by Teknita Team | Nov 30, 2022 | Security
Sharing files is as simple as sending a link, and personal email accounts that shouldn’t have access to confidential documents can be added without IT teams knowing. In fact, over half of employees admit that they or a coworker have accidentally added their personal email accounts to company documents.
These personal email accounts usually have fewer protections than corporate accounts, leading to outsized security risks and headaches for admins. For example, a personal account could have access to a company file for months or years after the employee who owned it has left the organization.
IT and Security teams have zero to little visibility into this access, and fixes take up valuable time and resources.
Understand the scope of the problem
Identify risks through full visibility of personal account access.
To resolve issues with personal account access, companies must first understand the scope of their risks. With the right process and tooling, this should take almost no time and zero manual effort.
Create clear policies
Get stakeholder approval and ensure all employees understand security policies
Once a company has visibility into its personal account risk, it can begin creating policies. In our experience, policy creation is a process that requires conversations with key stakeholders, and, depending on a company’s size, a formal approval process.
Once policies have been aligned and approved, it’s important to make sure employees fully understand the policies they’ll be expected to abide by.
Educate and empower employees
Train employees and delegate processes to end-users to create a culture of security
Another key step to keeping company information secure is to train employees on risks and issues related to personal accounts. It’s vital to help employees first understand the problems so that they can take part in solutions.
Remediate problems and automate processes
Quickly fix issues through simple investigations and bulk remediation actions
A key step in the journey is cleaning up personal account access. However, without the right tooling and processes, this often takes lots of time and bandwidth for IT and Security teams.
Unauthorized or accidental access by personal accounts is one of the biggest risks companies deal with when keeping their sensitive data safe. And creating a culture of security and protecting company documents from this risk is not a simple task.
You can read more about Protecting Company Data From Personal Account Access here.
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by Teknita Team | Nov 29, 2022 | Uncategorized
A legacy system is a broad term used to describe an information system that uses (Older, perhaps) outdated technology.
Some factors used to determine legacy systems are:
• Age. If the software is over 10 years old, it can be considered legacy software.
• System support. The system can no longer support multiple software that the organization relies on, or the skills required to support the system have become obsolete.
• Maintenance. The software cannot be upgraded or extended, and maintenance is more expensive and takes more time and effort.
• User Experience. The software is unable to handle a large number of users. (Or, it requires users to have to go to multiple systems to compile the required info).
While legacy systems may still work despite these factors, the window of opportunity for growth is firmly sealed shut. Missing out on new software capabilities like cloud computing , improved data integration and the effective use of Metadata tools, can hold your business back.
Fortunately, there are many legacy system modernization strategies. Which legacy system modernization strategy works best for your business depends on the skills shortages you have and what enhanced capabilities you would like to add on. Conducting a thorough assessment of your legacy system can help you determine which legacy system modernization strategy will work best for you.
Some legacy system modernization approaches that you can take:
Replacement
Legacy replacement modernization is a strategy that involves eliminating the former application component and replacing it with a new system.
Legacy replacement modernization may be the right modernization strategy for you if:
• You are looking to add on new functions and features
• Your system cannot keep up with your business needs
• Modernization of your existing legacy system is not possible or cost-effective
• Your legacy system is very outdated and not extensible
As you can tell, this modernization strategy is multi-faceted and can be applied to many business types to help meet their needs.
Rebuild
The rebuilding method essentially takes your legacy system and throws it out the window. This strategy rewrites the application component completely from scratch while still preserving specifications and key factors.
While a complete overhaul like this takes a lot of work, it does allow for new functions and features to be integrated into the new system.
Rearchitecting
Rearchitecting involves materially altering the application code so it can be transferred to a new application architecture with better capabilities.
Refactor
Refactoring involves optimizing and restructuring existing code without changing external behavior. This strategy is used to remove technical debt and to improve the features and structure of the component.
Replatforming
This strategy is used to migrate an application to a new run-time platform. Replatforming makes very few changes to the code for adaptation but does not change the code structure nor the functions and features that it provides.
Rehost
Rehosting re-deploys an application to a cloud infrastructure, virtual, or physical structure. This is done without recompiling, altering the code, or making any changes to functions and features.
Encapsulate
This strategy is used to extend an application’s features and value. Data and functions are encapsulated into the application and made available as services through an application programming interface (API).
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by Teknita Team | Nov 23, 2022 | Security
You can secure your organization from risks of ransomware and recovery with a robust, fool-proof and tested plan. However, designing a ransomware incident response plan can be a daunting task, especially if you’re not sure where to start. These are 5 steps with key pointers and best practices for creating an effective ransomware response plan that is tailored to your organization’s specific needs.
1. Assess Risks | Validate Attack
Before you can begin building your ransomware response plan, you first need to assess your organization’s risks and vulnerabilities. Conduct a thorough risk assessment and threat analysis. This includes understanding the types of ransomware attacks that are most likely to occur, as well as identifying which systems and data are most at risk.
Validate that an attack is actually happening. There are a variety of malware – phishing, adware, or other malware infections that exhibit ransomware-like symptoms, such as strange file extensions, unusual emails or files, or system slowdowns. Proceed to the next steps if the two telling signs of ransomware are verified – your files are encrypted or locked.
2. Mitigate Risks | Contain Attack
Once you have assessed your organization’s risks and vulnerabilities, it’s time to start mitigating them. This may include implementing additional security measures, such as firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), and anti-virus software. It’s also important to make sure that your employees are properly trained in how to identify and respond to ransomware attacks.
