Access Granted Systemsis in the Facility Management Tech Industry

Access Granted Systems

Thanks to the recent publication of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) , weeding out common network weaknesses and vulnerabilities have shot to the top of the agenda for many business decision-makers. Network Infrastructure Security Guidance report After all, the average financial fallout of a data breach has reached an eye-watering – a 17-year high. Today’s organizations must prioritize data security and the benefits of a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), but before we go any further, let’s take a closer look at what ZTA is and where this concept came from. $4.24 million What's Zero Trust? Also known as perimeterless security, Zero Trust is a security model based on a framework of principles for the design and implementation of IT systems to address cyber threats in increasingly decentralized environments. Users must be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before being granted access to systems and data. In short, Zero Trust inherently trusts no one. Hackers’ point of entry is often not their target location within a network. Instead, they identify a vulnerability in one area and move laterally until reaching their target. ZTA prevents this from happening by forcing users to identify themselves at multiple points –essentially limiting the damage a bad actor can do. Zero Trust isn’t a new concept. It was first presented in 2009 by , a former principal analyst at Forrester Research. However, its popularity has exploded over the past two years. In fact, a 2021 found that 90% of security decision-makers were familiar with the concept, up from just 20% just a year ago. This trend has no doubt been catalyzed by the growth of remote working and increased cloud adoption. Not to mention the skyrocketing number of cyberattacks – which look to grow further based on about incoming Russian cyberattacks on U.S. businesses. John Kindervag Microsoft report recent warnings from the White House “OK, but how can I implement Zero Trust in practice?” There’s no one-size-fits-all model for implementing ZTA. However, organizations should typically consider the following: Ensure that you’re managing and securing all user identities through robust policies and access entitlements. Role-based access controls can help you enforce these policies by leveraging user roles to grant access to the systems and applications they need to do their jobs, and nothing more. Identity governance: Privileged accounts are those with the highest level of access and pose a greater security risk than the average user given the degree of sensitive information that could be exposed. Adhere to the principle of least privilege by providing just enough access to third parties or admins to complete a task through granular policy control at the system level. Privileged access management: One of the most common initial attack vectors is compromised user credentials, which is what MFA aims to prevent. This layer of security requires two methods of authentication before granting access to a system or application: something you know (password or PIN), something you have (smartphone or token), and something you are (biometric data). Multifactor authentication (MFA): Security is only as good as those who use it, and when security is noticed by users, it’s often ignored. In fact, while many other users share credentials with colleagues. SSO enables organizations to implement stronger security by eliminating the need to remember and repeatedly type usernames and passwords to access systems. Single sign-on (SSO): 57% admit to writing down passwords on sticky notes As National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) documents describe, this is the “brains” of your ZTA. Every single time a digital identity, whether it’s a person or machine, tries to access an enterprise resource, the ZTA policy engine is asked whether it should access it. Of course, you set the parameters for your policy engine. Effectively, if your digital identity management is tight, you can also use the ZTA policy engine to remove some username or password requirements, as well as MFA requirements. Essentially, you can improve security while providing easier access – doesn’t, that sound familiar? Zero Trust Policy Engine: Identity and access management – it's time to get your house in order Effectively managing and securing digital identities is arguably the most important component of ZTA. Simply put, without an identity and access management (IAM) strategy in place – you can forget Zero Trust. Or, at least forget any of the benefits that come from it. There’s a huge range of tools that organizations can use when implementing their IAM strategy but having the above solutions in place is just one piece of the puzzle. Thanks to an array of legacy systems that most organizations still have, it’s common to see one tool for provisioning and deprovisioning, another for MFA, a third for SSO, and so on. Without intending to do so, organizations with this type of fragmented approach often introduce the very risks they’re trying to avoid. Instead, forward-thinking organizations should be looking to consolidate these tools with a unified strategy that eliminates gaps and enables a single point of control. All in all, it’s hard to overstate the sheer number of cybersecurity-related challenges currently facing organizations. Admittedly, for many, it’s a case of figuring out how to secure systems, data, and users in the immediate term. But once they’re done firefighting, implementing ZTA – grounded in an effective identity and access management strategy – is a no-brainer.

