The automation and digital connectivity in the business world have led to an increase in the level of cybersecurity threats. The development of network security applications is essential to deal with potential network security threats. Here are some of the emerging technologies that will help improve the security of information security systems and protect them from cybercriminals.

Cloud technology

The cloud has had a significant impact on the security technology revolution. More and more companies and government agencies are using cloud technology to store important information every day. Cloud provides more security methods and technologies. Mechanisms such as virtual firewalls, virtual intrusion detection and defence systems, and virtual systems can now be used from the cloud. For example, most companies use IaaS services to improve the security of their data centres.

Hardware authentication

The disadvantages of using usernames and passwords are well known and require a more robust and secure form of authentication. One of the most recent techniques is to use certified hardware. For example, Intel is now using this technology, which can simultaneously combine various hardware enhancements to verify the identity of users. Hardware authentication is especially important in the Internet of Things. In the Internet of Things (IoT), the network needs to ensure that any attempt to gain access to it is allowed to do so (Top 5 emerging information security technologies, 2020).

User-behaviour analytics

User activity is the number one concern of security professionals. After a person’s credentials are compromised, cybercriminals possessing the credentials can infiltrate the network and conduct malicious acts. If an existing system defender is using UBA (User Behavior Analysis), such behaviour may trigger red flags. This technology uses big data analysis to detect any abnormal behaviour. This technology is essential; it helps to solve the blind spots in the business security system.

References:

TechBeacon. 2020. Top 5 Emerging Information Security Technologies. [online] Available at: https://techbeacon.com/security/5-emerging-security-technologies-set-level-battlefield [Accessed 31 October 2020].

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9 replies

1. Post by Lewle Seneviratne40 days ago
   Peer Response - Emerging security technologies
   Hi Shiraj,
   I would like to extend on great points you have made regards to User Behaviour Analytics
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Over time, User Behaviour Analytics can translate a unique pattern of behaviours on how users interact with different authentication means into a digital profile that is absolutely unique to each user; a highly reliable picture of the relationships map between the user and particular devices, locations and credentials. As highlighted in the original statement, these user credentials based UBA (User Behaviour Analysis) are used as a cyber-security tool that helps the detection of insider threats, targeted attacks, and financial fraud.
   Machine learning plays absolution key role in UBA as it provides far more nuanced monitoring and response capability for UBA by driving a scalable platform based on multi-entity behaviour profiling and peer group analytics. The threat detection capabilities in a UBA enable it to act as a cyber security tool, which can correlate anomalies within any environment that generates machine data through multiple data sources.
   Here are some of the possible scenarios where UBA can play a key role as a cyber security tool:
   § Account Credential Compromise
   UBA through underlying machine learning algorithms help to identify attackers exploit vulnerabilities (Pass-the-Token, Remote Execution, Pass-the-Hash(PtH), etc) by detecting any deviation from the normal behaviour of a particular account through various parameter inspections such as device, location, IP, timestamp and transaction patterns.
   § Insider Threat and Data Exfiltration Alerts
   UBA solutions can reveal anomalies in data and behaviour patterns such as downloading of sensitive content, coping to external storage or uploads to cloud storage, access to competitor websites, emails to personal accounts, which organizations could not otherwise recognize or detect as a rogue insider.
   § Anomalous behaviour and watch lists
   UBA models are designed to highlight false positive feedbacks, thus, it is a perfect tool to identify profiles with anomalous behaviour as watch-list-profiles and keep track of escalated unknowns, while applying predictive risk scores.
   
   Reference List
   Akutota, T. & Choudhury, S. (2017) Big Data Security Challenges: An Overview and Application of User Behavior Analytics. Available from: https://www.academia.edu/35086237/Big_Data_Security_Challenges_An_Overview_and_Application_of_User_Behavior_Analytics [Accessed 5 November 2020].
   Nguyen, P. et al. (2019). Hierarchical User Profiles for interactive Visual User Behaviour Analytics. Available from: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/22591/8/VASABI_VAST_2019_CameraReady_Final.pdf [Accessed 6 November 2020]
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2. Post by Marzio Hruschka40 days ago
   Peer Response - Emerging security technologies
   Hi Shiraj,
   I believe cloud technology is an exciting topic when looking at it from a cyber security perspective (especially cloud storage). I would like to further expand on the great introduction you have written above.
   As you have mentioned, cloud technology provides a multitude of opportunities which can be leveraged by companies to outsource specific processes or functionalities. There has been a significant increase in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that are offered on a cloud-basis. Many diverse solutions are now being offered on a SaaS-basis, with even automated AI-based penetration testing being among these solutions (BreachLock, N.D.). The IT research and advisory company Gartner forecasts the worldwide public cloud revenue to grow by 17% in 2020 alone, totalling to $266.4 billion (Gartner, 2019).
   However, when focusing on the security aspect of cloud solutions, it is not always entirely clear who is responsible for the security in place. Amazon’s AWS is a leader in cloud services and has the following terms of services in place (AWS, N.D.):
   “Customer responsibility will be determined by the AWS Cloud services that a customer selects. This determines the amount of configuration work the customer must perform as part of their security responsibilities. For example, a service such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is categorized as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and, as such, requires the customer to perform all of the necessary security configuration and management tasks.”
   Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform provide a selection of security services to protect their cloud infrastructure. However, when using cloud services, be it SaaS or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the customer always has some level of responsibility to protect their data from attackers. Especially for smaller companies, it is attractive to choose SaaS and IaaS solutions to reduce costs and save time. This proves to be a problem, due to smaller companies often lacking the expertise and workforce to ensure the necessary security across the whole infrastructure.
   
