Minding your P’s and P’s

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It seems that there is a constant barrage of regulations and standards that businesses must comply with. Every quarter there is a new audit; SOX, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI, and the list goes on. Businesses try to accommodate these requirements by adopting structured governance model which presents their own requirements, seldom aligning perfectly with the others. Fortunately, there is a common thread woven into all these business detractions. If managed properly, that thread can be a lifeline to save much of the time and effort required to meet regulatory requirements. So what is this thread? It’s your policies and procedures.

Policies and procedures are the foundations of your businesses activities. They are the rules that you play by. They also can make up much of the evidence required by auditors to show that you understand and intend to comply with whatever regulation or standard being applied at that moment. Policies are high level management directives. They are designed to indicate to the company’s workers that management has made a commitment to something which they expect the staff to uphold. Policies are typically general in nature. Specifics are usually in the domain of the procedure. Read more

How to Shorten the Deployment Process

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In the Information Systems industry, as in other related industries, the challenge in deploying the latest solutions is timing. In the software industry, the time that it takes to get a product, solution and new deployments is a key factor for the benefits they offer.

In delivering new software products, there is the expression you have to shoot the programmer and ship the product. Now no one takes this literally, but the message is the product development cycle could go on forever as new functions are added along the way. However, if the product never reaches the intended user, all is for naught.

The same can be said for software projects and the deployment of the latest products that could benefit their intended users. Below are some ways learned to reduce project cycle time for their delivery.

Planning is very significant. One of the challenges during the planning cycle is when everyone wants to get started with the project and is looking for early tangible results. Breaking down the project into milestones and phases will give everyone a better understanding of the progress with visible stages. Read more

Email Attacks and Hate Mail Response: Recognizing When You Need to Hire an Incident Response Expert

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Many people who use email think that their true identity and location are anonymous. Hidden behind their supposed “cloak of anonymity,” these people may sometimes lash out at their employers, colleagues, political adversaries, ex-lovers, and so on. Thankfully, there are a number of identity management services that can help to reveal the identity of the person who sent you a threatening message.

If you receive an email that is of a threatening or illegal nature, it’s not difficult to initiate an enquiry leading directly to the person involved for appropriate actions by authorities. Here is a look at how the specialists at PathMaker Group can handle your situation:

Forensic Expertise

The key to finding out who is responsible for sending a threatening message is the technical knowledge that incident response experts have about the inner workings of electronic mail. By examining the Internet Headers of a particular email, our incident response experts can identify the exact source of the message. Read more

Consequences of Not Maintaining a Secure Website

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It’s estimated that nearly one-third of the global population uses the internet on a regular basis. It’s no surprise, then, that businesses of all sizes are starting to rely more heavily on their websites for marketing, sales, client services, and more. Unfortunately, many of these websites pose considerable security risks for the businesses who operate them.

As a premier security and identity management firm in the Dallas area, PathMaker Group is intimately familiar with the consequences of not maintaining a secure website—consequences that can be avoided by utilizing our proven security and identity management solutions. Some of the risks of not maintaining a secure website include:

  • Identity Theft
    Unsecured websites are ideal targets for hackers and cyber-criminals looking to steal valuable customer information. Once they obtain your customer’s information, it is very easy for them to commit identity fraud. Besides the devastating consequences this can have for your customers, it can also be extremely damaging for your company’s reputation. To ensure that your website is secure from such attacks, contact the security and identity management professionals at PathMaker Group. Read more

Using IBM Tivoli Identity Manager to recertify Active Directory Groups

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Its audit time and you’re responsible for recertifying approximately 75 Active Directory Groups and each group has a membership of about 10 to 30 people.  An email needs to be sent to every manager for them to confirm the person still needs to be a member of the group.  You have to provide information to the Auditors to confirm that each person in each of these groups has been verified.  Before you can send out the verification requests to the managers you have to confirm each Active Directory Account has the correct person contact information and manager information.  All this has to be done in the next 30 days.

What are you going to do?  Book an early tee time!

How is this possible? Read more

An Overview of Digital Forensics and Electronic Discovery

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Digital forensics and electronic discovery involve the collection and analysis of electronically-stored data. Together, these two fields of electronic security cover the entire digital information spectrum. To find out more about what each one is and when or why you may want to hire an investigative team to perform digital forensics and electronic discovery procedures for your company, continue reading this article.

What is digital forensics?

Digital forensics entails the thorough examination of electronic storage devices. In the process, electronic systems investigators identify, collect, maintain, and analyze the data stored on an electronic device. After doing so, they produce results based on their analyses that are defensible enough to be upheld in a court of law. Deleted, damaged, and encrypted files are all included in the analysis and the data explained in the results.

What is electronic discovery?

