Game-Changing Sensitive Data Discovery

I've tried not to let my blog become a place where I push products made by my employer. It just doesn't feel right and I'd probably lose some portion of my audience. But I'm making an exception today because I think we have something really compelling to offer. Would you believe me if I said we have game-changing DLP data discovery?

How about a data discovery solution that costs zero to install? No infrastructure and no licensing. How about a solution that you can point at specific locations and choose specific criteria to look for? And get results back in minutes. How about a solution that profiles file shares according to risk so you can target your scans according to need. And if you find sensitive content, you can choose to unlock the details by using credits which are bundle-priced.

Game Changing. Not because it's the first or only solution that can find sensitive data (credit card info, national ID numbers, health information, financial docs, etc.) but because it's so accessible. Because you can find those answers minutes after downloading. And you can get a sense for your problem before you pay a dime. There's even free credits to let you test the waters for a while.

But don't take our word for it. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from early adopters: 

“You seem to have some pretty smart people there, because this stuff really works like magic!”

"StealthSEEK is a million times better than [competitor]."

"We're scanning a million files per day with no noticeable performance impacts."

"I love this thing."

StealthSEEK has already found numerous examples of system credentials, health information, financial docs, and other sensitive information that weren't known about.

If I've piqued your interest, give StealthSEEK a chance to find sensitive data in your environment. I'd love to hear what you think. If you can give me an interesting use-case, I can probably smuggle you a few extra free credits. Let me know.

Finding & Closing Open File Shares

My team has been working on an advanced workflow for finding and closing down open file shares. I think we've really nailed it. At a few customer environments, we've scanned thousands of servers, performed the analysis to discover and prioritize high-risk file shares, and have the complete workflow to tighten the controls and/or shut them down as appropriate. If you have a need in this area, shoot me a note. I'd love to walk through it with you and see if we can help.

Windows File System Access Rights

I recently did some research into how Windows networking environments apply access rights across file systems. I've been in the IT business for more than a decade. So, if asked, I probably would've told you that I already know how it all works. But, there are a number of intricacies and things I didn't know -- like how security policy can override local NTFS permissions or how Windows doesn't always enforce the most restrictive policy. It seems that Windows enforces permissions based on what it believes to be the administrator's intent, which is interesting.

I published a whitepaper describing all the details. It describes how the controls work and covers the affect of group memberships, inheritance, deny ACEs, the owner attribute, and more. And of course, it provides some guidance for taking control of all that complexity.

You can register for a copy here:
http://www.netvision.com/offer

Who Has Access? Free Reports

Do you have questions like:

Who has access to this file?
or
What does this user account or group have access to?

If so, take a look at this description of NetVision's latest - free reports that answer complex questions. Or to get started right away, go directly to the TryIt! edition product page.

It's nice to have something free to give away that is actually useful.

Two reports provided that every admin should care about are:

Direct User Assignments – report on all instances of permissions being assigned directly to user accounts (instead of via groups).

Explicit Deny Entries – report on all instances of explicitly denied permissions (these can cause headaches when trying to figure out why someone doesn't have expected permissions).

Better data from Active Directory for your SIEM

If you Have or are Planning to Have:

• A SIEM solution (ArcSight ESM, RSA enVision, Novell Sentinel, IBM TCIM)
• An enterprise Log Management solution (LogLogic, TriGeo, SenSage)

And your employees log on to:

• Microsoft Active Directory / Windows
• Novell eDirectory / NetWare

And you're unhappy with the solution's ability to:

• Get complete information from the directory or file system
• Filter which information is collected
• Generate highly relevant alerts based on filtered event data and custom policies
• Collect event data directly from the source (independent of system logs)
• Apply decisions or alerts based on WHO is performing the action
• Report on ANY combination of objects and attributes in the directory
• Report on who is opening or modifying files, folders, or file system permissions

THEN ...Please give us a call.

I recently wrote a paper discussing how we (NetVision) extend the ability of SIEM or log management solutions by getting better, more reliable, and more relevant information directly from what is arguably your most critical source (the network directory). The paper isn't publicly available (it's not that kind of paper). So, let us know and we'll pass it along or we can save you the trouble of reading and just explain it.

Insider Threat: Crime of Opportunity

For the past few years, I've talked to many people about the insider threat. I don't spend too much time focused on the hardcore criminal element that plan an attack against their employer. I have mostly been thinking about the 35% of employees that claim they need to break policies in order to get their jobs done (see my post on Insider Threat - By the Numbers). And the unknown percentage of employees who break policies without being noticed (or in many cases without even knowing it).

A few days ago, security researcher Ira Winkler articulated one aspect of this very plainly.

Why is there a sudden epidemic of violations of sensitive personal information? The answer is, Because it’s there.

The scenario of an employee viewing sensitive information that they shouldn't be viewing is a fairly common example of real-world insider security breaches. While it won't likely lead to a $7 Billion loss, it could mean a failed audit, bad publicity, lost customers, or other lost business opportunities. In today's transparent business environment, it's only a matter of time before juicy information is made public. State Dept. employees were probably snooping on passport information for years before they found the 2008 presidential candidates. Then, it got out and became a news story.

Winkler goes on to note:

Anyone developing or maintaining information just better accept that their fellow workers will look at information and that they need to track and limit access. More importantly, they better look at their audit logs and specifically search for violations.

I agree. One of the scenarios I often run into is where administrators require access to files (in order to manage access) but they don't require access to the information within those files. A good example is the admin who controls access to HR files and has the ability to open offer letters containing salary and other personal information. To Winkler's point, if the capability is there, they will likely open the files to take a peek. After all, they have been explicitly granted access to those files in order to do their jobs. Doesn't that make it OK? No. And to Winkler's final point, the admin would probably exercise additional restraint if they knew that file access was being monitored.

File System Audit

Anton Chuvakin of LogLogic posted today on some of the intricacies of Windows native file system audit. If you have a need for monitoring access or changes to files, beware of the do-it-yourself method. Chuvakin provides insight on some of the challenges.

One of the things that NetVision engineers brought to market long before I joined is a very slick file system monitoring solution. Slick mostly because you have extreme control over which events you want to capture. You can filter on server, folder, file, person acting, event type (read, create, modify, delete, ACL or attribute changes) – you can even specify times of day to activate a particular policy. And you can have different policies for different files or folders. You can also choose what to do when an event occurs. For some events, write it to a database or file. For others, send an email too or kick off another process. None of it relies on system logs and the reports are delivered in a nice web UI running on Crystal Reports. So the business people get relevant results without having to understand the tech stuff.

Some of our customers even use our filtering to narrow down the events that are then fed into an enterprise security event management or log management system (like LogLogic). It's File System audit made easy.