   Reference List
   AWS (N.D.) Shared Responsibility Model. Available from: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/ [Accessed 6 November 2020]
   BreachLock (N.D.) BreachLock® Penetration Testing as a Service. Available from: https://www.breachlock.com/how-it-works/ [Accessed 6 November 2020]
   Gartner (2019) Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17% in 2020. Available from: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-11-13-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-grow-17-percent-in-2020 [Accessed 6 November 2020]
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3. Post by Christopher Debiccari38 days ago
   Peer Response: Emerging security technologies
   Something to keep in mind when discussing network security technologies is that a system is only as strong as its weakest link, and that link can often end up being the very users of the system. Social hacking attempts like phishing are constantly increasing due to the ease of setting up such attacks and their relatively low risk if failed. Hardware authentication can help against these, however more nuanced hackers could still fool certain users into divulging enough information about their extra authentication to successfully gain access to the network. Education and network security protocols like occasional password resets are still required to shore up against these social hacking angles.
   
   Even this will never be enough to completely eliminate unauthorized access; this is where user-behavior analytics is useful. A similar approach is commonly used by credit card companies to detect identity theft. It is nearly impossible to know if someone has duplicated a credit card with a skimming device. However, it only takes a few purchases that deviate from the credit card holder’s usual spending pattern to raise a red flag for the credit card companies. Similarly, it is difficult to know when someone has had their network credentials compromised, but if their network activity suddenly deviates from normal it can be a strong sign that a closer inspection is required.
   
   References:
   Raguvir, S., Babu, S. (2020) ‘Detecting Anomalies in Users - An UEBA Approach’. International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management. Dubai, UAE, 10-12 March. IEOM Society International.
   
   Lohani, S. (2019) Social Engineering: Hacking into Humans. International Journal of Advanced Studies of Scientific Research 4(1). Available from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3329391 [Accessed 8 Nov, 2020]
   
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4. Post by Amy Lord38 days ago
   Peer Response - Emerging security technologies
   Hi Shiraj,
   
   I would just like to expand on some great points made by both Marzio and yourself concerning cloud technologies.
   
   Cloud technologies has been a great development in the computing world, particularly with regards to making high end computing available to small businesses without having to spend a significant amount of money on servers and an infrastructure team to maintain them (Abdallah and Varol, 2019). The use of cloud computing means that all of the infrastructure that these small businesses use are managed by security-aware infrastructure teams ensuring that the servers are more likely to stay up to date with appropriate security measures, therefore, making them less vulnerable to attacks (Vajjhala & Ramollari, 2016).
   
   As cloud services depend on data distribution, connectivity and access to the network there are however a few drawbacks to using cloud storage and infrastructure. The first one being the simple fact of connecting to the service, if there is a technical problem or low internet connectivity you then temporarily lose access to all of your data (Abdallah and Varol, 2019). Furthermore, using shared infrastructure can introduce a whole new class of vulnerabilities and risks that a company may have not yet previously considered. Timing attacks like Spectre and Meltdown which take advantage of speculative execution are made much more problematic through the use of shared resources (Mundhenke & Moritz, 2018).
   
   References:
   
   P. A. Abdalla and A. Varol, (2019) "Advantages to Disadvantages of Cloud Computing for Small-Sized Business," 7th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS), Barcelos, Portugal, 2019, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/ISDFS.2019.8757549.
   
   Mundhenke & Moritz (2018) Spectre and Cloud : An evaluation of threats in shared computation environments. Mannheim University of Applied Sciences Department of Computer Science.
   