An Intro to Zero Trust Architecture

Una introducción a la arquitectura Zero Trust

Une introduction à l'architecture Zero Trust

जीरो ट्रस्ट आर्किटेक्चर का परिचय

ゼロ トラスト アーキテクチャの概要

Uma introdução à arquitetura de confiança zero

Kiến trúc Intro to Zero Trust

零信任架构简介

iPhone and Mac users received a suite of updates to their devices at the start of the new year, most aimed at shutting down the Spectre and Meltdown exploits that could allow unauthorized access to anything stored or run on their devices. The vulnerabilities that allowed such exploits are , who reports they are working as intended in the company’s CPUs, requiring manufacturers and OS providers to address the problems directly. Users should update to the for the best protection against Spectre and Meltdown. not considered a flaw by Intel latest Apple security versions What Is Spectre? Spectre is an exploit that uses the speculative access granted by software between integrated systems to compromise the data stored on devices including the iPhone X and the latest Mac iterations. Speculative access lets computer chips make educated guesses to what paths information will flow through and then discards excess data received. The core Intel system that lies at the heart of the iPhone X and similar devices features a series of checks using speculative access to make sure unwanted access is harder to obtain, but Spectre uses the data from these very checks to gain access to other systems and access user data on and desktop computer systems. The exploit was discovered by Jann Horn at Google Project Zero and Paul Kocher. security advanced, modern smartphones How Does Meltdown Affect Devices? Meltdown goes directly from the OS to every application on a system instead of relying on the “error-proof” checks that Spectre uses. This gives it potential access to any data stored on the device and even allows remote operation of applications and unauthorized execution. Meltdown literally removes the safety checks that exist by appearing to be part of the operating system’s normal functioning, using the newly formed vulnerability to get into whatever systems may be available on the device. This poses a similar threat to , giving total control to anyone who uses the exploit, but is more insidious as it allows true OS-level system access. Meltdown was originally discovered and reported by Google’s Project Zero, Cyberus Technology and the Graz University of Technology. iPhone FaceID failures What the Patches Fix The patches released by Apple address many of the key vulnerabilities the exploits require. These shut down much of the speculative access that allows the Intel CPU units to run quicker and execute systems faster, but they also dramatically reduce the security risk. Spectre and Meltdown The most recent patches close almost all known vulnerabilities and areas of attack through Meltdown. Some Spectre vulnerabilities remain as of January 9, 2018, and Apple has announced they will continue to release patches to secure all affected systems. The speculative memory access vulnerability is inherent in the Intel CPUs and will take some time to correct, especially with the chip maker apparently unwilling to directly address the issue. Remaining Vulnerabilities The most recent patches protect systems much more thoroughly against Meltdown, but there are many remaining concerns regarding Spectre. Because of the continued use of speculative memory access by the Intel hardware, Spectre and potentially other exploits continue to plague users and OS providers. Intel awarded bounties for the responsible disclosure and reporting of both Meltdown and Spectre. The bounty system remains one of the best , and Apple is working to ensure that releases of iOS, macOS and tvOS address as many of these vulnerabilities as possible. techniques for evaluating computer system security future

Apple Patches Vulnerabilities Affecting Personal Data on All iPhone and Mac Devices

Today, let's take a look at another JavaScript array method, which is the method. We will be learning how to determine if an item exists in an array using the method. some() some() As always, the code examples in this article are written in the JavaScript language. Therefore, knowledge of the language is required for proper understanding. Without further ado, let's dive in. What is the JavaScript some() method? The Javascript some() method determines if at least one array member satisfies the test defined by the given function. It returns true if it finds an element in the array for which the specified function returns true; otherwise, it returns false. It makes no changes to the array. Let's review this code snippet for a better understanding of this method: const basket = ["oranges", "apples", "pineapple", "yam"]

basket.some(bas => bas.length === 3)

// true

basket.some(bas => bas.length <= 1)

