The rise of global economy and the emergence of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology have produced great efficiencies and innovation. Nowhere is this more evident than in information and communications technology, which has undergone a revolution in the past two decades. The current global ecosystem provides lower costs, interoperability, and flexibility to manufacturers and their customers, but it also has introduced a new tier of security challenges.
An organization’s products are only as reliable as the components and materials that go into them. Its information systems and the data they contain are likewise only as secure as the systems they are networked with. Each link is a potential point of compromise by advertisers. This makes the job of securing and managing risk a critical part of enterprise security.
This applies to cybersecurity as well as to physical security because so many business activities today are conducted online. The integrity of components can be undermined with malicious capabilities. Back doors can be inserted into products, and software can be sabotaged, threatening not only your own enterprise but also your customers. When sensitive or proprietary information is shared with your partners, vulnerabilities in a partner’s systems can expose it to compromise.
Despite their importance, there often is too little visibility and supporting critical operations or into the risk they can present. Attacks against apparently low-impact targets in other companies can provide launching points for exploits against systems in other organizations; and likewise, an attack against your systems could compromise your partners, putting your organization at a serious business disadvantage and possibly exposing it to liability.
Addressing risks requires a multi-faceted approach that includes both internal and external security. Internally, the various divisions within an organization should understand the need for security and must be able to identify their assets, know where they are and who has access to them. Externally, partners must be identified and efforts made to assure the integrity of the product and materials they provide and efforts made to assure the integrity of the products and materials they provide and to verify that they have established their own basic security measures.
The task is complicated by the fact that organisations often are multinational and that laws and regulations governing security, privacy and transparency vary from country to country. It would be impractical – if not impossible – for one company to prescribe security controls for another. In the long run, security should be achieved through a partnership based on mutual benefits.
This is where businesses can fully take advantage of software’s like password managers where security and identity management are considered top priority. Identity management allows a network or system to authenticate the identity of a user through some type of credentials. The strength of the authentication required will depend on the sensitivity the material is being accessed. Public information might require little or no authentication, while propriety or classified data or accounts with administrative privileges should require stronger authentication.
Password manager has also helped simplify the entire user-navigation concept and democratized surfing. For those that are less tech-savvy and for our older loved ones, having to remember only one password and username as opposed to three or four or twenty, makes the digital revolution more accessible to them. Password manager has reshaped the way we interact in a digital world. It has not only made it easier for us to conduct business and live our lives on the internet and on our mobiles devices, but it also has made the whole experience more accessible and powerful.
