Tag: SSO

Devin Partida, Editor-in-Chief of ReHack.com, tapped Optimal IdM for her recent blog, “The Best Secure Authentication Methods for Teams Working from Home”.  ...

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The IDaaS market has evolved over the past few years and is still growing, both in size and in the number of vendors. However, under the umbrella term of IDaaS, we find a variety of offerings. IDaaS, in general, provides Identity & Access Management capabilities as a service, ranging from Single Sign-On to full Identity Provisioning for both on-premise and cloud solutions. These solutions also vary in their support for different groups of users – such as employees, business partners, and customers – their support for mobile users, and their integration capabilities back to on-premise environments. ...

Social sign-ons are not meant to and should not be used to protect sensitive assets. Of greater concern is that data sharing is a two-way street. When a company uses single sign-on, it gets information such as email addresses and geographical locations from the social network; however, it also may be giving information about its users’ behaviors back to the social network. Businesses should understand which user information they are sharing when they agree to the terms of the social network.

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Where to begin listing Optimal IdM’s accomplishments in 2018? Gartner named them to the Access Management, WorldWide Magic Quadrant and the Access Management Critical Capabilities reports. They partnered with TypingDNA to incorporate behavioral biometrics into their MFA, adding an even smoother authentication option to their arsenal. Optimal IdM partnered with Omada earlier this year to leverage identity governance data. Additionally, Gartner recognized Optimal IdM in the “Finding the Right Consumer IAM Products” report. 2019 is a year of promise for Optimal IdM and their CIAM. Posted on January 25, 2019 by Ben Canner ...

The HTTP protocol was designed as a transport protocol to fetch and return content and to display HTML or other functions. But, HTTP wasn’t designed with authentication security top of mind. Approximately 40% of data breaches originate from attacks on web apps. And many of these breaches are preventable. HTTP header session protection as a part of your SSO solution should be at the forefront of your mind. Access to web/SaaS applications obviously initially requires successful authentication. After your username and password are accepted, authentication between the user and web service (client/server) session is usually maintained by cookies. The cookie allows the server, after successful authentication, to identify and trust the client during the session to allow seamless access to the web service. Many web services are front ends to databases, consumer data and/or corporate user specific data. An attacker, therefore, would just need to steal the cookie to hijack the current authenticated session. HTTP headers provide another layer of security for employees and consumers to guard against a number of attack vectors — including man-in-the-middle attacks (MIM), many cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, session hijacking, and more. Cross-site scripting (XSS) has been a popular attack vector. In fact, it’s reported that XSS is the most common exploited vulnerability in web applications. XSS are high risk vulnerabilities where a type of code injection is used to hijack a legitimate users’ session. This isn’t a password breach, but a breach in the web session where the user has already successfully authenticated and is interacting with a web service. The HTTP session is hijacked and the attacker is now impersonating a legitimate authenticated user. Users are vulnerable everywhere to these threats but are especially susceptible within public unsecured WiFi networks where attackers can easily extract session cookies. Certainly, you would always also prefer an HTTPS session over an HTTP session, but that won’t necessarily help mitigate some XSS security issues. You need multiple layers of protection. HTTP header session protection is an essential component of a secure web services session; however, HTTP header session protection won’t protect against weak and reused passwords, brute force attacks, phishing attacks and other attacks against the passwords themselves. To mitigate password threats, implement strong authentication using multifactor authentication (MFA). Optimal IdM has a rock solid, agile MFA solution that was named Best MFA Solution of the Year in the GSN Homeland Security Awards. Microsoft reports that only 4% of SaaS storage apps and 3% of SaaS collaboration apps support all HTTP headers session protection. It’s irresponsible for organizations to ignore such large, yet solvable, attack vectors.  Today’s sophisticated threat landscape for web and SaaS SSO applications require a vendor who can support modern, strong authentication by leveraging multiple HTTP session protections. Optimal IdM is that vendor. Further, Optimal IdM’s SSO solutions session support protections and encrypt data in transit and at rest. Additional Recommendations ...

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Ideas about cybersecurity in the manufacturing sector have started to change, and it’s about time. Until recently, a common misperception among those in the industrial world was that that they had little to attract hackers—no credit card data, no health records, no bitcoin. But manufacturers do have data, and it’s immensely valuable — their trade secrets. Profit isn’t the only motivation for hackers many just want to cause chaos. There are plenty of reasons for hackers to attack manufacturing systems; the proof is that one out of three industrial control systems (ICS) computers were hacked last year (Kaspersky Lab, Sept 2017). That number seems daunting. Many industrial automation systems have only limited internet connectivity, if at all. But they are connected to their corporate networks, and that’s where the weakness lies. Only half of manufacturing businesses isolate their ICS networks from their corporate networks (www.ncms.org/CyberSecurityReport). The rest are the mercy of the same phishing, ransomware, and insider attacks as any financial or healthcare organization. One vulnerability that affects manufacturers in particular is poor security practices among their vendors. It just takes one weak partner to infect an entire supply chain. Hackers are efficient criminals; they conduct research using Lexis Nexis, LinkedIn, and even dumpster dive to learn what they need to know to launch the most effective attack possible against their target of choice. If they want to attack your business, they may learn who your vendors are, choose those they suspect to be the weakest¾which may be a mom-and-pop shop, or may be a larger business that has a reputation on the dark web as an easy takedown¾and breach the weak vendor in order to hop onto your network. Security professionals like to say, “Security is people.” The average worker at a bank or hospital is highly aware that their employer is a high-value target, so they are more cautious than those in other industries about clicking on links or opening attachments. The average worker in an industrial business may not be as guarded. Security awareness training is a step in the right direction, but not all workers will take it seriously. Even if every worker did keep security at top-of-mind, humans still make mistakes. It just takes one accidental click to open the door to malware. And once inside, it may make its way to whatever target its authors desire. That could be your trade secrets, or it could be the main controllers in your automation system. ...