Luca Rognoni, Chief Security Officer and Co-Founder, YEO Messaging
The cyber threat landscape has expanded dramatically in recent years due to the exponential growth of interconnected devices, systems and infrastructure inside and outside organizations. New IT technologies mean new cyber threats to assess, expanded organizational network perimeters, new attack surfaces to defend against, new attack vectors to recognize, and a reduced margin of error in cyber risk assessments, but as the number of cyber threats increases, all organizations Increased data processed, transmitted, and stored in
In the rapidly growing cyber threat landscape, providing confidentiality and integrity of data in transit is more important than ever in an organization’s cyber defense strategy, and secure communications play a key role in preventing data breaches and other cyber attacks.
Secure communication includes several components including encryption, authentication, authorization, integrity, and non-repudiation. Encryption plays an important role in protecting confidentiality and integrity as it is a data security control that can be applied to data when it is in three different states of its lifecycle: at rest, in transit and in certain scenarios, data in use. do. In the layered security model, encryption is a direct information protection technology that integrates seamlessly into a defense-in-depth approach to data security.
Authentication and authorization mechanisms ensure that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data. Authentication and authorization has evolved into an identity and access management system that allows organizations to grant access to resources only to authorized individuals or entities, and to determine what individuals or entities can do based on their roles or privileges, resulting in granularity or isolation. to be able to create. systems, workspaces and people. A granular approach to data access reduces the scale and impact of data breaches. The identity and access control system provides a comprehensive set of frameworks to enforce authentication and authorization through MFA, contextual authentication, single sign-on, and federation.
Data integrity ensures that transmitted information has not been tampered with or altered during communication, while non-repudiation proves the authenticity of data and the identity of the sender.
Looking at an organization’s cyber risk landscape, data breach mitigation for data in transit is one of the most important defense challenges organizations face as it encompasses multiple organizational areas where data moves in and out of organizational boundaries. .
Mitigate fast-emerging threats related to your supply chain and reduce their impact with secure communications. As organizational data moves in and out of network perimeters and traverses multiple organizations and infrastructures in complex supply chains, risk is often difficult to fully assess, so direct information protection technologies such as data encryption, policy-based access control, and continuous monitoring can protect data transmission. Mitigate serious data breaches along these long supply chains, where data visibility is often reduced or lost at the edge of an organization’s network perimeter. Secure tunneling protocols such as VPN (IPSec, WireGuard) using on-premise or cloud VPN proxies are fundamental to providing secure site-to-site connections between multiple networks. Secure supply chain management can rely on secure data exchange protocols such as AS2/AS4 and OFTP2, which provide strong security and flexibility in a B2B environment. Traditional S/MIME, SFTP, HTTPS, and E2EE are still solid foundations for secure communication of email, web content, and data exchange in general.
Cloud services from SaaS to IaaS are the lifeblood of any organization, but they force organizations to extend their defense perimeter outside where on-premise risk mitigation strategies cannot be applied. Secure communication between organizations and their cloud infrastructure protects incoming and outgoing data traffic from sensitive user data to management plane network traffic. VPN Protocols and VPN Gateway Services Security Management Plan Network Traffic, Secure Web Gateways, CASBs, and DLPs enforce organizational security policies and visibility in day-to-day network traffic to detect and prevent data exfiltration, policy violations, and malicious content to connect with cloud infrastructure. Create secure communications. .
On-premise data traffic, especially north-south network traffic, should always implement secure communications by segmenting the network and using firewalls and access control policies to control access to sensitive data. Whether unintentional or unintentional, data exfiltration is the most difficult threat to mitigate internally. Secure communication is secured by restricting access to data, providing accountability and monitoring through data loss prevention (DLP) and secure web gateway solutions that can monitor communication channels for sensitive data and ensuring it is not shared with unauthorized parties. Enables the deployment of collaboration solutions. Organizations securely share data and collaborate on projects without exposing themselves to the risk of cyberattacks. Secure communication can protect e-mail messages by encrypting the content, verifying the identity of the sender using digital signatures, and scanning e-mail attachments for malware.
The recent pandemic has increased remote or hybrid work environments. While providing great flexibility and cost-effectiveness, it also expands an organization’s attack surface. An organization’s defense network perimeter extends beyond its on-premises or cloud infrastructure to remote worker infrastructure and networks, increasing traffic inbound and outbound to the organization of sensitive data. . Secure communications are critical to protecting and monitoring confidential data such as email, video/audio conferencing, and current messaging. Secure communications are critical to mobility and include end-to-end encrypted and continuously authenticated secure messaging apps such as those designed and developed by YEO Messaging, encrypted email protocols such as S/MIME, mobile remote VPNs, and organization-managed web application proxies and security. Access the web gateway.
Secure communications are essential for organizations that must comply with industry regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS or GDPR. These regulations require organizations to protect sensitive data and maintain secure communication channels to prevent data breaches by implementing secure communication protocols that provide end-to-end encryption, digital signatures, access control, and other security features.
Finally, secure communications are an important component of an organization’s incident response plan. The plan includes maintaining secure communication channels to prevent further data leakage and facilitating quick and secure coordination and collaboration between all parties involved: incident response teams, management, legal counsel, law enforcement and other third-party vendors or consultants.
About the author
Luca Rognoni, Chief Security Officer and Co-Founder, YEO Messaging, secure messaging that uses patented persistent facial recognition to authenticate users. Luca is a highly skilled software engineer with over 25 years of experience designing and coding digital rights management (DRM), antivirus, encrypted systems and other security software. He started his career in 1999 as a software and hardware reverse engineer and device driver developer for Microsoft and Linux platforms, focusing on file system filter and network filter drivers. This gave him a strong foundation to develop core system software with interesting security applications, which sparked his interest in developing antivirus and antimalware solutions.
Luca then began developing antivirus and anti-malware kernel engines and DRM solutions for software and data, including the DRM solution used by Microsoft Game Studio to protect Windows PC games, mobile security software development and penetration testing.
Luca co-founded YEO Messaging in 2017 and is responsible for YEO’s internal security, intrusion resistance and global threat resistance development. YEO can be used by businesses and individuals who want to know that the messages, files, and media they share are safe, private, and only the intended recipients can see, whether it’s private photos or sensitive documents. In addition to end-to-end encryption and geo-fencing capabilities, YEO is the only app that uses persistent facial recognition to verify not only your device, but also who is viewing it.
Luca can be reached at Luca@yeomessaging.com and on our website at www.yeomessaging.com.