Building a Fortified Wall: Effective Third-Party Risk Management Against Cyber Threats

In today’s interconnected business environment, companies regularly rely on third parties for critical business functions like supply chain, IT services, and more. While these relationships can provide efficiency and expertise, they also introduce new cybersecurity risks that must be managed. More than 53% of businesses worldwide have suffered at least one cyber attack in the past 12 months and one in five firms attacked said it was enough to threaten the viability of the business. Recent high-profile breaches like the SolarWinds attack have highlighted the dangers of supply chain compromises. Implementing a comprehensive third party risk management program is essential for security. In this post, we’ll explore key strategies and best practices organizations can use to defend against cyber threats from third party relationships.

Limit Access and Segment Third Parties

Once a third party relationship is established, limit their access to only what is required for their role. Segment them into their own virtual network or cloud environment isolated from your core infrastructure. Implement the principle of least privilege access for their credentials. Disable unnecessary ports, protocols, and services. Lock down pathways between your network and the third party. The goal is to reduce their potential impact and restrict lateral movement if compromised.

Continuously Monitor for Threats

Monitor third party networks vigilantly for signs of compromise. Deploy tools like intrusion detection systems that generate alerts for anomalous behavior. Monitor for unusual data transfers, unauthorized changes, malware, and other IOCs. Conduct vulnerability scans and penetration testing against your third parties’ environments. Audit their logs and security events for issues impacting your security posture. The goal is early detection that can limit damage from a third party breach.

Practice Incident Response Plans

Even rigorous security can still experience incidents. Develop plans for quickly responding to a breach impacting a third party. Define escalation protocols and response team roles. Maintain contacts for your third parties’ security staff. Institute plans for containment, eradication, and recovery activities to limit the impact on your organization. Practice responding to mock third party breach scenarios to smooth out the process. Effective incident response can significantly reduce the damage from real world attacks.

Foster Strong Relationships with Third Parties

While security requirements and controls are critical, also focus on building strong relationships with your vendors, suppliers, and partners. Collaborate to improve security on both sides. Offer guidance and training to enhance their practices and controls. Recognize those who exceed expectations. Build rapport at the executive level so security is taken seriously. Cybersecurity does not have to be adversarial – work together to protect against shared threats.

Third party risk management is essential in modern interconnected business ecosystems. Businesses can no longer rely solely on their own security – all external connections must be assessed and managed.
To Know More, Read Full Article @ https://ai-techpark.com/third-party-risk-management-strategies-against-cyber-threats/

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From Man to Machine: Robots Reimagine the Executive Playbook

In recent years, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have witnessed a surge in popularity, and it’s anticipated to expand as organizations become more dependent on AI solutions to address issues. Numerous tech giants, like Amazon, Apple, and Alibaba, have already started to explore the possibilities of implementing AI and robotics in their organizations.

The introduction of robots into the workplace is set to alter how C-level decision-makers will do business, as they need to share space with robots as coworkers and learn new skills as robots will gradually take over tedious and dangerous tasks on behalf of their employees. There will be a shift in job responsibilities and obligations, creating bandwidth for strategic planning for better business development in sections where robotics are not utilized. Functional leaders in customer-facing roles may identify the best methods to serve clients and use automation to deliver personalized products and services on demand.

Robotics is becoming a game changer in various industries throughout the world.

Chief Operating Officers (COOs)

COOs will play an important role in transforming the workplace by integrating AI and robotics, creating a digital strategy for automating services, and streamlining operations. Thus, COOs will drive and manage the organization’s transformation into a human-robot workforce; however, they must update their knowledge of technologies by understanding the changes and how they can affect the business. For instance, in a manufacturing company, the role of COOs will be to assess the need for automation technologies like IoT and blockchain in a department. After evaluation, they should come up with an investment strategy by analyzing how AI and robots will reshape the manufacturing industry and streamline the supply chain.

Chief Information Officers (CIOs)

CIOs will have to adjust to technology issues and work closely with other C-suits as they navigate a new landscape of risk and compliance. They will have the liberty to explore and evaluate the areas of data management, analytics, and cybersecurity. With automation technology and robot workers having a positive impact on the organization, CIOs will witness changes in function becoming more deeply integrated.