// false We simply try to test if one of the fruits’ lengths in the basket array is exactly equal to 3. At least in the array, a member complies with this test; it’s “yam” in this case. Our expected result would be true. The second condition checks if there’s any fruit length less than or equal to 1. This would result in a false because we obviously don’t have any length less than or equal to 1. How do I use the JavaScript some() method? The javascript some() method is easy to use; let me show you how. Let’s start off by understanding how the syntax is written. The syntax is written by simply surrounding the word 'some' with a parenthesis '()' as follows: some() Because this is a method, it accepts arguments, which gives you greater flexibility over what you can do with an array using the some() method. They are as follows: Element Index Array Element The element parameter indicates the current element that is being processed in the array. Index The index is just the index of the current element that’s been processed in the array. Array This is the array in which we call the some() method. Now that we understand the syntax, let’s see what the complete method looks like. some((element, index, array) => { /*... */ }) As you can see, we have the three parameters included in the code snippet above, which provides a clear example of how to build this method. Depending on your needs, you can choose to skip certain characteristics. Similar to the index, you may offer it as one of the options if you want extra details about the array. All the criteria do not always have to be included. Three ways of writing the JavaScript some() method The three common ways of writing Javascript are as follows: Arrow function Inline callback function Callback function Arrow function The arrow function was introduced in ES6, which attempts to solve some problems faced by the traditional function. This function can also be used with the some() methods: some((element, index, array) => { /*... */ }) Inline callback function We have the ability to write the callback function in the some() method without storing it in a variable. const basket = ["oranges","apples","pineapple","yam"]

 const result = basket.some(function (element, index, array)) {

 return element.length >= 7

})

console.log(result) Callback function This style can be written by first declaring the function and storing it in a variable, then passing it as a callback to the some() method, like so: const basket = ["oranges","apples","pineapple","yam"]

function callBack(bas){
   return bas.length === 7
} 

const result = basket.some(callBack)

console.log(result) Use cases Validating form inputs confirming an item's existence Authorization and access control making form inputs valid When processing form submissions, the function can be used to determine which input fields satisfy specific requirements. For example, you could verify that any inputs contain valid email addresses or that at least one required field is filled out. some() I will give you an example of how this might look. const formInputs = document.querySelectorAll('input'); 

const isAnyInputEmpty = Array.from(formInputs).some(input => input.value === ''); 

if (isAnyInputEmpty) { 
   console.log('Please fill in all required fields.'); 
}
else { 
  console.log('Form submitted successfully.');
} In the code sample, we ensure the user does not submit an empty field; we want to notify them if they leave it blank immediately. And if they meet the requirements by submitting at least the relevant data, we want to handle the submission. Confirming an item’s existence If we have a cart of products or a data structure in our web application, we can use some() to determine if a specific product exists. This is particularly helpful when we want to perform certain actions based on whether an item is present or not. Let’s have a look at this code sample that explains it better. const shoppingCart = ['shoes', 'T-shirt', 'trouser'];

const itemPresent = shoppingCart.some(item => item === 'trouser');

if (itemPresent){ 
  console.log('Product exists in the cart.')
} else { 
console.log('Product does not exist in the cart.')
} We check to see if we have a ‘trouser’ in the shopping cart. We log into the console when we confirm it’s in the cart. Authorization and access control When implementing user authentication and authorization systems, we can make use of some() to check if a user has at least one required permission or belongs to any of the specified roles. This allows us to control access to certain functionalities or resources. const userRoles = ['admin', 'editor']; 

const permissions = ['admin', 'moderator']; 

const hasRequiredRole = permissions.some(role => userRoles.includes(role)); 

if (hasRequiredRole){ 
console.log('Access granted.')
} else { console.log('Access denied.'); } In the code sample, we made use of the combination of includes() and some() methods to grant permissions based on the user’s roles. If a user’s role aligns with the required permission, we grant them access; otherwise, we deny them access. Takeaways On a final note, the javascript some() method is used for testing conditions. It does not change the original array. They accept three parameters: element, Index, and array', where the element parameter indicates the current element that is being processed in the array and the index parameter is the “index” of the current element that has been processed in the array. Thanks for reading my review of JavaScript's array method, specifically the some() method. What did you think of the explanation? Will you be giving it a try? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and please for future articles. follow me on HackerNoon

