Category: Cybersecurity

FinTech companies need to manage their IT infrastructure to ensure their daily activities and operations continue running efficiently. FinTech or Financial Technology firms heavily depend on complex IT and cybersecurity systems to manage their businesses. Over time, these systems undergo deterioration and become vulnerable to security attacks. As a result, FinTechs require upkeep and maintenance of such business-critical systems.

FinTech and BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance sector) companies are encouraged to enhance their IT infrastructure for:

Reducing IT Security Risks – Planning, setting scope, and mitigating cyber threats are a part of a comprehensive IT InfraSec management program. High severity incidents, attacks, and data leaks are less frequent and have minimal impact when threat and vulnerability management is implemented. The first step in reducing the IT security risks is to determine the features essential to protect infrastructure. The next step is to set up monitoring and visibility infrastructure that ensures the ongoing scans of all systems. Identification of internal and external infrastructure vulnerabilities and threats is very important. Any MSSP (Managed Security Service Providers) could be called in to provide their services so as to speed up the deployment of security across the FinTech company. MSSPs (Managed Security Service Providers) help in performing threat detection and incident response exercises and simulations. They also help in hunting threats across the organizational systems and network. Cybersecurity professionals from MSSPs perform root cause analysis to each and every incident that occurred within the infrastructure. Complying with government regulations and standards is also crucial to running FinTech businesses. MSSPs ease your journey to getting compliance certified.

Continuity of Operations – Even the most powerful cybersecurity frameworks can’t guarantee that there will be no incidents, leaks, or other cyber-attacks. A fintech company with good IT infrastructure management doesn’t have to shut down if sensitive data is lost or corrupted. Instead, the backups and data recovery plans are most likely in place. Infrastructure management also provides FintTech companies with effective incident management policies that include:

Identification of the occurrence of malicious activity
The relevant alerts logged and documented
Analysis and investigation procedures implemented
Adjustment and assignment of the tasks to professionals
Remediation and resolution of alerts and incidents
Customer Feedback is analyzed for continuous improvement

Implementation could be scaled-up and down – The deployment of substantial IT infrastructure, frequently on short notice, is one of the most difficult tasks that FinTechs face. This procedure can be made simple by good infrastructure management, that allows the company to scale up and down as needed. Infrastructure management encompasses assistance with architecture implementation at all stages of the process. This includes original planning, development and acquisition, lifecycle management, and secure system termination. A strong managed architecture implementation package should also interact seamlessly with any current risk and incident management infrastructure. To entirely protect the sensitive assets, architecture implementation should also involve extensive training and awareness services. This ensures that all stakeholders understand their duties and how to uphold them.

Well-organized regulatory compliance – Another reason for the FinTech industry is ensuring compliance with numerous legislations. The PCI-DSS applies to any BFSI organization that processes credit card transactions or cardholder data. PCI-DSS is the acronym for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Many businesses may be forced to perform SOC audits due to governmental or industry pressure. This is to ensure that the AICPA’s (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) SOC requirements are met. SOC stands for Security Operations Center. Fintechs working in or near the healthcare sector will almost certainly need to comply with HIPAA, either as covered firms or business associates. HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. These are just a handful of the compliance issues that companies in the FinTech industry might face. A regulatory compliance advice package should be included in every comprehensive infrastructure management program. That package must optimize and streamline compliance through assessment, mapping, and reporting.

For more information on IT infrastructure management for enterprises, contact Centex Technologies at Killeen (254) 213-4740, Dallas (972) 375-9654, Atlanta (404) 994-5074, and Austin (512) 956-5454

Human Factor Is One Of The Biggest Contributors To Cybersecurity Threats

By centexitguy

On December 28, 2021

In Cybersecurity

All cyber security actions, in one way or another, entail human engagement at some point. Hence, the human component should be regarded as a core part of cybersecurity.

Insiders affected by phishing and spear-phishing emails as well as unauthenticated scans and exploits performed by external hackers are two of the most dreadful threats to any network infrastructure. Credential thefts resulting from shoulder surfing, or social engineering the employees are prevalent for a long time now and employees still fall for such trivial illusions by hackers. These threats are usually a result of employees being complacent or ignoring common cybersecurity practices.

Four human factors that are often preventing the organization from adopting advanced cybersecurity measures are:

Application usability and accessibility – Usually, applications designed with a security-first approach lacks a user-friendly UI (User Interface) and hence lose mass appeal. People are not encouraged to be cautious or wary because of user-friendly designs. The efforts DevOps take to safeguard users are frequently meant to disrupt the DevOps flow. Making things more secure is already a Sisyphean process. While making things less secure is like dragging that same boulder downhill. This effect is amplified for persons who have special accessibility needs, such as vision impairment.
Cybersecurity skills – Enterprises are having a hard time hiring and retaining employees in cybersecurity roles for a variety of reasons. There exists a misconception about Cybersecurity as a career path; that it is only fit for people who have been steeped in code. Those interested in a career in information security will often discover that an entry-level position requires prior work experience. Moreover, for some businesses, cybersecurity is not a priority. All these reasons make hiring cybersecurity specialists a hard task and many employees quit mid-way into this domain.
Challenges to implementing solutions – Over the period of time, employees become comfortable with how a particular process works or how a software functions. It may be difficult to convince them about the changes to be made in order to enhance security of IT systems. As a result, cybersecurity takes a back seat in organization’s priority. Employees need to be open to embracing change in performing their business-as-usual activities by introducing security measures in them.
No one-size-fits-all solution – Organizations must comprehend the cybersecurity posture and implement security policies according to the requirements of enterprise. While many solutions would look apt for a particular organization, there may be some elements which may not fit in a particular scenario and may lead to security vulnerability. Understanding cybersecurity solutions and how they will impact operations of an organization is an important human function, which if not done properly can either lead to cybersecurity vulnerabilities or production/ operational losses.