Other tech leaders, like CTOs and CDOs, may be joined by Chief Robotics Officers (CROs), who will help in navigating how robots will perform, providing robust road maps, and setting strategies for future developments.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will change the workplace as some job roles will be replaced by robots and automation, but the technology will also lead to the creation of new jobs and highly valued responsibilities. This development will also affect the C-suite, as robots will minimize their responsibilities and help in creating robust strategies in this digital era. Large-scale enterprises and SMEs must prepare their employees for collaboration with new technologies by providing adequate L&D opportunities, upskilling, reskilling, and giving them the bandwidth to accept the change.
To Know More, Read Full Article @ https://ai-techpark.com/robotics-is-changing-the-roles-of-c-suites/

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Arun Shrestha, Co-founder and CEO at BeyondID – AITech Interview

Can you provide a brief overview of your background and your current role as the Co-founder and CEO at BeyondID?

I have over 20 years of building and leading enterprise software and services companies. As CEO, I’m committed to building a world class organization with the mission of helping our customers build secure, agile, and future-proof business. I pride in partnering with customers to strategize and deploy cutting edge technology that delivers top business results.

Prior to co-founding BeyondID, I worked at Oracle, Sun Microsystems, SeeBeyond and most recently Okta, which went public in 2017. At Okta, I was responsible for delighting customers and for building world class services and customer success organizations.

The misuse of AI and deep fakes is becoming a serious concern in the realm of identity and security. Could you share your thoughts on how bad actors are leveraging these technologies to compromise trust and security?

The use of AI-powered deepfakes to create convincing images, audio, and videos for embarrassing or blackmailing individuals or elected officials is a growing concern. This technology can be used for extortion and to obtain sensitive information that can be used in harmful ways against individuals and businesses. Such actions can erode trust and harm society, as individuals may question the authenticity of genuine content, primarily if it depicts inappropriate or criminal behavior, by claiming it is a deepfake. Malicious actors can also use AI to mimic legitimate content and communications better, making it harder for email spam filters and end users to identify fraudulent messages and increasing phishing attacks. Automated AI attacks can also identify a business’s system vulnerabilities and exploit them for their own gain.

In the context of a zero-trust framework, could you explain the concept of verifying and authenticating every service request? How does this approach contribute to overall security?

The Zero Trust philosophy is founded on the belief that nobody can be fully trusted, and so it is essential to always authenticate any service request to ensure its authenticity. This can only be achieved through the authentication, authorization, and end-to-end encryption of every request made by either a human or a machine. By verifying each request, it is possible to eliminate unnecessary access privileges and apply the appropriate access policies at any given time, thereby reducing any potential difficulties for service requestors while providing the required service.

In conclusion, what would be your key advice or message to organizations and individuals looking to strengthen their security measures and ensure trust in an AI-driven world?

Consider adopting Zero Trust services as the fundamental principle for planning, strategizing, and implementing security measures in your organization. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has recently released a Zero Trust Maturity Model that provides valuable guidance on implementing Zero Trust Security. Identity-First Zero Trust Security is the most effective approach to Zero Trust because it focuses on using identity as the main factor in granting access to human and machine services.

To Know More, Read Full Interview @ https://ai-techpark.com/aitech-interview-with-arun-shrestha/

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cyberconIQ, Founder Dr. James Norrie – AITech Interview

Can you tell us about your background and journey that led you to establish cyberconIQ?

I am both an academic and a consultant/entrepreneur who has been studying technology trends, information privacy and security issues and considering the impact of disinformation on society for many years.  In both my professional practice and personal experience, cybersecurity – and now AI which will rapidly transform this important issue even further – are technology problems with a human dimension that more technology alone cannot fix.  So we need to blend psychology and technology better together in order to address the human elements of cybersecurity risk with proven behavioral science methods instead of simply pretending that humans are programmable like machines – they are not.  Knowing something is not the same as doing something, so we founded cyberconIQ to create pathways to voluntary changes in user behavior that creates a security 1st culture inside any organization more effectively than generic training that is unengaging and has proven to not have any meaningful impact on user behavior.

Dr. Norrie, could you please explain how cyberconIQ’s proprietary platform utilizes behavioral psychology to measure and manage personalized cybersecurity training and education programs?

By blending in proven elements of behavioral science including trait-based personality theory, understanding habituation and pattern interrupts as well as  the value of supporting humans as part of the solution instead of the problem, we EMPOWER  humans as your last line of organization defense against increasingly sophisticated attacks. Additionally, we can prove in side-by-side client studies that we can virtually eliminate phishing as a significant risk to your organization using this patented method.

Often, there is a gap between the technology implemented by organizations and the potential for human error. How can individuals and organizations bridge this gap to create a more robust cybersecurity posture?

