responsibilities belong to the service provider.

Ensure you have a firm grip on remote access and remote monitoring and management software used on your systems. These mechanisms must be highly monitored and restricted. Ensure secure configuration of these mechanisms is maintained.

Ensure that your network is properly segmented. Separation should be maintained between operational technology and IT. Business units and IT assets should be placed in network segments according to business need.

Ensure that the usage of PowerShell is restricted to specific users on a case-by-case basis by using Group Policy. Typically, only users or administrators who manage a network or Windows OS are permitted to use PowerShell.

Ensure that domain controllers are properly secured to help prevent the spread of ransomware network wide. Ensure that domain controllers receive prompt security maintenance and are include in vulnerability and penetration testing. Harden controllers to only include a minimum of software or agents needed for business purposes.

Ensure that logging from network devices, local hosts and cloud services is verbose, and that these logs are securely stored.

Establish a security baseline of normal network traffic and tune network appliances to detect anomalous behavior.

Ensure that you are conducting security testing, such as vulnerability and penetration studies, of networks and software applications.

Enable tracking prevention to limit the vectors that ad networks and trackers can use to track user information.

Enable website typo protection to limit the possibility of logging onto spoofed websites or other potentially malicious links that could compromise a browser.

Enable browser-based anti-virus for active scanning while browsing as an added layer of defense.

Block website notifications by default to limit a website’s ability to track user data that can be exploited.

Employing all of these best practices recommendations, and monitoring security and government websites for additions and updates to these best practices, will help your organization prevent ransomware attacks, and will also help you deal with them effectively if they occur.

Never Become Complacent About the Effectiveness of Security Controls

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This is a new world since I first began in the information security business. In the early 1980s, information security had little to do with the vulnerability of the computers themselves – this is before personal computers, Windows-type operating systems and the Internet. Mainframes were a tough nut to crack, and the possibility of compromise was pretty much an internal threat. What information security focused on then was signals and physical security. How to keep your information from being lifted from hard wires, documents and radio signals? The answer was cryptographic techniques and security policies actually developed during WWII and the Cold War. These same methods were then, unfortunately, applied to networked computer systems constructed from personal computer technology and operating systems, across a different medium than those used before: the Internet protocols. This is a recipe for information security disaster! Functionality, not security, was the overwhelming focus of these original protocols and operating systems, and applying security methods after the fact was like applying a Band-Aid to a torn artery.

When hacking and later cyber-crime problems first started appearing in the mid-90s, the business world and the general public didn’t take the problem too seriously at all. Having to use passwords and other simple security measures was viewed as a pain in the keester by almost all of us at that time. But little by little, privacy and security breaches started getting more and more serious and damaging; people began to pay more attention to cybercrime and businesses began to become a little more open to increasing their information security budgets. Network perimeter security controls became stronger, and we started paying more attention to internal security controls. But by this time cybercrime was firmly in the hands of professional, financially and politically motivated cybercriminals. This highly motivated group started finding new and novel ways to overcome or circumvent information security controls, applications and services. Every time new and more restrictive security methods were put in place, some new attack method to overcome the latest and greatest soon followed. This, alas, is where we stand today.

The fight continues, and the good guys are making great strides, both in security methods and in public and business willingness to participate in information security. The CIS Critical Security Controls and all the new AI-driven security applications are examples of this willingness. But I have noticed something disturbing happening here of late. The security measures being employed by businesses are getting so good, that people are starting to trust in their effectiveness too much; complacency is rearing its ugly head! And since the very idea of security began thousands of years ago, complacency has proved itself to be a fatal error. No matter what, you can count on security controls to be overcome one way or another. So far, this has never failed to occur in the history of mankind.

It therefore behooves all of us, especially those of us tasked with the privacy and security of information, to be constantly vigilant and even more forward thinking than the attackers that would steel our information and privacy. It must constantly be kept in mind that the attacker always has an advantage over the defender: the defender must get it right every single time, the attacker only must get it right once.