Centex Technologies provide cybersecurity audit and solutions for businesses. For more information about how to keep your business processes secure, contact Centex Technologies at (254) 213 – 4740.

Website Security Vulnerabilities

By centexitguy

On November 29, 2021

In Cybersecurity

The OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping businesses design, buy, and manage secure apps and APIs. The OWASP Top 10 is largely intended to raise awareness. However, since its introduction in 2003, enterprises have used it as a de-facto industry AppSec standard. If you’re going to utilize the OWASP Top 10 as coding or testing standard, keep in mind that it’s only a starting point.

Top most common security vulnerabilities usually found in websites across the globe are as follows:

Broken Access Control
Users cannot behave outside of their specified permissions because of access control. Failures frequently result in unauthorized information disclosure, alteration, or loss of all data. Also, it might lead to the execution of a business function beyond the user’s capabilities. Access control is effective only when there exist trustworthy server-side programs or server-less APIs and the access control validation or metadata cannot be modified by the attacker.

Insecure Design
Insecure design refers to a variety of flaws, such as “missing or inadequate control design”. There is a distinction to be made between insecure design and insecure execution. The first is for design problems, whereas the second is for implementation flaws. Implementation flaws can lead to weaknesses in a secure design. Because necessary security measures were never established to fight against specific threats, unsafe designs cannot be rectified by faultless execution. The absence of a business risk profile inherent in the software or system is created. Therefore, failure to decide the level of security design required is one of the reasons that lead to unsafe design.

Security Misconfiguration
Inadequately set permissions on cloud services or a lack of sufficient security hardening across any portion of the application stack. Systems are more vulnerable without a determined, repeatable application security setup procedure. A repeatable hardening procedure makes deploying another environment that is suitably locked down. The development, QA, and production environments should all be set up the same way, with separate credentials for each. To reduce the time and effort necessary to set up a new secure environment, this procedure should be automated.

Vulnerable and Outdated Components
Software such as OS, web/application server, database management systems, applications, APIs, runtime environments, and libraries are vulnerable, unsupported, or out of date. This involves utilizing tools like versions, OWASP dependency check, retire.js, and others to constantly inventory the versions of both client-side and server-side components and their dependencies. Continuously check for vulnerabilities in the components using resources such as the CVE (Common Vulnerability and Exposures) and the NVD (National Vulnerability Database). Automate the process by utilizing software composition analysis tools.

Identification and Authentication Failures
To guard against authentication-related threats, users’ identities must be confirmed, authentication must be performed, and sessions must be managed. If the program allows credential stuffing when the attacker has a list of legitimate usernames and passwords, there may be authentication vulnerabilities. Memorized secrets or other contemporary, evidence-based password rules should follow the recommendations in section 5.1.1 of NIST 800-63b.

Software and Data Integrity Failures
Code and infrastructure that do not guard against integrity violations are referred to as software and data integrity failures. Unauthorized access, malicious code, or system compromise can all be risks of an unsecured CI/CD pipeline. Finally, many programs now have auto-update capabilities, which allow updates to be obtained without necessary integrity checks and applied to previously trusted applications. Attackers might theoretically distribute and run their own updates across all systems. Another example is unsecured deserialization, which occurs when objects or data are encoded or serialized into a structure that an attacker may see and manipulate. Use a software supply chain security tool, such as OWASP dependency-check or OWASP CycloneDX, to ensure that components do not contain known vulnerabilities.

Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
This category is designed to assist in the detection, escalation, and response to active security breaches. Breaches cannot be identified without logging and monitoring. It could happen at any moment because of insufficient recording, detection, monitoring, and active reaction. Custom dashboards and alerts are available in commercial and open-source application security frameworks like the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set. Security experts also use the open-source log correlation tool ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack.

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
When a web application fetches a remote resource without verifying the URL provided by the user, an SSRF vulnerability occurs. Even when secured by a firewall, VPN, or another form of network access control list, it permits an attacker to force the program to submit a forged request to an unexpected location. Fetching a URL has become a typical scenario as current online applications provide quite resourceful functionalities to end-users. As a result, SSRF is becoming more prevalent. Because of cloud services and the complexity of architectures, the severity of SSRF is also increasing.

Centex Technologies develops secure web portals for clients. For more information on cybersecurity and secure web applications, contact Centex Technologies at (254) 213 – 4740.

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Category: Cybersecurity

Need Of IT Infrastructure Management For Fintech Businesses

Human Factor Is One Of The Biggest Contributors To Cybersecurity Threats

Website Security Vulnerabilities