Computer and information technologies have embraced all sectors of the economy today. For any modern company, information becomes one of the main resources, the preservation and proper disposal of which is of key importance for business development and reducing the level of various risks. Information security is becoming an urgent problem for an enterprise.
What does the concept of "information security of an enterprise" mean?
Information security of an enterprise or company is understood as a set of organizational and technical measures aimed at preserving and protecting information and its key elements, as well as equipment and systems that are used to work with information, store and transfer it.
This complex includes technologies, standards and methods of information management that ensure its effective protection.
Ensuring information security helps to protect the information and information infrastructure of an enterprise from negative impacts. Such impacts can be accidental or deliberate, internal or external. The result of such interventions may be the loss of important information, its unauthorized modification or use by third parties. Therefore, information security is an important aspect of protecting your business and ensuring its continuity.
Principles of effective implementation of information security systems in a company:
Confidentiality.
Confidentiality is understood as organizing and maintaining effective control to ensure a sufficient degree of security of data, assets and information at various stages of business processes to prevent unauthorized or unwanted disclosure.
Confidentiality support is necessarily applied when storing and transit information in any format.
Integrity.
Integrity encompasses controls that ensure the internal and external consistency of information. Ensuring integrity eliminates the possibility of data corruption at any stage of business operations.
Availability.
Accessibility supports full and reliable access to information for officials who have the appropriate authority.
The key point here is the predictability of the processes taking place in the network environment, so that users can access the necessary data at the right time. One of the important factors in the availability of information is the ability to quickly and completely recover the system after failures in order to prevent its negative impact on the functioning of the company.
Control over the information security of the enterprise
It is possible to ensure complete and reliable information security of an enterprise only if an integrated and systematic approach is applied. The information security system should be built taking into account all current threats and vulnerabilities, also taking into account those threats that may arise in the future. Therefore, it is important to provide support for continuous monitoring, which must operate daily, around the clock. A prerequisite is to ensure control at each stage of the information life cycle, starting from the moment it enters the company's infrastructure and ending with the loss of its relevance or destruction of data.
There are several types of information security control, the implementation of which allows a company to reduce risks in this area and maintain them at an acceptable level. Including distinguish:
Administrative control.
Administrative control of information security is a system consisting of a set of established standards, principles and procedures. This type of control defines the boundaries for the implementation of business processes and personnel management. It includes laws and regulations, corporate security policy, recruitment system, disciplinary and other measures adopted at the enterprise.
Logical control.
Logical control involves the use of controls (technical controls) that protect information systems from unwanted access. These tools combine special software, firewalls, passwords, and more.
Physical control.
Physical control focuses on the workplace environment and computing facilities. In particular, it provides for the effective functioning of the engineering systems of the enterprise buildings, the work of which can affect the storage and transmission of information. Such systems include heating and air conditioning, fire protection systems. Another important component of physical control is control and management systems for access to facilities.
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Types of information security threats
The information infrastructure of an enterprise is constantly exposed to numerous threats, which by their origin are divided into several types:
Natural. Threats caused by causes beyond human control. These include hurricanes, fires, lightning strikes, floods, and other natural disasters.
Artificial. A complex of human-created information security threats. Man-made threats, in turn, are divided into intentional and unintentional. Intentional threats include the actions of competitors, hacker attacks, sabotage of offended employees, etc. Unintentional threats arise as a result of actions committed due to lack of competence or through negligence.
Internal. Threats that arise within the information infrastructure of the enterprise.
External. Threats that originate outside the information infrastructure of the enterprise.
Depending on the nature of the impact, threats to information security are divided into passive and active. Passive threats are influencing factors that cannot change the content and structure of information. Active threats are capable of making such changes. These include, for example, the impact of malware.
The main danger is artificial and deliberate threats. Given the ever-increasing computerization of all spheres of business and the increase in the number of electronic transactions, these threats are also rapidly developing. In search of ways to obtain classified information and harm companies, cybercriminals are actively using modern technologies and software solutions. Their actions can cause significant damage, including in the form of direct financial losses or loss of intellectual property. Therefore, the information security of an enterprise should also be built on the basis of advanced technologies using up-to-date data protection tools.
Information security tools
Information security means are devices, devices, gadgets, software, organizational measures that prevent information leakage and ensure its preservation under the influence of the entire spectrum of current threats.
Depending on the implementation methods used, information security protection tools are of the following types:
Organizational. A set of measures and means of an organizational, legal and organizational and technical nature. The former include legislative and regulatory acts, local regulatory documents of the organization. The second type is measures to maintain the information infrastructure of the facility.
Hardware (technical). Special equipment and a device that prevents leaks, protects against infiltration of IT infrastructure.
Software. Special software designed to protect, control, and store information.
Hardware and software. Special equipment with installed data protection software.
The most widespread today are software tools for protecting information. They fully meet the requirements of efficiency and relevance, are regularly updated, effectively responding to current artificial threats.
