Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

May 2021

An Introduction To Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Many organizations are equipped to handle insider threat and external, common well-known challenges (like malware, for instance). These so-called “intentional” threats can be addressed through proactive security measures and best practices. But what about the unintentional risks that come with operating in a cloud-first environment? Unintentional mistakes, such as misconfiguring cloud infrastructure, can be equally devastating.

Improving Web Security User Experience with HTTP/2

More than half of websites today support HTTP/2 for an improved user experience as web developers continue to move off HTTP 1.1. That’s for several good reasons. HTTP 1.1 can support six concurrent TLS tunnels with one session each to download web objects in popular web browsers, but HTTP/2 uses multiplexing to support thousands of sessions in one TLS tunnel and download web objects much faster.

Protecting data when migrating Confluence and Jira from on-prem to cloud

Atlassian made a big splash in cloud SaaS news when they announced that the company would stop selling new on-prem server licenses as of February 1, 2021. Upgrades of existing server licenses will continue to be available through the third quarter of 2022. Impacted services include Jira Software Server, Jira Core Server, Jira Service Desk Service, Confluence Server, Bitbucket Server, Crowd Server, Bamboo Server, Atlassian-built apps, and Atlassian Marketplace server apps.

Expanding the Netskope-Microsoft Relationship: Microsoft Intelligent Security Association

Netskope is proud to be a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association! We provide adeep and effective ability to leverage the Microsoft Azure Information Protection (AIP) and Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) feature sets available to E3 and E5 customers who are connecting not only to Microsoft cloud services, but to a wide range of non-Microsoft cloud storage solutions and Internet services.

The Right Steps to SASE: Gain Awareness and Visibility

The following is an excerpt from Netskope’s recent book Designing a SASE Architecture for Dummies. This is the second in a series of seven posts detailing a set of incremental steps for implementing a well-functioning SASE architecture. The first step in solving any problem is admitting there is one.

Ask SME Anything: Which legacy technologies are being made obsolete by SASE?

Netskope, the SASE leader, safely and quickly connects users directly to the internet, any application, and their infrastructure from any device, on or off the network. With CASB, SWG, and ZTNA built natively in a single platform, Netskope is fast everywhere, data centric, and cloud smart, all while enabling good digital citizenship and providing a lower total-cost-of-ownership.

Cloud and Threat Report: Gone Phishing

The total number of phishing attacks doubled in 2020, with phishing for cloud credentials, specifically SaaS and webmail app credentials, accounting for nearly a third of the targets of phishing campaigns. Over the same period, we saw cybercriminals hosting 13% of their baits in cloud apps. This blog post summarizes the top phishing trends from 2020 and looks forward at what to expect for the rest of 2021.

Cloud Threats Memo: Keeping Distributed Workforces Secure

Thanks to the growing availability of vaccines and immunization campaigns in multiple countries, the world is starting to see a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. We are eager to return to a new normal, being aware that some changes will be permanent, or if not permanent will strongly characterize the next years.

Securing the new AWS App Runner service

In its mission to simplify building and running cloud-native applications for users, Amazon has announced the GA of AWS App Runner, a new purpose-built container application service. With security top of mind for most organizations shifting to the cloud, Sysdig has collaborated with AWS to enable threat detection for the new platform.

DigitalOcean vs Linode

Chances are, if you’re shopping for a virtual private server, you already understand why they’re useful for web developers, app designers and everyone in between. You also probably know that the surge in popularity of hourly pricing means you can try most of the big players in this space for yourself for the cost of one Bazooka Joe comic (not even the gum, just the comic).

"Network Security" the Biggest Concern for Public Cloud Adoption, Reveals Survey

Cloud misconfigurations represent something that’s plaguing many organizations’ cloud adoption efforts. For example, a 2020 report found that 91% of cloud deployments contained at least one misconfiguration that left organizations exposed to potential digital threats. Those weaknesses contributed to more than 200 data breaches between 2018 and 2020, noted SC Magazine, with those security incidents exposing more than 30 billion records.

Impact of GDPR on Cloud Service Providers

Cloud computing is an integral part of most businesses globally. Technology has transformed the way businesses operate and thrive in the industry. However, the cloud industry has been facing huge challenges when it comes to complying with various data protection and data privacy standards. With the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a lot has changed for most businesses.

How to design Data Safety into your cloud

What is Data Safety, why is it important, and how do you go about designing into the foundations of your data environment? When you see the phrase "Data Safety", the chances are you think of Data Security. Most people do. What is far less likely is that you think of the other two pillars of Data Safety: Data Privacy and Data Governance. Clearly, all three pillars overlap.

