What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the application of tools, technologies, policies, processes, controls, and procedures in the protection or recovery of networks, devices, systems and applications from digital attacks. The digital attacks are aimed at accessing, destroying and altering sensitive data, disrupting workflows, and extorting money.

Cyber criminals deploy a broad range of attack types against organizations and individuals in order to compromise data confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

• Attacks on confidentiality are designed to steal sensitive information such as PII.
• Attacks on integrity are meant to sabotage operations and inflict reputational damage.
• Attacks on availability aim to prevent users from accessing data.

At the individual level, an attack could be the precursor to identity theft, extortion and the loss of irreplaceable data such as family photos. At the organizational level, a cyberattack could result in data loss, disruption to operations, ransom demands, industrial espionage, regulator censure and loss of reputation.

An integrated, automated approach to cybersecurity and cyber resilience accelerates the detection, remediation, and investigation of cyber threats.

Why is cybersecurity important?

Why do we need cybersecurity? The importance of cybersecurity is primarily driven by the following factors.

Increasingly sophisticated attacks

Attacks are growing in sophistication. Distributed denial of service (DDoS), ransomware, advanced persistent threats and state-sponsored hacking have all made the threat landscape more dangerous.

Widely available hacking tools

You no longer need to be an uber geek with years of programming experience to pull off a debilitating cyber-attack. The tools and tactics are available online for free. Your cyber attacker today could very well be someone with limited digital skills.

Compliance

Regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require organizations to deploy security measures to protect sensitive information. Failure to comply could lead to substantial fines and legal action.

Rising cost of breaches

Fines and lost business are just one aspect of the rising financial costs of security breaches. There are also expenses associated with containing the impact, disaster recovery, closing loopholes, acquiring new security systems, and repairing the organization’s reputation.

Strategic, board-level concern

A 2019 study of the top 10 risks facing businesses ranked cyber incidents as number one. This is further compounded by the string of new regulations that task boards and senior management with driving cyber risk management.

Cybercrime is big business

Cyberattacks can have social, ethical, or political motives. Nevertheless, the vast majority are driven by financial intentions. Cybercrime is a multibillion-dollar industry.

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What are the challenges of cybersecurity?

The internet of things (IoT)

The internet is no longer a network of just routers, switches, servers, computers and printers. It is rapidly giving way to the IoT. Numerous electronic and electric devices are internet-enabled, including refrigerators, televisions, cameras, motor vehicles, washing machines, and light bulbs.

While the IoT has created innumerable opportunities for connectedness, it has also introduced gaps of unprecedented scale and number. There are far more potential entry points for attack. Cyber criminals can take over thousands of these devices to unleash a DDoS attack.

Rapidly evolving risks

Information technology is arguably the fastest evolving industry in the world. Technology that was state-of-the-art five years ago could be teetering on the brink of obsolescence today. With new technologies come new dangers and new avenues of attack, making it challenging for organizations to keep pace and update their practices accordingly. This is especially true for smaller organizations that don't have the luxury of large IT, security and compliance teams.

Collection of large quantities of confidential data

Organizations capture, process, and store enormous quantities of information of confidential information from users—a significant proportion of which might be deemed sensitive. Even small enterprises can find themselves in possession of thousands of customer records in just a couple of months.

With more information in their hands, the risk of a cyber criminal stealing the data is an ever-present concern.

Organized and state-sponsored hacker groups

Cyberattacks are no longer the preserve of a computer-savvy individual, clawing away at a company’s cyber defenses while confined to a dark basement. Today’s threat actors are more systematic and organized, ranging from advocacy groups such as Anonymous to entire government departments dedicated to cyberespionage, cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism.

Remote working

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the normalization of remote work, demonstrating that many jobs don’t need to be housed in an organization’s office. But remote work comes with cyber risks.

Employees who use public Wi-Fi while traveling could connect to a rogue hotspot and expose confidential company information to criminals. Working outside the confines of the office also elevates the risk of eavesdropping and device theft.

High-speed internet

For decades now, the internet has enabled the real-time exchange of data. Bandwidth has grown dramatically over the years and high-speed internet is widely accessible, making it possible for rogue actors to upload vast quantities of data in minutes.

Bring your own device (BYOD)

BYOD policies lower the cost of acquiring organization-owned devices. However, these same devices can be weak points that introduce malware into the organization. And BYOD might not be subjected to the same degree of oversight and control as enterprise-owned gadgets.

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How can I manage cybersecurity?

You need multiple strategies, techniques, tools, technologies, practices and services to counter cyberattacks. The following are some of the most important pillars of cybersecurity.

Leadership commitment

Cybersecurity must have conspicuous buy-in at the highest level of the organization. Employees will be committed to causes that have the explicit support of senior management and the board.

Regular risk assessments

Regular cyber risk assessments help to identify and evaluate threats, while also determining whether the controls in place are adequate. It’s a cost-effective and efficient means of proactively protecting your digital assets.

Password management

Develop policies and awareness programs that ensure users create passwords that are difficult to predict. Default passwords should be changed before an application or device is deployed into the production environment.