A Deep Dive Into the JavaScript Some() Method

জাভাস্ক্রিপ্ট সাম() পদ্ধতিতে গভীরভাবে ডুব দিন

Ein tiefer Einblick in die JavaScript-Methode Some()

Una inmersión profunda en el método JavaScript Some()

Une plongée profonde dans la méthode JavaScript Some()

जावास्क्रिप्ट कुछ() विधि में एक गहरा गोता

JavaScript Some() メソッドの詳細

JavaScript Some() 메소드에 대한 심층 분석

Um mergulho profundo no método JavaScript Some()

JavaScript Some() Yöntemine Derin Bir Bakış

Tìm hiểu sâu về phương thức Some() của JavaScript

深入探讨 JavaScript Some() 方法

User permissions (authorizations and authentication) are an indisputable aspect of most systems’ essential operation, and they demand careful consideration in terms of design, structure, and construction. As software engineers, products like Okta and Auth0 come to mind as tools for navigating user authentications, and then you investigate different authorization policies and models depending on the Infrastructure you want to use, of which ABAC, RABC, LDAP, or SAML (single sign-on authentication) are just a few examples. Understanding Authorizations and Authentications and why you should care Authorization is the process of giving someone the ability to access a piece of information. Authorization rules are part of the Identity and Access Management group in computing, and we can simply define it as the identification of system managers to control and validate users who have access to system resources and set client privileges. While User authentication is a security process that prevents unauthorized users from accessing your device or network, It’s a login procedure where an application requests personalized passwords to give you authorized access to it. If a user lacks the proper login rights to the network, their authentication fails. There is almost no doubt that authorization, as overlooked as it is, is one of the most complicated to get right and a possible future threat if not done correctly since minor errors or misconfiguration might result in millions of user records being exposed. While researching the best options for properly navigating user permissions without having to worry about the problems that come with it, one product stood out as the central focus of this article. is an open-source decoupled access control for your software making user permissions and authorization simple to implement and manage. Cerbos With cerbos, user permissions become a plug-in solution and you do not have to build from scratch or worry about exposing user details as cerbos provides you with a Low-code, human-readable configuration and goes way beyond basic role-based-access-control with context-aware role definitions and attributes and you can get it implemented and running in minutes. A typical code without Cerbos: if user.email.endswitch("@samuelakinosho.com") or (
    "developers" in user.groups and user.company.package == "allowance"
):
    if user.region == resource.region:
        audit_log.record(Audit.ALLOWED, "edit", user, resource)
    else:
        audit_log.record(Audit.DENIED, "edit", user, resource)
    else:
        audit_log.record(Audit.DENIED, "edit", user, resource) With Cerbos: if cerbos_client.is_allowed("edit", user, resource)