If you determine that an attack is in progress, it’s important to take steps to contain it. This may involve isolating infected systems, disabling network access from affected systems, quarantining infected files, and contacting law enforcement for assistance.
3. Respond to Attack | Recover Data
Once you have contained the ransomware attack, it’s time to start responding to it. This may include restoring systems and data from backup, removing ransomware infections, or contacting law enforcement. It’s important to have a well-defined Incident Response Plan (IRP) or a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan (BCDR) in place so that you can respond quickly and effectively to a ransomware attack. CIOs, CSOs, and IT managers outline processes that help their organization prepare for and recover from disruptive events.
Once you have contained and responded to the ransomware attack, your next priority will be to restore systems and data as quickly as possible. Depending on the scope of the attack, this may involve restoring data from backup and/or reinstalling affected systems from scratch. If you have followed the 3-2-1 best practice of backups, then your backup should be unaffected – on the cloud or offsite – such that you can restore the “last known good version”. It’s important to work closely with IT staff during this process to make sure that any necessary security patches or updates are applied before bringing affected systems back online.
4. Train Employees | Communicate and Coordinate
Turn your weakest link to your strongest with comprehensive, contextual, and regular cybersecurity training. Also, remember to keen it contextual by building governance into your systems such that alerts and red flag checks appear at pertinent times. For instance, on sharing files or folders advise employees to provide minimal access on a strict need-to-know basis.
As part of your ransomware response plan, it is important to outline clear communication and coordination with all relevant stakeholders throughout the incident response process. This includes working closely with IT teams, security personnel, legal teams, and other key stakeholders both within and outside your organization.
5. Retrospect and Improvise
Effective ransomware incident response requires coordination between multiple teams and individuals, both inside and outside your organization. Make sure that everyone involved in the response understands their roles and responsibilities, and that there is a clear chain of command so that decisions can be made quickly and effectively.
Once the ransomware attack has been contained and dealt with, it is important to take a step back and retrospectively analyze what happened. Performing a post-mortem analysis of a ransomware attack can help your organization learn from its mistakes and improve its defenses against future attacks.
Finally, it is important to continually monitor for new threats and risks related.
You can read more about Ransomware Incident Response Plan here.
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by Teknita Team | Nov 22, 2022 | Box
Box is a cloud-based software package that allows for automated syncing of files and folders. Box users can use the software to collaborate on projects and file creation, too.
For a company already using the Box cloud storage and collaboration software on laptops and desktops, adding the mobile Box app is a logical next step. Team members can enhance their productivity by using Box anywhere and on any device. No matter where work (or life) takes you, Box Mobile app helps you manage your content and get more done. With flexibility to view hundreds of file types, securely share your files, and save them for offline access, the Box app puts the power of the Content Cloud in your hands.
The number of features users will have available with the mobile apps depends in part on the subscription tier for the account.
When purchasing a Box subscription for a business, users can select among four different pricing tiers. Each of these four tiers includes mobile access as part of the regular price. Each level also offers a 14-day free trial period. However, the version of Box made for non-business use does have a completely free version available.
Users will have access to the same folder structure they use in the desktop version. When users open the Box app, they will see all of the folders used to organize the files stored in the cloud.
Users who sign up for the Business, Business Plan, or Enterprise tiers will have access to Box’s mobile security controls feature. This feature gives administrators the ability to control how team members access the data stored in Box through their mobile devices. Administrators can manage these mobile security settings through the Admin Console page in Box. Individual mobile users also have some options for controlling their mobile security settings, including the ability to require a Box app-specific passcode after a period of inactivity. Users can choose to enact a two-step login process to Box as well.
Box Mobile App is available via iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices. This app gives users the ability to make use of Box – capture, access, and share content securely – on any device, anywhere.
You can read more about Box Mobile here.
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by Teknita Team | Nov 18, 2022 | Uncategorized
A process of implementation involves a variety of different departments and stakeholders. The key to a successful ECM implementation lies in the combination of planning and partnership.
Here are five steps you can take to ensure a smooth ECM implementation.
1. Enlist a team of stakeholders
The success of your ECM program depends only minimally on the technology you choose. A much more important consideration is around your stakeholders – the people and leaders of teams who will use or benefit from the ECM system. You should examine how they feel about the project and whether the ECM system it produces meets their needs.
Input from your stakeholders will help you to understand how an ECM system affects different departments of the business. This understanding will improve your chances of success.
2. Define your ECM goals
You should define the goals of your ECM project with your stakeholder team. Goals will depend on your situation, but some common ECM goals are as follows:
- Improve information security.
- Support compliance.
- Reduce friction in the business.
- Implement content tagging.
- Integrate automation and AI.
3. Plan for your goals
Once you know what your goals are, you should plan how to reach them. This could be through refinements of the current system or by building a new system. This may require you to consider content migration and user training and adoption.
For each goal, it’s important to balance time-to-market with its effects on the business. Determine whether there are important things you can complete faster than others. During this step is the time to optimize your implementation timeline.
4. Build, test and deploy your ECM
Use the agile/scrum methodology to drive your implementation project and CI/CD to maximize stakeholder engagement and program flexibility. Iterate in bi-weekly or monthly releases that stakeholders will evaluate.
By moving incrementally toward the goals, you will provide opportunities for learning and course correction as the program progresses.
5. Iterate
Despite completing a successful implementation, the work is not over. An ECM must adapt to new realities if it will remain viable and valuable to an organization. You should include in your plan the capability to build, integrate and refine your ECM to deliver future business value.
You can read more about ECM Implementation here.
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