Why Vulnerabilities Remain Hidden

The cyber industry continues to innovate and offer new ways to help organizations stay secure and compliant. Over the past few months I've observed analyst, media and pundit coverage of three new cyber product categories - software defined segmentation, threat intelligence gateways and automated breach simulation. All three offer many new ways to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your security programs. I will discuss each briefly and reference relevant Gula Tech Adventures portfolio companies in these new categories.

9. Which domains need software vulnerability assessments to mitigate risk from software vulnerabilities? The end point or workstation.

Organizations use the Cloud in a variety of different service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) and deployment models (Private, Public, Hybrid). There are a number of security issues/concerns associated with cloud computing but these issues fall into two broad categories: Security issues faced by cloud providers (organizations providing software-, platform-, or infrastructure-as-a-service via the cloud) and security issues faced by their customers.In most cases, the provider must ensure that their infrastructure is secure and that their clients’ data and applications are protected while the customer must ensure that the provider has taken the proper security measures to protect their information.

Deploying the right security products – IT security today has a wide range of technologies that are aimed specifically at lowering risks and threats.

In security engineering, a vulnerability causes errors and weakness to the IT systems. Environment vulnerabilities in combination with an internal or external threats leads to a security failure. For example, vulnerabilities may result from input validation errors, memory safety violations, weak passwords, viruses, or other malware. In recent years, software companies and government agencies have become particularly aware of security risks that vulnerabilities impose on the system security and have started analyzing and reporting detected vulnerabilities of products and services (Ogut, Cavusoglu & Raghunathan (2008).

To deal with current trend of information security and sophisticated cyber threat we need the most efficient and best suited vulnerability management solution for our infrastructure as well as applications. As vulnerability management deal with people, process and technology; we need to choose each of them carefully. Technology is the pillar which is very vast and we cannot opt for multiple investment on the same. We need to be much cautious while choosing the same. One can take into account following parameters while choosing a vulnerability management solution:

The most comprehensive software solution for assessing security of web application, network systems, end point systems and email users is CORE IMPACT Pro. It allows you to take security testing to the next level by safely replicating a broad range of threats to your organization’s sensitive data and critical infrastructure. You gain extensive visibility into the cause, effect and prevention of data breaches, enabling you to drive effective risk mitigation

Yes, a vulnerability is still valid even thought there is no associated risk. The reason for this is that although there is no risk now because there is no associated threat, it does not mean that there won't be in the future. If you think about it like there's a hole in the fence of a prison, the situation we have is that there is no one that is looking to exploit that hole just yet but down the line there could very well be someone that finds it and gets away. Much like the example, if there is an issue that is found and is preventable, even if there isn't any risk of exploitation just yet, there should be measures taken to fix the issue.

Security will always be a driving emphasis for the success of an organization. As technology continues to grow and develop, there is a greater need for understanding threat environments. The growing anxiety with security and privacy concerns make receiving a virus on a personal or company computer dangerous. It is vital that both individuals and organizations take the time to understand how to protect themselves from schemes used by hackers. It only takes one mistake for a hacker to have control of your computer. A proper understanding of security offers direction for improving business procedures and educating users of acceptable threat management and authentication practices. The management of network and application security

are elaborated on this report. There are several existing tools and clouds services that aids web development, making it diverse and dynamically changing. It is also inevitable that new security threats and system vulnerabilities are discovered. Issues with vendor lock-in, continuous integration, connectivity, network protocols, virtualisation, and loss of service can potentially damage the ICT infrastructure of Probe Inc. without applying proper mitigation techniques. In addition, cyber attacks can occur in the data center, corporate network of Probe Inc., and even in their internet service providers. One of the prominent solutions to address security related issues is for Probe Inc. to keep their platform software up-to-date to ease its vulnerabilities. Another one is to make sure that Probe Inc. utilize encrypted network protocols such as SSL. On the other hand, a straightforward solutions for non-security related issues is carefully choosing the proper cloud service provider that employs technologies that solve existing network protocol problems as well as virtualisation. In addition, Probe Inc. should also give focus on the SLA with their cloud provider to ensure the service they are using from the

Some organizations mistakenly believe that they are immune because they have moved critical business applications to the cloud. However, the cloud still relies on the same imperfect network, and you have the additional complication of a third-party vendor. If the vendor's site is not performing as it should, the performance of your application can also be affected.

The purpose of this report is to explain the process of conducting vulnerability assessments and modeling threats. Vulnerability assessments are conducted to keep organizations safe from device and network vulnerabilities. There is a process that should be followed in order to perform a proper vulnerability assessment, if it is followed properly the organization will eliminate most if not all vulnerabilities from their network. Modeling threats is also an important step in creating a safe computing environment. It is a way for organizations to classify threats to their network, applications, and devices. Classifying the threats allows an organization act accordingly when it comes to the threats that are present on their networks. All organizations should adopt some form of vulnerability assessment and threat modeling, this will help protect the organizations reputation as well as its data that resides and travels through the network.

The leading cause of security breaches are caused by vulnerabilities in software (Verizon Enterprise). PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is the most common programming language for creating web applications being used on over 80% of websites. According to W3Techs, over 74.06% of those installations contain at least one known security vulnerability (Q-Success). A recent data breach is a great example of how hackers can exploit software in order to collect information otherwise inaccessible. In 2013, Target’s security and payment system was compromised by an attacker in an attempt to harvest personal information including addresses, telephone numbers, and credit card information from Target customers. The attacker was able to

The Cloud Security Alliance reported that providers lack to offer much insight on their hiring practices and standards and for potential employees and access controls and audit techniques being used within their firm (Cloud Security Alliance, 2011). Providers with lapse practices and controls create an opening for attackers; they can simply gain employment with providers and attack the infrastructure from within.

As global security continues to grow exponentially in response to threats of cyber terrorism, the field of computer security continues to proliferate into many adjacent socioeconomic and technologically-based areas of society. Gartner Group, a leading market research in the enterprise IT industry, has stated that the worldwide market for security software will reach $21B in 2011, rising to $15.8B in 2015 (Karjalainen, Siponen, 2011). This rapid growth of computer security is also driving the development of entirely new patents in the areas of cryptography, enterprise security management strategies, and extensive support for more advanced programming features for securing enterprise networks (Albrechtsen, 2007). The pace of development in this market is accelerating as the sophistication and variety of threats continues to also exponentially escalate (Liang, Xue, 2010).