A wide range of specialized software is used to protect data in modern networks. The following types of software protection can be distinguished:
Antivirus software. Specialized software for detecting, neutralizing and removing computer viruses. Discovery can be performed during scheduled or administrator-run scans. Programs detect and block suspicious program activity in "hot" mode. In addition, modern antiviruses can resume files infected with malware.
Cloud Antivirus (CloudAV). Combining the capabilities of modern antivirus programs with cloud technologies. Such solutions include Crowdstrike services, Panda Cloud Antivirus, Immunet and many others. All the main functionality of the software is located in the cloud, and a client is installed on the protected computer - a program with minimal technical requirements. The client uploads the bulk of the data analysis to the cloud server. This ensures effective anti-virus protection with minimal resource requirements for equipment. CloudAV solutions are ideal for protecting PCs that do not have enough free computing power to run standard antivirus.
DLP (Data Leak Prevention) solutions. Special software solutions to prevent data leakage. This is a set of technologies that effectively protect enterprises from the loss of confidential information for a variety of reasons. Implementation and support of DLP - requires a fairly large investment and effort on the part of the enterprise. However, this measure can significantly reduce the level of information risks for the company's IT infrastructure.
Cryptography systems. (DES - Data Encryption Standard, AES - Advanced Encryption Standard). They transform the data, after which their decryption can only be performed using the appropriate ciphers. In addition, cryptography can use other useful applications to protect information, including message digests, authentication methods, encrypted network communications, and digital signatures. Today, new applications that use encrypted communications, such as Secure Shell (SSH), are gradually replacing obsolete solutions that do not provide the required level of security, such as Telnet and the FTP file transfer protocol. Modern WPA / WPA2 protocols are widely used for wireless encryption. The rather old WEP protocol is also used, which is inferior in terms of security. ITU-T G.hn and other wired communications are encrypted using AES and X.1035 provides authentication and key exchange. Applications such as PGP and GnuPG are used to encrypt e-mail.
Firewalls (ITU). Solutions that filter and block unwanted traffic control network access. There are such types of firewalls as network and host servers. Network firewalls are located on LAN gateway PCs, WANs and intranets. The firewall can be executed in the format of a program installed on a regular computer or have a software and hardware implementation. A hardware and software firewall is a special device based on an operating system with an installed firewall. In addition to the basic functions, firewalls offer a number of additional solutions for the internal network. For example, they act as a VPN or DHCP server.
Virtual private networks VPN (Virtual Private Network). A solution that uses a private network to send and receive data over a public network, effectively protecting network-connected applications. VPN provides the ability to remotely connect to a local network, creating a common network for the head office with branches. Directly for users, VPN gives you the ability to hide the location and protect the activities performed on the network.
Proxy server. Serves as a gateway between a computer and an external server. A request sent by a user to the server first goes to the proxy and on its behalf goes to the server. The response is also returned with the passage of an intermediate link - proxy. The advantage is that the proxy server cache is available to all users. This improves usability because the most frequently requested resources are in the cache.
SIEM solutions - information security monitoring and management systems. Specialized software that takes over the data security management function. SIEM collects information about events from all sources that support security, including antivirus software, IPS, firewalls, as well as operating systems, etc. SIEM also analyzes the collected data and provides its centralized storage in the event log. Based on data analysis, the system identifies possible failures, hacker attacks, other deviations and possible information threats.
Given the widespread use of mobile devices that employees often use outside the enterprise for corporate purposes, this factor must be taken into account in the information security system. Software products such as Blackberry Enterprise Mobility Suite, IBM MaaS360, VMware AirWatch and others can be used to monitor personnel mobile devices and protect enterprise information.
How to choose corporate information security tools
Ensuring information security is an urgent need today, the neglect of which can have devastating consequences for the business. The wide array of tools and solutions available today to protect information can make choices difficult for an enterprise. To ensure the security of the IT infrastructure, a certain set of tools allows you to select individually. This will make it possible to implement a multi-level information protection system that will ensure reliable neutralization of current threats.
The choice of tools for protecting corporate information when creating such a system should be made taking into account a whole range of factors, such as:
- scope of the company;
- the size of the business, the presence of geographically remote subdivisions, as well as subdivisions that need special IT protection;
- technical equipment of the company - the composition and characteristics of the equipment used, the level of obsolescence, etc .;
- the level of training and experience of personnel involved in the maintenance of information infrastructure.
The company's own IT department is usually unable to implement such an integrated approach. The result is the use of standard solutions that cannot meet today's data security challenges. This leads to the emergence of large gaps in this area, which threatens the loss or damage of valuable information as a result of unauthorized interference from the outside.
Therefore, the development and implementation of the information security system at the enterprise should be carried out by professionals. Smart-Soft will help ensure the creation of such a system using its own products, which have proven a high level of efficiency.
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