Managing Risk is More Important Now Than Ever

February 20, 2018 1210 Views Gabriel Torok

I just read the Forrester Wave™: Governance, Risk, And Compliance Platforms, Q1 2018.

Forrester reminds us all that “Risk and compliance management is more important than ever, thanks to the increasingly intangible nature of business value and the growing risk of violating customer trust.”

The report evaluated 14 leading GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) vendors: ACL, Enablon, IBM, LogicManager, MetricStream, Nasdaq, NAVEX Global, Riskonnect, RSA, Rsam, SAI Global, SAP, ServiceNow, and Thomson Reuters. What was most interesting to me is that 50% of these leading providers use PreEmptive’s application protection tools as part of their own strategy.

With software applications driving new business models, corporate reputations are increasingly at risk and regulatory fines are skyrocketing. Now is an ideal time to implement a comprehensive risk management strategy.

Effectively Implementing App Protection

Development’s Journey to Effectively Implementing App Protection

Because data is created, accessed, and changed through applications, hardening and shielding your applications is a key component to protecting your data. Adding application protection to your secure software development lifecycle will make it more difficult for people and machines to exploit them. But, what are the factors to consider when thinking about application risk? Effective application risk management is a sustained, consistent practice and technology selection and implementation is a specialized discipline within that practice. The initial steps below offer a roadmap to selecting and implementing application hardening and shielding as a part of a broader application risk management program.

The full Infographic in pdf form is available here.

Does app have intellectual property?

Does app gate access to value?

Does app access private information?

Is the app subject to regulation?

Does app run in an untrusted environment?

“Software is eating the world.” The now-famous quote by technology expert Marc Andreessen was relevant in 2011 but seems downright prophetic in 2018 — the rise of web-based, mobile and IoT applications have created a market both massive and ever-changing. Companies know that simply staying competitive requires cutting-edge apps that both streamline the user experience and provide a steady flow of actionable data. But malicious actors also recognize the value of applications — and will do anything they can to compromise, infiltrate or damage business app networks.

It gets worse: According to the Center for Internet Security, “malspam” threats — unsolicited emails that contain malicious links or attachments — remain the number one attack vector for cybercriminals. Why? Because despite their simplicity, these attacks succeed. As noted by SC Magazine, meanwhile, 80 percent of IoT applications still aren’t tested for security vulnerabilities.

I just read the Forrester Wave™: Governance, Risk, And Compliance Platforms, Q1 2018.

IT security is a hot topic, and no wonder — major healthcare, finance and government breaches have all made headlines in recent months prompting both federal agencies and compliance organizations to draft new security standards. As noted by Tech Target, regulations under Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI-DSS and HIPAA all lay out clear expectations for companies when it comes to protecting network assets, personal data and critical infrastructure.

Software, meanwhile, has historically escaped the reach of these regulations, largely thanks to the rapid uptake of mobile and web-based applications: The sheer number and type of cloud-enabled offerings and now IoT-connected software made it difficult for governing bodies and compliance agencies to define meaningful standards that improved overall security. But, just as cloud computing went through a “wild west” period of rapid expansion followed by increasing scrutiny and regulation, software and application development is now on the receiving end of emerging security regulations.

Preventing Privilege Escalation in mobile payment apps (PCI Mobile Payment Acceptance Security Guidelines Section 4.3)

Regulators, standards bodies and IT auditors have become increasingly likely to recommend an absolute prohibition of rooted Android devices in production environments. As the 2017 PCI Mobile Payment Acceptance Security Guidelines state, “Bypassing permissions can allow untrusted security decisions to be made, thus increasing the number of possible attack vectors.”

It is only natural that the apps themselves rise up to act as a ubiquitous governance, risk, and compliance management layer – preventing, detecting, responding, and reporting on threats - including those posed by unauthorized rooted devices.

Managing Risk is More Important Now Than Ever

Effectively Implementing App Protection

Development’s Journey to Effectively Implementing App Protection

Technology Trust Issues When Running in Untrusted Environments? Try Application Shielding