#Access granted How Cerbos Works So let’s start with the basics of this diagram, which shows how your application would interact with Cerbos. When a user performs an action, the application layer unbundles that request to determine who is attempting to perform what action and on which resource or object. The application layer then unbundles these two data points further. The first is the user’s identity, which could include things like the groups the user is a part of or the departments and or geographies it belongs to; the second is the resource or object that is being accessed or mutated; the application knows what state that object is in and any additional information about its attributes at this point in order to make a decision whether or not that activity should be permitted. Traditionally, you would construct an if then else block that implements a conditional branch depending on all of the preceding bits of information we discussed. Cerbos decouples and centralizes that logic out of your application code, as seen in this figure. The call to the SDK would provide information about the user action and the resource, and it would ask Cerbos to decide whether or not that action should be allowed. The SDK interacts with the servos instance running within your environment via the rest API or GRPC based on the policies defined. The application that uses the Cerbos SDK would implement a very simple API for two different courses one for action allowed and another for action denied. This way, you would not have to change your application code when the rules of what should be allowed change. Installing and using the Cerbos API To install cerbos using Docker (run from a container): docker run --rm --name cerbos -p 3592:3592 ghcr.io/cerbos/cerbos:0.17.0 You should see something like this: Creating a directory for the policies and config files mkdir -p cerbos-quickstart/policies Creating a config file policies
cat > cerbos-quickstart/conf.yaml <<EOF
server:
 httpListenAddr: “:3592”
 storage:
 driver: “disk”
 disk:
 directory: /quickstart/policies
 watchForChanges: true
EOF Launching the container with the config files docker run — rm — name cerbos -d -v $(pwd)/cerbos-quickstart:/quickstart -p 3592:3592 ghcr.io/cerbos/cerbos:0.17.0 server — config=/quickstart/conf.yaml You can view the latest API documentation from a running Cerbos instance by running: docker run --rm --name cerbos -p 3592:3592 -p 3593:3593 ghcr.io/cerbos/cerbos:0.17.0 or you can easily navigate to using your browser. http://localhost:3592/ Demo Implementation To test out the Cerbos practical Demo, you can begin by cloning any of these examples depending on your preferred languages: Application (Python) GraphQL Service (NodeJS) REST Service (Go) We would use the and the following calls in the application to query the Cerbos PDP and make policy decisions. To get started, you can use the Cerbos PDP hosted demo instance. Application (Python) Note: If you’re deploying for production use cases, a self-hosted instance should be deployed for security and latency reasons. Cerbos PDP Instance: https://demo-pdp.cerbos.cloud To install the Cerbos NPM package npm i @cerbos/sdk // or yarn add @cerbos/sdk Configuring the Cerbos Client Then wherever is needed in the business logic, you can call Cerbos to check the authorization. Alternatively, you can watch this video tutorial to see Cerbos policies in action. https://www.loom.com/share/0425d8a075804d528185ad2ba30817b3 Conclusion: In this article, I discussed the issues with building user permissions from scratch and how Cerbos can assist developers to replace complicated, hardcoded permissions logic with a simple API request. I also gave code snippets for running Cerbos, integrating the APIs, and seeing Cerbos policies in action. Also Published Here