Cloud Threats Memo: How Contact Tracing and Personal Cloud Apps Led to a Huge PII Exposure

COVID-19 contact tracing and personal cloud apps, what could possibly go wrong? A recent federal lawsuit, filed against the state of Pennsylvania and a vendor contracted by the state’s Department of Health, provides an interesting answer. The vendor in question was contracted “to provide contact tracing and other similar services” following the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020.

The Right Steps to SASE: Understand Where You're Going

When undertaking a new project, the need to deliver quantifiable results today (or at least very quickly!) is a significant challenge facing a CIO, CISO, or anyone with high-level responsibility for enterprise networking and security. Unlike typical IT projects where long development cycles may be tolerated, security must demonstrate value right away and deliver quick wins. Vulnerability is scary.

Hardened Access - Dual Authorization for Roles & Per-session MFA with Yubikeys

This webinar is a deep dive into how companies can harden access to Teleport with two new features in Teleport 6.1 These include creating dual & multi Authorization rules, requiring multiple team members to approve role escalation. This is an important FedRAMP control ( AC-3 ) and increasing the visibility and audibility for access. We’ll show how you can enforce per session MFA with the aid of hardware tokens; reducing the scope and risk related to certificate exfiltration.

The Netskope Online Community

Netskope, the SASE leader, safely and quickly connects users directly to the internet, any application, and their infrastructure from any device, on or off the network. With CASB, SWG, and ZTNA built natively in a single platform, Netskope is fast everywhere, data centric, and cloud smart, all while enabling good digital citizenship and providing a lower total-cost-of-ownership.

A Real-World Look at AWS Best Practices: IAM Policies

Best practices for securing an AWS environment have been well-documented and generally accepted, such as AWS’s guidance. However, organizations may still find it challenging on how to begin applying this guidance to their specific environments. In this blog series, we’ll analyze anonymized data from Netskope customers that include security settings of 650,000 entities from 1,143 AWS accounts across several hundred organizations.

Hacker Tools Used for Good as Exposed Amazon Cloud Storage Accounts Get Warnings

Responding to the all too familiar news of compromised Amazon cloud storage, security researchers have begun leaving “friendly warnings” on AWS S3 accounts with exposed data or incorrect permissions. The misconfiguration of access control on AWS storage “buckets” has been behind numerous high profile data breaches, including Verizon, The Pentagon, Uber and FedEx.

How Cloudflare Logs Provide Traffic, Performance, and Security Insights with Coralogix

Cloudflare secures and ensures the reliability of your external-facing resources such as websites, APIs, and applications. It protects your internal resources such as behind-the-firewall applications, teams, and devices. This post will show you how Coralogix can provide analytics and insights for your Cloudflare log data – including traffic, performance, and security insights.

What are the security risks of the cloud computing?

The technological change of the 21st century has seen rapid growth in the innovation and fastest adoption of cloud computing. It is now considered the most ingenious solution that removes the idea of having a data centre by helping businesses meet their needs virtually in the most cost-effective, efficient, and productive way.

Prevent cloud misconfigurations in HashiCorp Terraform with Snyk IaC

We’re delighted to share new features of Snyk Infrastructure as Code (Snyk IaC) designed to support how Terraform users write, plan, and apply their configurations. With Snyk IaC, you can get immediate guidance on security configurations as you write, and scan your Terraform plans in your deployment pipelines to ensure your changes and complete configuration are safe.

Navigating Cloud Security - A Netskope Fed Cyber Podcast

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many government agencies had to move very quickly to enable teleworking to ensure mission consistency during a very unprecedented time. More than one year later, and it is clear that teleworking in government is likely to remain in 2021, and beyond.

Safeguard Against Account Takeovers with Endpoint-to-cloud Security

Not long ago, amid the Microsoft Exchange Server attacks, Lookout Chief Strategy Officer Aaron Cockerill wrote about why cloud apps are more secure than their on-premise counterparts. That’s a really important lesson and an initial step towards securing your organization. Here’s part two of that narrative: you also need dedicated security to ensure that your cloud infrastructure and apps are secure.

Leading SaaS innovation with collaboration and security transparency

Detectify security experts are speaking with security managers and operational defenders daily. There’s a clear division on how a modern and mature organization will approach security compared to the compliance-first organizations that are playing whack-a-mole to lock down the perimeter. Security transparency is one of the differentiators.

