Tech Times | Protecting data from cyberattackers

Jamaica's computer appliance and software retailer, Royale Computers, held their conference on 'Solutions for Today's Cyber Breaches' on May 17, 2017, in the Venetian Room at the Terra Nova Hotel.

Over the last seven years, Royale Computers has partnered with several reputable vendors to ensure its customers receive the highest quality products and solution services. With the recent increase in cyber breaches worldwide, there is now a compelling need for the increase in cybersecurity.

The company recently partnered with mission-critical system to increase its ability to provide security solutions for corporate Jamaica and personal usership. The aim of the conference was to educate IT specialists who are in control of the information gathered within these corporate entities.

The six security vendors in attendance were A10 Networks, Infoblox, Proofpoint, Okta, Carbon Black and Phishme. Each vendor specialises in different areas which may not only increase the security of a network, but also its productivity.

Investigating encrypted traffic

Lloyd McClelland from A10 Networks expounded on the company's Thunder Secure Sockets Layer (SSLi) product which gives IT administrators high-performance visibility in SSL-encrypted traffic. The product enables visibility into encrypted traffic with SSLi insight and stop potential threats. It also eliminates the blind spot in corporate defences by enabling third-party security devices to inspect encrypted traffic. Thunder SSLi has a cloud-based self-learning network that can classify over 13 billion URLs and 460 million domain names for ultimate visibility.

It also offloads burdensome tasks such as SSL decryption, URL filtering and ICAP integration from perimeter security. Its key features include flexible, high-performance visibility, application delivery partitions, URL category bypass, URL filtering, firewall load balancing and reduced load on security infrastructure.

Protecting your domain

Another vendor, Infoblox, had speakers Saul Escalante and Juan Chamora, who spoke about domain name servers (DNS) security using their product. Infoblox secures a network from the core, blocking cybercriminals from mitigating DNS-based attacks, malware, and data exfiltration.

Adam Greenberg from SC Media, the cybersecurity source, indicated that intruders often use DNS as a pathway to exfiltrate data because it's commonly overlooked by security solutions that focus on firewalls, IDS, and proxies. It was also revealed that forty-six per cent of large businesses have experienced data exfiltration via DNS. The speakers stressed that companies cannot afford downtime, especially with the financial impact and legal consequences that will come from a cyberattack.

Targeted attacks using emails

Marcio Bonifacio from Proofpoint was the third vendor and he elaborated on his company's ability to provide targeted attack protection. Proofpoint stops ransomware, business email compromise and malware attacks at the core, where they start. More than 90 per cent of targeted attacks start with email, and these threats are always evolving.

Proofpoint targeted attack protection (TAP) stays ahead of today's attackers with an innovative approach that detects, analyses, and blocks advanced threats before they reach the inbox. TAP allows administrators to block and quarantine messages with malicious attachments or malicious URLs. They never reach the inbox, so users never click on them and become compromised. It also submits attachments and URLs to their cloud-based scanning service to detect and inspect malicious content.

TAP transparently rewrites all embedded URLs to protect users on any device or network. Finally, it tracks and blocks access to malicious web pages without affecting the user experience or other URL-filtering technologies he is using.

Creating ease of access

The fourth vendor to give a presentation was Okta, which was delivered by Casey Crocker and focused on multifactor authentication, single sign-on and bring your own devices. With Okta, users need to authenticate just once to be able to manage and access all their applications, whether behind the firewall or in the cloud, through a single, customisable user portal.

In addition, Okta can also be used to provide single sign-in to access multiple applications hosted through NetScaler Gateway. End users stay connected and productive on any device, wherever they are, while companies stay secure by enforcing centrally managed authentication and authorisation policies.

Carbon Black's presentation, delivered by Kristen Desantis and Tristan Morris, were the fifth vendors at the conference. They're product-focused on end point detection and response for end point security. The Carbon Black end point security platform helps organisations of all sizes replace ineffective antivirus, lock down end points and critical systems, and arm incident response teams with the most advanced tools to hunt down threats.

Empowering employees

The final presentation was done by Phishme, which was delivered by Jeff Fleischer. Phishme specialises in product awareness. Fleischer explained how easy it is for organisations to point to the everyday employee as the root cause. However, Phishme believes employees should be empowered as part of the solution to help strengthen defences and gather real-time attack intelligence to stop attacks in progress.

Coordinators Christine Chan-Waiy and Keisha Leyow deemed the conference a success as it fulfilled its initial aim, which was to inform corporate IT managers of the various products available to prevent cyber breaches within their respective companies.