Robust cybersecurity culture

Most cyberattacks ride on vulnerabilities caused by human error. Weak passwords, phishing emails, scam calls, and malware-laced attachments rely on the actions of a user. Attackers utilize these to trick employees into opening a doorway for unauthorized access.

Every employee must recognize their responsibility as the first line of defense in protecting the organization’s digital assets against cyberattack. This must be reinforced through regular training. Cybersecurity should be integrated into the company’s values and vision. And there should be incentives and rewards for employees who model the right cybersecurity behavior.

Integrated application and network security solutions

The best enterprise security software services work in multiple layers to create a solid defense against cyber threats.

Often, an organization will need several applications and network security solutions to do the job, ranging from intrusion prevention systems to antivirus software. Historically, these solutions were deployed in a reactive, siloed stance that proved ineffective, expensive and complicated. Attackers could exploit gaps.

To have true end-to-end visibility of the threat landscape, applications and network security solutions must be integrated to prevent anything from falling through the cracks.

Partner with a dedicated cyber defense company

The complexities of rapidly evolving cyber dangers can be challenging and time-consuming for the average enterprise. Partnering with a dedicated cyber defense company like OpenText enables you to tap into the best cybersecurity knowledge and expertise available.

A cyber defense company can help drive cybersecurity into an organization’s fabric and deploy the solutions that are most suitable. Armed with proven cyber resilience software and enterprise security tools, a dedicated cybersecurity solutions provider can keep your security robust.

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How can I mitigate cybersecurity risk?

There are no guarantees that even the most elaborate strategies will keep your organization immune from attack. However, taking the right actions will substantially minimize the odds by making it harder for cyber criminals to break through. By identifying new vulnerabilities, deploying cybersecurity tools, and educating users, cybersecurity makes the digital environment safer for all.

A good cybersecurity strategy protects your systems, your applications, and your data. You need to ensure that only authorized users can access your systems and that you can track them wherever they go through strong identity access management. You also need to be able to detect vulnerabilities in your applications and find any weaknesses that might be exploited. Finally, the privacy of your data—information about your customers, your employees, and your organization’s intellectual property—must be guarded with the highest levels of security.

Another component of an effective cybersecurity strategy is to detect when someone is trying to act maliciously against you. This can be very challenging as bad actors become more sophisticated and work in more covert ways to breach your environment. Plus, these advanced threats aren’t limited to the outside. Some breaches begin inside an organization. The bad actors can be stealing or destroying data and even damaging the systems themselves without anyone knowing.

To adequately detect security risks, companies must understand what data they hold and where it resides. Mapping your data enables you to understand its importance, govern it according to applicable regulatory demands, and minimize the risk of non-compliance, theft, and more.

It’s also helpful for security teams to understand individual user behavior. When you understand what someone’s “normal” actions are in the system, it’s easier to identify behaviors that don’t meet the patterns and might be putting the company at risk.

One reason security teams struggle with detection is that many solutions generate so much data that they create “false positives.” In fact, so much data is generated that it’s often hard to determine what is an actual threat. Security operations centers just don’t have the time to look at each alert individually and evaluate the risk. That’s why any good strategy will have the ability to evaluate and automate responses, and then elevate higher-risk alerts to the security team for action.

A third major component of cyber resilience and cybersecurity is the ability to adapt and evolve your security posture to stay ahead of threats. Hackers are constantly finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. They know that there will eventually be a fix for what worked yesterday, so they’re constantly trying to figure out what will work tomorrow. A cyber-resilient organization will anticipate the new attack vectors through threat modeling and work to defend them even before they become a vulnerability.

To evolve requires the ability to quickly deploy and integrate existing and new services, both on-premises and in the cloud. It also requires access to industry intellectual property and best practices ideally built into the products and tools being used for security. And it involves being able to rapidly correlate data using mathematical models and machine learning so you can make data-driven decisions.

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How do OpenText security offerings help organizations?

OpenText™ Cybersecurity Cloud helps organizations of all sizes protect their most valuable and sensitive information. Our portfolio of end-to-end cybersecurity solutions offers 360-degree visibility across an organization, enhancing security and trust every step of the way.

Our solutions help you:

Anticipate cyber risk with advanced threat visibility, insights, and monitoring.

Protect across identity, data, applications, users, and devices for adaptive security posture management.

Simplify security across business functions, roles, and processes to drive compliance via platform.

Here are some key capabilities:

Application security

Application security begins in your application development process. Testing needs to be scalable, flexible for on-premises or on-demand, and integrate with your development lifecycle. It should include developer-friendly processes and robust security functionality.

OpenText™ Application Security solutions seamlessly integrate into your developers’ preferred tools so they can unearth and resolve security vulnerabilities at every juncture of the software development lifecycle. Deliver on key business objectives while ensuring faster release cycles, more secure applications, and lower development costs.