Electronic discovery, or e-discovery, is the process of gathering electronic data so that it is readily available and can be stored on a variety of electronic storage devices. This data is gathered and stored via:

  • Information and identity management.
  • Collection and preservation of all data.

When good e-discovery practices are employed at a company, e-discovery records can be sent to a team of digital forensics investigators for:

  • Processing, analysis, review, and presentation of results.

When are these processes necessary?

Electronic discovery should be practiced by any company that stores sensitive data and records that are crucial to future business. Digital forensics should be employed when a company needs to draw on its performance history to justify a decision made in the present, as well as whenever a company is facing legal action. A forensics team can ensure the files and digital history stored on your computer that support your case will provide you with valid courtroom evidence.

Are you a Dallas-based business owner who is looking for services in the field of electronic security and identity? If so, call PathMaker Group at (817) 704-3644 and ask about our electronic discovery, digital forensics, and identity management services today!

 

Using IBM DataPower XI50 Appliance to Secure XML-based Web Services

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Congratulations!!! Your IT organization, and more importantly your company, now enjoys the benefits of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). These benefits include return on investment, code mobility and maintenance, agility, improved scalability and high availability.  But along with these rewards come some disadvantages.  These include degradation of application server performance and increased security concerns and risks.  The XML-based Web Services in use in your enterprise easily expose back-end systems to customers and partners.  Your Web Services pass through your enterprise network firewall and are based upon SOAP, XML and HTTP.  These all combine to introduce new threats and security exposures within your enterprise infrastructure.  These new type of threats can consist of some of the following below:

  • XML Denial of Service
    • Slowing down or disabling a Web Service so that service requests are hampered or denied
  • Unauthorized Access
    • Gaining unauthorized access to a Web Service or its data
  • Data Integrity and Confidentiality
    • Data integrity attacks of Web Service requests, responses or underlying databases
  • System Compromise
    • Corrupting the Web Service itself or the servers that host its Read more

IBM Pulse 2012

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Business Without Limits!

Pathaker Group is an IBM Premier Partner with the sales and technical certifications required to sell and implement an ever expanding array of best in class security solutions from IBM. Be sure to put Pulse 2012 on your calendar and stop by the Solution Expo and visit our booth. Business partners and customers will learn how IBM is shaping the IT Security Landscape with newly acquired technologies and integrated solutions to meet the growing challenges that we face.

Check out some info from IBM about Pulse!

“Pulse 2012 returns to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas March 4-7, 2012 and we invite you to take part in the action! Experience first-hand how organizations in every industry are using Visibility Control Automation to improve the economics of their business infrastructures and speed the delivery of innovative products and services.

With over 7,000 attendees including industry-renowned speakers, Pulse 2012 is your ticket to hundreds of technology leadership sessions, industry-focused breakouts, and technical skill-building workshops. At this year’s conference you’ll have an opportunity to network with colleagues, participate in hands-on labs, and attend our largest-ever Solution Expo. Don’t miss this significant event!

The Pulse conference is now accepting session submissions! Visit the IBM Speakers page for the timeline, benefits and guidelines, or to answer the Call for Speakers today!” (IBM) Read more

Security and Identity Management Solutions for the Healthcare Industry

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Do you work in the medical or healthcare industry? Is your company in need of security or identity management solutions? If so, here are some of the key ways in which PathMaker Group can provide value in this field.

Enterprise Single Sign-on Doctors and nurses have a lot of passwords to manage as well as using shared workstations creating potential issues around people sharing a user ID to an account and people leaving an application or patient information open on a shared workstation. With ESSO, PathMaker Group can give the users a secure way to store all their passwords and automating the login and logoff process.

  • ESSO can be paired with an RFID badge – a quick tap of the badge can log a user on or off from the workstation, saving the time of entering the user ID and password over and over again as they switch between machines all day. A proximity sensor can be added to workstations to automatically lock them when a user forgets to tap out as they walk away from the machine.
  • Shared Workstation Management – Shared machines can be configured to be locked when an ESSO user leaves the workstation. When the next user comes in, any apps left open by the prior user can be gracefully closed to prevent the new user from having patient access under the prior user’s account.
  • Context Management ESSO can further streamline the process of accessing patient records across multiple applications. Tools, such as CareFX Fusion Context Management, provide the ability to script the sharing of patient identification across applications, removing the need for constant searches and patient lookups. Read more

Addressing NIST’s New Risk Management Framework

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a series of publications that provide guidance for federal agencies on the implementation, certification and accreditation of federal information system security. The same guidelines hold true for all commercial agencies/companies as well.

So the question that comes to our mind What is NIST’s New Risk Management Framework? NIST describes the RMF model as a series of six repeating steps designed to identify the security mechanisms necessary for an IT system, implement those protections, and validate their proper operation over the systems lifecycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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