Using Cerbos to Navigate User Permissions

Easy Password Cracking For a number of years I’ve been interested in the security provided by passwords, and the methods being developed to attack password-protected accounts. So I thought I’d see how successfully everyday developers, without specialist knowledge, could hack millions of passwords. **Ethical Hacking: The real-world passwords used in this experiment were hacked and leaked online by an individual who is not myself. These passwords are now freely available online. Carrying out virtual attacks on leaked passwords like this enables us to educate individuals on the protection provided by their passwords, and can therefore help protect them from real attacks. Before carrying out my work I stripped all personally identifying information from the leaked file.** People use passwords to protect virtually everything online: from emails to bank accounts, to crypto exchange accounts. While many sites now offer use of two factor authentication (‘2FA’), this often isn’t publicized or enforced, and a huge number of sites still don’t offer 2FA at all. The security passwords provide is therefore critical for protecting the population’s identity and money. Naturally, the value stored behind passwords has motivated many attacks to be developed against them. There’s a huge number of research papers you can read about complex password cracking algorithms, which use intricate probability and machine learning techniques, and can crack over 90% of passwords. While it’s scary how good these algorithms are, they don’t feel like a very realistic threat against the general population — how many people really know how to carry these attacks out? Why would they target me?! I decided therefore to take a look at a far more realistic attack: an attacker that knows how to create an AWS instance (or other cloud instance), and can run some open-source software on it. If you already know about hashing of passwords please skip ‘ . If you know about offline attacks against hashes please skip . Brief Background: Storing Passwords’ ‘Brief Background II: Attacking Hashes’ Brief Background: Storing Passwords When logging into a password-protected application, the sequence of events that to occur is the following: appears User enters a password (which is transmitted for approval) Entered password is compared to the password on record Access granted if these match However transmitting and storing passwords like this is incredibly insecure. For increased security, many systems (though sadly not all) actually store the ‘ of users’ passwords in their database, and not the passwords themselves. You can think of the hash as an irreversible jumbling of the password; if an attacker discovers a password’s hash they cannot reverse the process to discover the password itself. hash’ When a user enters their password in a system like this, the actual sequence of events is the following: User enters password is calculated locally and the hash is transmitted Hash (password) The hash is compared to the hash on record Access granted if these match Brief Background II: Brute-forcing Hashes In a system that uses hashing, if an attacker manages to get their hands on the password database, they still cannot see a user’s password. Attacks against such systems cannot reverse a hash to find the corresponding password, and therefore go as follows: Guess a password Calculate the hash of this guess Compare this to the real hash Repeat steps 1–3 until a match is found This sounds pretty time consuming, however with a machine that can guess thousands of passwords in parallel, you can imagine things start to speed up. The Attack Software The software I used is called Hashcat, which is an advanced password recovery tool, and is known as the . Hashcat is , has sources and binaries downloadable from their , and has an extensive to the tool. It’s safe to say you don’t have to be a specialist to use it. “world’s fastest password cracker” open-source website wiki guide Hardware I ran Hashcat on a Nvidia Tesla K80 — a GPU with 4992 cores that you can rent on AWS for $0.90 per hour (P2.xlarge). I started off by looking at the hashing capabilities of the K80, just to see how it fairs in comparison to a standard built-in laptop GPU. The K80 came out 16 times faster than an average Intel graphics card. The K80 can calculate ~800 million SHA-256 hashes per second… that’s nearly 3 trillion per hour. The passwords As stated at the top, the passwords I ran my attack on were leaked by an attacker online. There were over 14 million passwords leaked in the attack, all of which was created by real-world users. I won’t provide a link to the passwords — there’s no need to share them unnecessarily — however I found them easily with a quick google search. The logic of my attack While Hashcat allows you to perform simple brute-force attacks (where you try every possible password of a specified length), they also have commands for slightly more complex attacks. It’s well known that most people base their password on a word, in various forms: Just a word (potentially with different capitalizations) — Password A word followed by some numbers/symbols — or monkey! Coffee12 A word with ‘ applied — or leet speak’ p4ssw0rd f4c3b00k Multiple words stuck together — isthissecure And what a coincidence… if you can provide a list of words in a file, Hashcat has different modes built in, that can guess: Every word Every word with each possible number/symbol appended Every word with specified rule(s) applied (i.e. ‘replace every o with a 0’) Every combination of words stuck together So I downloaded a dictionary file containing millions of English words to use in my attack. From there you can then get a bit more generic, specifying ‘masks’ that Hashcat should try. This means instead of telling Hashcat to try ‘all passwords of length 8’ — which is 7 quadrillion different combinations — you can try every password that is ‘6 lowercase letters followed by 2 numbers’. So how well did the attack do? To be honest… it was far, far more successful than I had possibly imagined. Actually scarily successful… 2 hours: 48% of the passwords were cracked 8 hours: nearly 70% were cracked 20 hours: over 80% had been cracked Call to action Let me summarize. 20 hours. $0.90 per hour. That’s just $18. 80% of 14 million passwords cracked. Let that sink in. That’s scary. Really scary. People to make their passwords more secure. Replacing ‘o’ with ‘0’ and ‘e’ with ‘3’ Adding numbers and symbols to the end of a word doesn’t either. It’s too predictable. need does not make your password secure. I’m not a security professional — I can’t give you rules that you can follow to make passwords unhackable. It was people following predictable rules that made these passwords so crackable. Be unpredictable. Or better yet, use a password manager like or to be unpredictable for you. LastPass 1Password

20 Hours, $18, and 11 Million Passwords Cracked

Why do cryptocurrency hacks keep happening?

