Cyber Defense eMagazine May 2019

would show that it’s so hard to access someone’s privileged account if you do not count on someone
being inside that organization and providing you the critical data. On the other hand, any critical
infrastructure device could get vulnerable to cyber incidents and in that fashion; we could discuss a bit
more the endpoint security challenges. In other words, it’s crucially important to carefully manage the
sensitive information for a reason if you leave your login details and security procedures as well as
policies within some computing unit – the bad guys could get in possession of those information and use
them to access the privileged accounts. Also, it’s significant to mention that the privileged account is not
necessarily the access to some could-based environment, but rather the approach to some computer,
server or even datacenter. In other words, the privileged accounts could serve to protect some machine
from being exposed to the malicious activities.
The Internet of Things as a Critical Infrastructure
So many people on the planet would apply the IoT devices through their everyday’s lives and business
activities and they would certainly get dependable on those solutions. For instance, there are so many
IoT smart homes, buildings and even cities in the world and the functionality of those systems could get
deeply correlated with the ability of those solutions to communicate using the web signal. The internet
communications could get distinguished into three main spots and those are source, transition and
destination ones. It’s well-known that the critical assets would use the security operating centers in order
to get safe or at least under the well-managed risk and the similar practice could get applied to the internet
providers which would literarily feed the IoT solutions with their communications signal. For example, let’s
discuss the IoT smart heating system for a while! The IoT smart heating system would mainly deal with
the computing device getting some software with so and that application would use the internet
connectivity in order to exchange the information with the gateway asset. Any heating system would get
the thermostat as the gadget that would control the functioning of the boiler that would pump the water
to the radiators. In addition, the IoT smart device with its application on would send the web signal to the
router and the router would talk to thermostat in order to make it obtains the desired temperature and the
additional conditions in that place. If there is no internet connectivity – there would not be any operability
to that system, so far. This could get so serious during the winter months because the hackers and even
terrorists could disable your internet connection attacking your web provider and leaving you without the
heating at, say, your Christmas Eve. This could get the challenge to so many IoT manufactures which
would not take into account the security of their products and which would offer the quite unreliable
solutions on the marketplace. In other words, we do not want to criticize anyone because the IoT is so
fast growing landscape and so many small economies worldwide would see their chance to progress
making and selling the IoT solutions. That’s the quite convenient way to make a profit on, but do not be
that selfish to put on the risk so many people over the globe.
How to Secure Your Critical Asset?
The best practice would suggest that one of the ways to protect your critical asset is to use the privileged
accounts. Even if you cope with those accounts – you should always care about their safety and security.
It’s quite clear that if we include the IoT into the critical infrastructure – you would need to think hard about
some alternative options how to make those solutions being so functional even without the internet
connectivity. It would appear that in such a case we need to go a step back for a reason our web network
is not that safe at all. Also, we would recommend to protect your internet providers and, in some manner,
guarantee the security of your signal delivery. We live in the historically quite turbulent period for the
entire human kind, so that’s why it matters to think about your and everyone’s security.
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