Edition 14: Okta breach, State IDs on apple Wallet, A New Turn in the EU Data privacy rulings, and two posts worth sharing

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Welcome to Edition 14.

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Arizona approves & launches driver's license and state ID in Apple Wallet.

The upcoming states are Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, Puerto Rico.

It is a huge win for federal and state governments to begin this program. People will be able to add their driver’s license or state ID to Apple Wallet. Tap their iPhone or Apple Watch to present it at TSA checkpoints. The program will ensure data privacy and safety.

I am looking forward to this program covering nationwide.

Microsoft & Okta data breaches this week

This week, Microsoft and Okta had a data breach. Here is a summary:

• Lapsus$ group from Brazil took responsibility for the breach.
• Leaked 40 GB of Bing and Cortana source code files.
• Exposed 90% of Bing Maps, 45% of Cortana.
• Okta's 2.5% of 15000 customers were affected.
• Hackers got the ability to reset employee passwords, unauthorized access to VPN, and superuser access.
• Microsoft said that secrecy of code doesn't lead to the elevation of risk.

Some relief to the American Tech companies, but will the Trans Atlantic data privacy framework hold?

I wrote about the various court rulings in the EU taking a strong stance against EU Data residency in the USA. Even when Google Analytics doesn't collect any PII data, they went hard on it. Rulings created ripples in the tech industry. More than $1 Trillion in cross-border trade takes place between the EU & USA.

Last week, a Trans Atlantic data privacy framework has been approved. It puts a hold on those rulings and provides a sigh of relief to companies like Google, Facebook. They would not need to move EU residents' data. This framework will provide EU residents with stronger rights to protect & appeal for their data in the USA.

Experts believe this framework will not stick, but it's a move in the right direction.

Posts Worth sharing from last week

A checklist to audit your Security & Infrastructure

President Biden & White House are warning against a cyber attack on critical infrastructure. Here is a checklist to audit your Security & Infrastructure.

✅ Enable/ensure a Strong MFA.

✅ Enable threat protection services - malware, zero-day attacks

✅ Control IT administration. Know who can access and control the network.

✅ Move towards context-based access -right people, role, devices, endpoints, regions, applications, data.

✅ Get rid of inactive or dormant accounts.

✅ Get rid of abnormal, unknown, unused configuration settings.

✅ Disable shadow admins.

✅ Monitor real-time traffic including encrypted traffic.

✅ Monitor 24/7 to detect & respond to threats outside of working hours.

✅ Inspect firewall rules and exceptions granted. get rid of anything unknown, inactive.

✅ Examine your patching status. Ensure patches are in place for exploited vulnerabilities.

✅ Review all remote access to a network.

✅ Review your security posture and critical assets protection.

✅ Review your DR and BCP plans.

✅ Setup clear communication plans to know how to respond.

✅ Tap into external sources for incoming threat information.

10 Questions CXO can use to dive deeper into their security posture

Not every CXO is a Cyber Security Guru.

Here are 10 questions for CXO to begin diving deeper.

💎 What is our enterprise cybersecurity posture today?

💎 What is our current exposure(business, compliance, financial) today?

💎 What are our most valuable assets? How well are those protected?

💎 What are data crown jewels? how do we secure and audit them?

💎 Are the investments/projects aligned with reducing risks? Can we correlate investment $s to risk reduction?

💎 What is our cybersecurity roadmap? (How is it reducing enterprise risk/exposure)

💎 How do we know if we get breached? What is our readiness to respond?

💎 What are our business recovery plans in case of a breach?

💎 What is our plan and timelines for moving over to a Zero trust framework?

💎 What is our roadmap towards building a Security culture?

Cheers

Saurabh