I opened with the premise that more technology cannot solve a problem that new technology originally created.  That is because for most technologies, there is still an operator who is a human.  And humans are not programmable just because they are told what they should do, does not mean that they will do it.  So how do you inspire individuals to think of themselves not as a weak link in the chain, but the strongest?  And then use that dedication to new security habits to improve your organizations overall security posture one human and one style at a time?  And it works. Very well.

To Know More, Read Full Interview @ https://ai-techpark.com/aitech-interview-with-dr-james-norrie-founder-of-cyberconiq/

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Lookout VP, Strategy, Research & Innovation, Brian Buck – AITech Interview

Could you delve deeper into Lookout’s strategy for achieving its mission of ensuring a secure digital future?

As the leading provider of Data-Centric Cloud Security, we work to set a new standard for helping businesses protect the sensitive data and information they care about most. Today, the boundary between enterprise and personal data has all but disappeared.  A common software vulnerability can compromise a large, global company, which in turn can expose the personal information of millions of its customers.  And the reality is that regardless of corporate policies, people use the device that is in front of them to do both business work and personal tasks. People work from home, where the pace of corporate work intermeshes with the demands of home and family. An organization’s employees have personal presence on social media, and the history of data breaches combined with privacy-invasive tracking mean that there is an enormous amount of data about employees in the dark web, and attackers, who always use the easiest and least defended path to attack, are targeting employees as a means to gain access to enterprise data.

This reality requires a bold new approach to data protection—one that’s easy, automatic, and transparent. Our mission is to secure and empower productivity while keeping privacy a top priority in a world where work can happen anywhere. We do this by offering both mobile threat defense and security service edge (SSE) solutions to enterprise and government organizations.

Many individuals express concerns that AI might potentially compromise digital security. In the light of this, could you elaborate on Lookout’s perspective and approach towards leveraging AI, as exemplified by Lookout SAIL, to enhance cybersecurity effectiveness?

AI is playing an increasingly important role in cybersecurity. In fact, last year, Acumen Research and Consulting put out a report valuing the global market for AI-based cybersecurity products at $14.9 billion in 2021 with an estimated value of $133.8 billion by 2030. However, many say hackers are reaping the benefits as well, considering AI-generated phishing emails have higher rates of being opened than manually crafted phishing emails. So it’s important to be mindful when creating and deploying AI-powered products. For us, we thought about what our customers need the most in light of talent shortages in the industry and decided on a generative AI assistant to help them use our Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security and Lookout Cloud Security solutions to the fullest and with significant time savings.

To Know More, Read Full Interview @ https://ai-techpark.com/a-50-year-journey-in-cybersecurity-and-innovation/
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Safeguarding ASEAN’s Digital Future: Proactive Cloud Incident Response Strategies

The acceleration in the adoption of cloud technology has revolutionised the business landscape, and in doing so, significantly altered the cybersecurity ecosystem. The vast potential of cloud technology, such as its scalability, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness, has not gone unnoticed by nefarious entities seeking opportunities for exploitation. As businesses across ASEAN continue their transition to the cloud, they are increasingly confronted with escalating incidents of data breaches, ransomware attacks, and insider threats.

Therefore, it’s vital for organisations to devise and implement a robust cloud-specific incident response plan. Such a plan can help minimise the impact of security incidents, accelerate recovery time, and ensure optimal data protection in this rapidly evolving digital space.

Cloud Incident Response (IR) today needs to grapple with a radically different set of challenges, including data volume, accessibility, and the speed at which threats can multiply within cloud architectures. The interplay of various components, such as virtualization, storage, workloads, and cloud management software, intensifies the complexity of securing cloud environments.

That being said, Cloud IR cannot be done in isolation of the company’s overall incident response activities and business continuity plans. When possible, cloud security tools should use the same SOC, SOAR, and communication tools currently being used to secure other company elements. Using the same infrastructure ensures that suspicious and threatening cloud activities receive an immediate and appropriate response.

Creating an effective response plan involves understanding and managing the unique cloud platforms, being fully aware of data storage and access, and adeptly handling the dynamic nature of the cloud. Specifically:

Managing the Cloud Platform: The administrative console, the control centre of each cloud platform, facilitates the creation of new identities, service deployment, updates, and configurations impacting all cloud-hosted assets. This becomes an attractive target for threat actors, considering it offers direct access to the cloud infrastructure and user identities.

Understanding Data in the Cloud: The cloud hosts data, apps, and components on external servers, making it crucial to maintain correct configurations and timely updates. This is vital not just to prevent external threats, but also to manage internal vulnerabilities, such as misconfigurations, given the inherent complexity and size of cloud networks.