   Vajjhala, N. & Ramollari, E. (2016) Big Data using Cloud Computing - Opportunities for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. European Journal of Economics and Business Studies. 4 (1), pp. 129.
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5. Post by Shoumik Chakraborty37 days ago
   Peer Response: Emerging security technologies
   Peer Response: Emerging security technologies
   Cloud Computing:
   AWS (N.D.) accepts responsibility for the infrastructure security and services, while the customers need to tailor their security settings to optimize the end-use of the AWS services. Cloud computing reduces cost for the end-customers, but there are multiple variables in play as stated by McAfee (2020) which directs concerns related to the visibility of data, data theft, inadequate controls over data, lack of skill, etc.
   
   Gartner (2020) states "Through 2022, at least 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer's fault" and recommends the development of enterprise cloud strategy, enforcement of policies, periodic risk assessment, development & implementation of adequate cloud controls, and training of staff.
   
   Hardware Authentication:
   Singh (2019) states, due to the lack of established industry-standards, the Device Authentication and Identity of Things (IDoT) lacks in standard framework resulting in weak security implementations. Also, due to the low memory bandwidth of the IoT devices, it becomes a challenge for the security provider to create robust solutions.
   
   Singh (2019) states, Hardware Root of Trust (HRoT) addresses the IoT security challenges. HRoT implements chip-based security functions and including "key generation, integrity checks and attestation".
   
   User-behaviour analytics (UBA):
   Chakraborty (2020) mentions the new version of SIEM tools equipped with User-behaviour analytics are in use. The integration of UBA and SIEM tools result in better result since it starts providing analytics depending on both user behaviour and the events which help in creating better risk models.
   
   Petters (2020) states "UEBA is now a very important component of IT security and forms a critical part of Varonis’ Threat Detection solutions. These solutions can drastically reduce the time to detect and respond to cyberattacks – spotting threats that traditional products miss by combining visibility and context from both cloud and on-prem infrastructure".
   
   References:
   AWS. (N.D.) Shared Responsibility Model. Available from: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/ [Accessed 10 November 2020]
   
   Chakraborty, S. (2020) Peer Response - Initial Post: Hardware Authentication and Zero-Trust Models. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230873 [Accessed 11 November 2020]
   
   Gartner. (2020) Clouds Are Secure: Are You Using Them Securely?.
   Available from: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-1YZ9USJA&ct=200506&st=sb [Accessed 10 November 2020]
   
   McAfee. (2020) Cloud Computing Security Issues. Available from: https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/security-awareness/cloud/security-issues-in-cloud-computing.html [Accessed 10 November 2020]
   
   Petters, J. (2020) What is UEBA? Complete Guide to User and Entity Behavior Analytics. Available from: https://www.varonis.com/blog/user-entity-behavior-analytics-ueba/ [Accessed 11 November 2020]
   
   Singh, A. (2019) Device Authentication and Identity of Things (IDoT) for the Internet of Things (IoT). Available from: https://www.kuppingercole.com/blog/singh/device-authentication-and-idot-for-iot [Accessed 10 November 2020]
   
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6. Reply to Shoumik Chakraborty from Shiraj Ali

7. Parent of this post

8. ↑34 days ago
   Re: Peer Response: Emerging security technologies
   Shoumik, You have highlighted several valid points.
   
   To extend on that, another example of user-behavioural analytics is when users downloading millions of files to a USB memory stick or abnormal file movement can cause alarms. This is the use of behaviour analysis; it helps mobile location tracking. Behaviour analysis can also help with next-generation violation detection, to analyse and understand user behaviour and machine patterns that help detect attacks.
   
   Since the Internet has now become a battlefield for hackers, network security is no longer an afterthought regardless of the size of the enterprise. The war between hackers and cybersecurity experts has become a wait-and-see policy. As the network security white hat solved a problem, another malicious behaviour occurred almost immediately. Cybersecurity industry always needs to look at emerging security technologies, and the cybersecurity professionals always need to be at the head of the game.
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9. Post by Shiraj Ali34 days ago
   Summary Post - Emerging security technologies
   The critical discussion point summarises emerging security technologies.
   
   Cloud technology
   It has made tremendous progress in computing, especially in making high-end computing available to small businesses without having to spend much money on servers and infrastructure teams to maintain them Lord (2020).
   
   Cloud computing reduces cost for the end-customers, but there are multiple variables in play, which directs concerns related to the visibility of data, data theft, inadequate controls over data, lack of skill Chakraborty (2020).
   
   Hruschka (2020) argues that, when focusing on the security of cloud solutions, it is not always entirely clear who is responsible for the security in place. When using cloud services, be it SaaS or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the customer always has some level of responsibility to protect their data from attackers.
   
   Hardware authentication
   The disadvantages of using usernames and passwords are well known and require a more robust and secure form of authentication. One of the most recent techniques is to use certified hardware.
   