• OpenText™ Fortify™ On Demand: Achieve all the advantages of security testing, vulnerability management, tailored expertise, and support without the need for additional infrastructure or resources.
• OpenText™ Fortify™ WebInspect: Secure your software supply chain and protect the integrity of your code with WebInspect dynamic application security testing (DAST).
• OpenText™ Fortify™ Static Code Analyzer: Find static code security issues early with the most accurate results in the industry and fix at the speed of DevOps.
• OpenText™ Debricked™: Take full control of open source security, compliance, and health with a toolkit that will revolutionize the way you use open source.

Data privacy and protection

Ensuring data security is a primary component of both cybersecurity and cyber resiliency. This includes data in both structured and unstructured formats. You need to be able to analyze the data you have, as well as glean important insights so you can stay compliant with privacy and other governmental regulations.

OpenText™ Data Privacy and Protection solutions equip organizations with a resilient and protected data ecosystem to govern data access, enforce policies, and monitor data usage for compliance. Operationalize security and secure sensitive data with deep analysis and insights to reduce financial risk and comply with privacy mandates.

• OpenText™ Voltage™ Fusion Platform: Discover and protect your most valuable data with end-to-end data security.
• OpenText™ Voltage™ SecureData: Protect high-value data with format-preserving encryption, tokenization, hashing, and masking while keeping it usable for hybrid IT.
• OpenText™ Voltage™ Structured Data Manager: Manage structured data over its lifecycle.

Identity and access management:

Identity and access management (IAM) is a comprehensive, scalable solution designed to manage and secure digital identities while controlling access to critical systems. It ensures the right individuals have appropriate access, minimizing security risks and supporting compliance. By integrating with existing IT infrastructure, NetIQ IAM enhances security and operational efficiency across organizations of various sizes and industries, ensuring they meet regulatory obligations.

NetIQ IAM encompasses a wide range of services, including:

• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Access Manager: Enable single sign-on and access across mobile, cloud, and legacy platforms.
• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Identity Governance: Protect all data with simplified identity management, compliance, and user access review processes.
• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Privileged Account Manager: Centralize privileged user access management and control over admin accounts across your entire IT landscape.
• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Identity Manager: Simplify identity lifecycle management to ensure secure resource access.
• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Advanced Authentication: Enable passwordless and multifactor authentication for protection.
• OpenText™ NetIQ™ Data Access Governance: Gain valuable file insights, secure unstructured data, and prevent unauthorized access.

Threat detection and response:

Together, these functions form a crucial part of an organization's overall cybersecurity strategy, aimed at minimizing the impact of potential security incidents. Threat detection is the process of identifying and recognizing potential security threats, malicious activities, or unauthorized actions within an organization's IT infrastructure. Threat response refers to the actions taken once a threat has been detected. It encompasses the steps and procedures an organization follows to address, mitigate, and recover from a security incident.

OpenText™ Threat Detection and Response solutions leverage AI-powered correlation analysis to help you detect threats in real time. With end-to-end visibility, you can quickly find, withstand, and recover from threats and improve your security operations’ efficiency and effectiveness.

• OpenText™ Network Detection and Response: Harness unparalleled network visibility to efficiently hunt for and defend against threats.
• OpenText™ ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager: Accelerate threat detection and response with real-time detection and native SOAR.
• OpenText™ ArcSight™ Intelligence: Proactively detect insider risks, novel attacks, and advanced persistent threats.
• OpenText™ ArcSight™ cyDNA: Get a bird’s-eye view of how attacks are being carried out and what they’re targeting.

Digital investigations and forensics

These offerings quickly and reliably collect, process, analyze, and report on evidence to help find relevant evidence, improve investigation efficiency, and close cases faster to improve public safety and protect businesses.

OpenText™ digital investigations and forensics solutions help collect, process, analyze, and report on digital evidence for faster, more thorough results.

• OpenText™ EnCase™ Forensic: Close cases quickly with reliable digital forensic investigation results.
• OpenText™ EnCase™ Endpoint Investigator: Conduct internal investigations to discover behaviors that put corporate assets at risk.
• OpenText™ EnCase™ Endpoint Security: Detect, analyze, triage and respond to malicious attacks with complete endpoint visibility.
• OpenText™ EnCase™ Information Assurance: Conduct defensible data collection and ensure effective information governance.
• OpenText™ Tableau Forensic: Digital forensic imaging for law enforcement and corporate investigations.
• OpenText™ EnCase™ Mobile Investigator: View, analyze and report on mobile evidence involved in an investigation.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Threat identification is traditionally a threshold-driven process, involving the discovery of potential threat patterns. Artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity has the capacity to revolutionize this process.

• OpenText™ Cybersecurity Aviator: An innovative AI cybersecurity solution threat detection approach that combines unsupervised machine learning models that automatically and continuously learn with rapid deployment—allowing new threat detection models to be in place within hours to protect from new and evolving threats.
• OpenText™ Fortify™ Aviator: An AI code security tool that executes fast auditing, identification, and automated code fix suggestions for SAST vulnerabilities with the power of AI. It embeds into your dev environment, using AI code analysis to continuously monitor code for security issues, and provides contextual explanations and tailored code fix suggestions.

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