Access Control #3: State of Startup Application Security

In this third episode of Access Control, a podcast providing practical security advice for startups, Ben Arent chats with Luca Carettoni, co-founder of Doyensec. Doyensec is an independent security research and development company focused on vulnerability discovery and remediation. The Teleport team has been working with Doyensec for the last two years and have worked together on security assessment for Teleport. In this episode, we’ll get a pentester's view on the current state of startup security.

Snyk CNA adds flexibility in delivery with self-hosted version for AWS customers

There are several advantages to consuming software as a service (SaaS). For starters, it allows companies of any size to leverage enterprise-grade software (CRM, service desk, security, etc.) in a pay-as-you-go model to avoid spending large sums of money on shelfware that may never get put to use. SaaS also offers customers the ability to scale or change the usage of their software with little to no advance notice, and makes them more agile in delivering products to market.

Snyk streamlines procurement with AWS Marketplace Solution Provider Private Offers (SPPO)

For years now, modern organizations have enjoyed a seamless procurement experience when purchasing software products through AWS Marketplace. AWS has made it possible for customers to purchase third-party software using their allocated AWS budget while still being able to negotiate custom pricing and legal terms directly with their favorite vendors.

Netskope Threat Coverage: DarkSide

DarkSide is a ransomware-as-a-service platform that made headlines on May 8, 2021, for targeting Colonial Pipeline, resulting in a shutdown of their pipeline operations. The DarkSide ransomware platform first appeared in August 2020, advertising that they would not target organizations in the education, government, medical, or non-profit sectors.

Teleport Cloud in 2021: Security Audit Results

This year we launched Teleport Cloud, a new service for providing a hosted version of Teleport Access Plane. One of the first problems the team had to tackle was how to secure the new infrastructure properly, and the team wanted to ensure the best possible results by engaging in an independent audit. As with the Teleport core product, we engaged with Doyensec to provide an independent security audit of our production environment.

4 Reasons Cloud-Native Organizations Benefit from Cloud-Native Logging and SIEM

For cloud-native organizations — those begun in the past decade or so — obtaining critical services from other cloud-native companies makes sense. After all, the whole point of being cloud native is to avoid physical infrastructure wherever possible. You want to focus on your business, not managing the systems and infrastructures that support it. That strategy applies to your logging and security information and event management (SIEM) solution, as well.

Ask SME Anything: What are the major transformations behind SASE architecture?

In this episode of Ask SME (Subject Matter Expert) Anything, Netskope’s Michael Ferguson explains the origin of SASE and how it is changing the way we look at data and cloud security. Netskope, the SASE leader, safely and quickly connects users directly to the internet, any application, and their infrastructure from any device, on or off the network. With CASB, SWG, and ZTNA built natively in a single platform, Netskope is fast everywhere, data centric, and cloud smart, all while enabling good digital citizenship and providing a lower total-cost-of-ownership.

A Real-World Look at AWS Best Practices: IAM User Accounts

Best practices for securing an AWS environment have been well-documented and generally accepted, such as AWS’s guidance. However, organizations may still find it challenging on how to begin applying this guidance to their specific environments. In this blog series, we’ll analyze anonymized data from Netskope customers that include security settings of 650,000 entities from 1,143 AWS accounts across several hundred organizations.

Pull Requests for Infrastructure Access

Making frequent changes to cloud applications running in production is the de-facto standard. To minimize errors, engineers use CI/CD automation, techniques like code reviews, green-blue deployments and others. Git pull requests often serve as a foundational component for triggering code reviews, Slack notifications, and subsequent automation such as testing and deployments. This automated process enforces peer reviews and creates enough visibility to minimize human error.

Navigating Cloud Adoption Myths And Misconceptions

Cloud computing is the vehicle with which modern enterprise organisations drive their digital transformation initiatives. Cloud adoption provides an opportunity for organisations to progress their digital transformation initiatives, scale rapidly and develop their digital service offerings with reduced time and cost overheads, resulting in more agile and efficient working practices and increased value to customers.

3 Realistic Ways to Drive Better Networking-Security Team Collaboration

The success of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture depends on how well networking and security teams, and the products and services they manage, converge into a shared set of priorities tied to business objectives. Unfortunately, new research from Censuswide confirms this network-security team collaboration is still strained—if not downright combative—at a majority of enterprises.

Secure Session Transfer Between Web Apps on Different Domains

Writing a web application that supports securely logging into a website and managing your credentials is a surprisingly difficult task. You have to develop a way to manage sessions, understand how browsers store state (cookies), learn a cryptographically safe password storing technique (like bcrypt), all the while making sure you mitigate common web security vulnerabilities like XSS and CSRF.