   Debiccari (2020) describes that a system is only as strong as its weakest link and that link can often end up being the users of the system. Education and network security protocols like occasional password resets are still required to shore up against social hacking angles.
   
   User-behaviour analytics
   UBA models designed to highlight false-positive feedbacks; hence, it is a perfect tool to identify profiles with anomalous behaviour as watch-list-profiles and keep track of escalated unknowns, while applying predictive risk scores Seneviratne (2020).
   
   Debiccari (2020), added that UBA is commonly used by credit card companies to detect identity theft. Only takes a few purchases that deviate from the credit card holder’s usual spending pattern to raise a red flag.
   
   Cybersecurity industry needs to look at emerging security technologies, and the cybersecurity professionals continuously need to be at the head of the game.
   
   References:
   
   Amy, L. (2020) Initial Post - Emerging security technologies. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230207 [Accessed 12 November 2020]
   
   Chakraborty, S. (2020) Initial Post - Emerging security technologies. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230207 [Accessed 12 November 2020]
   
   Debiccari, C (2020) Initial Post - Emerging security technologies. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230207 [Accessed 12 November 2020]
   
   Hruschka, M. (2020) Initial Post - Emerging security technologies. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230207 [Accessed 12 November 2020]
   
   
   Lewle, S. (2020) Initial Post - Emerging security technologies. Available from: https://www.my-course.co.uk/mod/hsuforum/discuss.php?d=230207 [Accessed 12 November 2020]
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10. Post by Kalina Mohonee32 days ago
    Peer reponse - Emerging security technologies
    Hi Shiraj,
    
    It is also noted that Two-Factor Authentication can be used as an alternative to hardware authentication.
    It is one of today's most secure methods of user authentication, used to gain access rights to any resource or data. With the assistance of a login-password pair, two-step authentication is a much more secure alternative to standard one-factor authentication (1FA), the security of which is currently very poor. Based on pre-organized botnets, there are a large range of strategies to hack and bypass password protection, from social engineering to distributed brute forcing. In addition, certain users use the same password to log into all their accounts, which in turn further simplifies scammers' access to information and transactions that are covered. Increased login security is the primary benefit of two-factor authentication (Protectimus.com, 2020).
    
    Reference:
    Protectimus.com. 2020. [online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2020].
    
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11. Reply to Kalina Mohonee from Shiraj Ali

12. Parent of this post

13. ↑31 days ago
    Re: Peer Response: Emerging security technologies
    The issue with using 2FA as an alternative to hardware authentication is, SMS-based two-factor authentication is not safe, Password-bearing SMS messages can be intercepted by a Trojan lurking inside the smartphone. SMS messages with passwords can be intercepted through a fundamental flaw in the SS7 protocol used to transmit the messages. The most technical and labour-intensive methods of the above SMS password stealing methods (using SS7 exploitation) have been used in practice. Therefore, it's not just an assumption (SMS-based two-factor authentication is not safe — consider these alternative 2FA methods instead, 2020).
    (Marker, Farke and Dürmuth, 2020) the research paper shows that there is a phishing attack against Google’s SMS-based two-factor authentication exploit, which is similar to the SMS containing the one-time password and SMS sent as part of Google Gmail’s confidential mode. The new attack against Google’s SMS-based 2FA by exploiting a design flaw in Gmail’s confidential mode. The attack shows how an adversary who mimics the protocol run of the confidential mode can trick users into providing their OTPs sent via SMS.
    What should one choose for two-factor authentication?. Various 2FA versions and combinations can be used for different services. For example, the account with the highest priority (mailboxes linked to other accounts, etc.) should be protected to prevent being locked by hardware U2F tokens, while blocking all other 2FA options. This way, one can ensure that no one can access the account without the token.
    
    A good option is to link two keys to the account. Similar to having a car key, one car key in use and the other in a safe place in case the first key is lost. Also, one can use different types of keys, for example, the authenticator app on the smartphone is the primary password, while U2F tokens or paper slips with one-time passwords are stored in the safe as a backup password.
    
    Reference:
    Kaspersky.co.uk. (2020) SMS-Based Two-Factor Authentication Is Not Safe — Consider These Alternative 2FA Methods Instead. [online] Available at: https://www.kaspersky.co.uk/blog/2fa-practical-guide/14589/ [Accessed 16 November 2020].
    Marker, P., Farke, F. and Dürmuth, M., (2020) View The Email To Get Hacked: Attacking SMS-Based Two-Factor Authentication. [online] Ei.ruhr-uni-bochum.de. Available at: https://www.ei.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/media/mobsec/veroeffentlichungen/2019/08/19/way2019-5-view-the-email-to-get-hacked_v3.pdf [Accessed 16 November 2020].
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