In conclusion, as businesses in the ASEAN region increasingly embrace cloud technologies, the need for a well-defined cloud IR plan has never been more crucial. By efficiently identifying signs of cloud-based threats, mitigating breaches, and limiting or eliminating damage, organisations can secure their cloud infrastructures, enhance their response processes, and reduce time to resolution.

To Know More, Read Full Article @ https://ai-techpark.com/strengthening-your-cybersecurity/ 

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Cyber Savvy Shopping: Protect Yourself from Black Friday Scams

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are excellent opportunities for customers to get hold of some great deals, while for retailers, it is an outstanding time to clear up their stocks. But, unfortunately, even cybercriminals utilize this time to execute scams and crimes that affect businesses.

According to global collective research in 2022, there is $41 billion in fraud damages reported from the e-commerce industry. However, it is anticipated that by the end of 2023, the loss will surpass $48 billion.

As cyber criminals initiate new routine scams around the time of these events, it is the right time for CISOs and other IT teams to step up their vigilance plan of action to counter such malicious attacks and protect their business as well as the interest of their valued customers.

With the help of this article, we will delve deep into some useful tips to create a secure online shopping experience.

Key Actions for Black Friday Cybersecurity

During such frenzied festive seasons, the CISOs and IT managers should be cautious as threat actors are on their toes to ruin businesses with their scams and deceiving tactics.

So, to prevent such incidents here are four essential key actions you can conduct:

Create a Robust Cybersecurity Plan

Planning a robust cybersecurity plan during events and festivals, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday can involve multiple approaches. It has been witnessed that cyber actors are ahead in the game by using tactics like:

Custom site designs for the event or early bird deals to fool customers into clicking on them and impersonating them as your customers.

It has been seen that customers are attracted to clickbait that forces your company to get their sensitive information, like credit or debit card details, addresses, mobile numbers, and many more.

Thus, chalking out the areas where monitoring is needed or what steps and protocols are needed to eliminate these incidents will save you valuable money and resources in turn giving your customers the retail therapy they deserve.

Implement Automated Data Security and Compliance

You need to ensure that your website or application follows all the rules and regulations in terms of data security and compliance.

Implement automated data security and compliance services that scan your network and notify you in real-time of any suspicious activity, which allows you to promptly act before any damage occurs.

Automated solution tools like Scrut, Vanta, Drata, and Tugboat Logic help employees monitor and report threats promptly.

The only standard approach to implement these tools would require adequate routine team training with appropriate knowledge transfer for personnel to operate these tools and defeat cyber criminals ahead of time!

To Know More, Read Full Article @ https://ai-techpark.com/ai-on-black-friday/ 

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Embracing Quantum Machine Learning to Break Through Computational Barriers

In our previous articles, we have highlighted how machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) can revolutionize IT organizations. But there is another very powerful resource that has the potential to change the traditional way of computing, which is called quantum computing (QC). In today’s article, we will highlight how to overcome computing limitations with quantum machine learning (QML) and what tools and techniques this technology can offer. But first, let’s take a quick glimpse of what quantum computing is.

Quantum computing is currently an emerging field that requires the development of computers based on the principles of quantum mechanics. Recently, scientists, technologists, and software engineers have found advancements in QC, which include increasingly stable qubits, successful demonstrations of quantum supremacy, and efficient error correction techniques. By leveraging entangled qubits, quantum computing enables dramatic advances in ML models that are faster and more accurate than before.

Usefulness of Utilizing Quantum Computing in Machine Learning

Quantum computing has the power to revolutionize ML by allowing natural language processing (NLP), predictive analytics, and deep learning tasks to be completed properly and with greater accuracy than the traditional style of computing methods. Here is how using QC will benefit technologists and software engineers when applied properly in their company:

Automating Cybersecurity Solutions

As cybersecurity is constantly evolving, companies are seeking ways to automate their security solutions. One of the most promising approaches is QML, as it is a type of AI that uses quantum computing to identify patterns and anomalies in large-scale datasets. This allows the companies to identify and respond to threats faster and reduce the cost of manual processes.

Accelerate Big Data Analysis

Quantum computing has gained traction in recent years as a potentially revolutionary technology that can be accurate in computing tasks and improve the speed of completing tasks. However, researchers are nowadays investigating the potential of QML for big data analysis. For example, a team of researchers from the University of California recently developed a QML algorithm that can analyze large-scale datasets more quickly and accurately than traditional ML algorithms.