Cloud computing networks are revolutionizing the business world and, with their limited resources, SMBs are often first in line to take advantage of virtualization. Unfortunately, due to their absent or budget in-house IT services, they are also high on the priority list of hackers looking to cause damage or to steal sensitive data. Even businesses with limited sensitive data on their systems are seen as a way to gain access to their bigger clients’ networks (for example, the HVAC company whose network access credentials opened up a channel to discount store giant Target in the 2013 data breach, costing them millions of dollars in settlements). The dilemma between increased operational efficiency and higher exposure to security breaches is one being anxiously chewed over by CTOs and business owners everywhere. If you decide to bite the bullet and embrace the cloud, here are some tips for minimizing risks. Automate Security Checks Security-conscious homeowners make sure they check the locks on all of their doors and windows when they leave the house. businesses do the same with any data coming into or exiting their networks. There are various types of automated threat detection software on the market and some are able to flag changes to firewall and server configurations and even trigger password change reminders. IT-security Just be aware that threat detection automation is not infallible. It still requires a human being to act on any threats it picks up on and, in the case of malware detection, install security patches. Even then, it may be breached as part of a zero-day exploit. Minimize Downloads Cloud services, especially the bigger ones, are often less vulnerable to security breaches than the systems used by their clients. Where sensitive data is concerned, the fewer versions stored on your in-house systems the better. One simple hack to reduce the risk of data theft is to strictly limit the downloading of data. For example, if you are accessing a sensitive document — such as a scanned bank statement — on the cloud, use a viewer or your browser’s preview function rather than automatically hitting the download button. There is no point in your cloud provider implementing end-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication only for a dodgy visitor to plug in a flash drive and swipe documents you’ve left lying about on your own PCs. Use Your Virtual Shredder As well as reducing the number of downloads, make it a clear policy to delete documents, emails and other data that you no longer need. Leaving emails and documents lying about in system folders — even spam folders or trash cans — not only increases the chance of them being stolen. It also leaves you vulnerable to hidden scripts or infected files. Adjust the settings of your email server to ensure the spam and trash folders are regularly purged. You can also use the inbuilt Task Scheduler (Windows) or Automator (Mac Os X) to delete, for example, unmodified files of a certain age. Consider Tokenization Tokenization is used by many security-conscious firms to protect sensitive data (e.g. card details in retail environments). However, tokenization systems can work with other types of sensitive data too. In a nutshell, tokenization associates real data with a temporary random alternative (the token). The token then replaces the real data during transfer. If the network has been exploited, the hackers can steal only the meaningless token. Unlike some forms of encryption, there is no formula used to create the token from the original data. Therefore, the hacker will be unable to recreate the real data. Strictly Control Third Party Apps — and Users! Businesses regularly underestimate the number of third party apps that are integrated into their virtual networks. Third party apps using APIs are now ubiquitous across the internet but not all follow good security practice. Carry out regular audits to draw up a list of all of the third-party apps your business uses. Make sure you are running the latest versions, have installed any security patches and that each app meets your company’s security and compliance standards. If necessary, replace those that do not. If your organization is complex or you are unsure about whether a third-party app is safe, consider outsourcing this function to a professional IT consulting firm. It is also wise to run a regular third-party user audit. You wouldn’t allow a lodger to retain the key to your home after they leave so be quick to withdraw any permissions you have granted to your systems when access is no longer appropriate. If you operate a Bring Your Own Device policy, ensure that former employees’ devices are recovered and/or wiped immediately. On the same theme, make sure that you give third-party users and remote workers only the minimum access they need to perform their role. Your virtual call center agents should not be able to access your company accounts! Moving Beyond Hacks Taken together, the tips and software hacks above will afford some protection from security breaches but they will never eliminate all danger. Security in the cloud is a process and there is no one-time hack or ‘silver bullet’ product that will render any business immune to the cyber criminals’ persistent efforts. The best course of action is to invest in proper staff training, lay sound security foundations (strong passwords, robust data protection policies, regular updates, compliance awareness, etc.) and keep up to date with the most recent developments in technology and IT security. Originally posted on Techeries.com by Brent Whitfield

Hacks to Reduce Security Breaches in Cloud Computing Networks

The Capabilities of Large Language Models: Hacking or Helping?

বড় ভাষার মডেলের ক্ষমতা: হ্যাকিং বা সাহায্য করা?

Die Fähigkeiten großer Sprachmodelle: Hacken oder Helfen?

Las capacidades de los modelos de lenguaje grandes: ¿piratear o ayudar?

Les capacités des grands modèles de langage : piratage ou aide ?

बड़े भाषा मॉडल की क्षमताएं: हैकिंग या मदद?

大規模言語モデルの機能: ハッキングか支援か?

대규모 언어 모델의 기능: 해킹인가, 아니면 도움인가?

As capacidades dos grandes modelos de linguagem: hackear ou ajudar?

Возможности больших языковых моделей: взлом или помощь?

Büyük Dil Modellerinin Yetenekleri: Hacklemek mi, Yardım Etmek mi?

Khả năng của các mô hình ngôn ngữ lớn: Hacking hay Help?

大型语言模型的能力：攻击还是帮助？

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