The potential of QML algorithms is immense, and training them properly can be a major challenge for IT professionals and technologists. Researchers are finding new ways to address these problems related to the training of quantum machine learning algorithms.

To Know More, Read Full Article @ https://ai-techpark.com/overcoming-limitations-with-quantum-ml/ 

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AtScaleExecutive Chairman, and CEO Chris Lynch –  AITech Interview

In AI-Tech Park’s commitment to uncovering the path toward realizing enterprise AI, we recently sat down with Chris Lynch, an esteemed figure in the industry and accomplished Executive Chairman and CEO of AtScale. With a remarkable track record of raising over $150 million in capital and delivering more than $7 billion in returns to investors, Chris possesses invaluable knowledge about what it takes to achieve remarkable results in the fields of AI, data, and cybersecurity.

Please give us a brief overview of AtScale and its origin story. What makes AtScale stand apart from its competitors?

AtScale was founded in 2013 as a highly scalable alternative to traditional OLAP analytics technologies like Microsoft SSAS, Business Objects, Microstrategy, or SAP BW.  However, our true breakthrough came with the enterprise’s shifting data infrastructure to modern cloud data platforms.  AtScale uniquely lets analytics teams deliver “speed of thought” access to key business metrics while fully leveraging the power of modern, elastic cloud data platforms.  Further, what sets AtScale apart is its highly flexible semantic layer.  This layer serves as a centralized hub for governance and management, empowering organizations to maintain control while avoiding overly constraining decentralized analytics work groups.

How do AtScale’s progressive products and solutions further the growth of its clients?

AtScale offers the industry’s only universal semantic layer, allowing our clients to effectively manage all the data that is important and relevant for making critical business decisions within the enterprise. This is so they can drive mission-critical processes off of what matters the most – the data!

To achieve this, AtScale provides a suite of products that enable our end clients to harness the power of their enterprise data to fuel both business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. We simplify the process of building a logical view of the most significant data by seamlessly connecting to commonly used consumption tools like PowerBI, Tableau, and Excel and cloud data warehouses like Google BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake.  

What potential do you think AI and ML hold to transform SMEs and large enterprises? How can companies leverage these modern technologies and streamline their processes?

AI and ML are going to have a profound impact on how we live, conduct our day-to-day business, and shape the global economy. It is imperative for every organization to leverage AI to streamline their operations and processes, improve their costs, and more importantly build and sustain competitive differentiation in the market. But without proper data, AI becomes inefficient and uneventful. The power of those AI models and their predictions rests in the organizational data and needs a universal semantic layer to create AI-ready data.

To Know More, Read Full Interview @ https://ai-techpark.com/aitech-interview-with-chris-lynch/ 

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Quick Guide to Endpoint Security

In today’s increasingly complex threat landscape, traditional antivirus solutions are no longer enough to protect organizations from cyber attacks. Attackers are constantly evolving their tactics, and sophisticated malware and ransomware are becoming more prevalent. As a result, businesses need to take a more proactive approach to security, and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is emerging as a critical tool in the fight against cybercrime.

What is Endpoint Detection and Response?

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) refers to a type of cybersecurity technology that focuses on detecting and responding to security threats on individual devices, such as laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. EDR tools provide advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities, which allows security teams to detect suspicious behavior on endpoints, such as malware infections, unauthorized access attempts, and data exfiltration.

The goal of EDR is to provide real-time visibility into endpoint activity and help security teams quickly identify and respond to potential security incidents. Some common features of EDR tools include:

Real-time monitoring and analysis of endpoint activity, including network traffic, system logs, and user behavior. Automated threat detection and response, which can help security teams quickly identify and respond to potential security incidents.

Advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, can help identify patterns of behavior that may be indicative of an attack.

Integration with other security tools, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and security information and event management (SIEM) platforms.

Why is EDR important?

EDR is important because it provides a proactive approach to endpoint security that can help organizations identify and respond to threats before they cause damage. Traditional antivirus solutions are reactive, meaning they can only detect known threats and may not be effective against newer or more sophisticated attacks.

In contrast, EDR tools are designed to be more agile and flexible, allowing security teams to quickly adapt to new threats and respond accordingly. By monitoring endpoint activity in real-time, EDR tools can help detect and respond to potential security incidents before they escalate into major breaches.

EDR also helps organizations meet compliance requirements and improve their overall security posture. Many regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), require organizations to have robust security controls in place to protect sensitive data. EDR can help organizations meet these requirements by providing enhanced visibility and control over endpoint activity.

To Know More, Visit @ https://ai-techpark.com/quick-guide-to-endpoint-security/ 

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