Businesses need to have a solid security plan in place to handle their SaaS security concerns if they want to fully benefit from cloud computing. In the first place, what are these worries?
Cyberattacks will cost businesses $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, a 300% increase over 2015, predicts McKinsey. Businesses need to keep up with the latest developments in data security if they want to reduce the risk and expense of cyberattacks. They must adopt a shared responsibility model and cloud-native solutions built with DevSecOps standards to actively manage their SaaS security.
Before the rapid development and popularity of digitization, the role of CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) was constrained to just being a part of IT teams, directing IT staff and planning cybersecurity defense. Regardless of conducting crucial tasks, CISOs were not traditionally a part of high management and had limited influence on the main business.
This has changed due to the rising risk of a cybersecurity breach and the rising expense of remediation. CISO is no longer a mere security evangelist, but holds much greater significance in the IT world.
However, with more power comes more responsibility. The cyber landscape now has become more complicated than ever, with more frequent cybercrime activities being witnessed than ever before. As cyberattacks become more complex, frequent, and damaging, the CISO is ultimately responsible for any defensive blunders made in defending against existing and new risks.
Moreover, the shortage of security professionals only adds to the struggle and strain that comes with this profession. Thus, CISO is required to focus on this issue to maintain its efficiency, with their evolving jobs. They may both safeguard their businesses and reduce their stress levels by devoting time and money to important areas like cultivating loyalty, dealing with legacy systems, and developing a culture that prioritizes security.
Competing with one another, CISOs are striving to acquire qualified cybersecurity personnel. Because there is now a dearth of qualified cybersecurity professionals and great demand, the majority of them may select where they work and demand higher pay. It will be challenging to compete with this, especially for CISOs who increasingly have more budgetary authority but also more accountability for spending wisely.
CISO can instead employee professionals who are not much skilled in cybersecurity, or even work in IT. They might gradually transition into important new cybersecurity responsibilities with the correct training and assistance. After all, not all cybersecurity positions require technological expertise.
Moreover, for roles that do require technical skills, Many firms have an underutilized resource—their developer community. Developers are in a great position to upgrade their skills, could learn secure coding approaches, and share responsibility for security because of their solid understanding of how computers function.
Looking internally eventually profits a firm’s morale and loyalty. Also, the corporation gains new cybersecurity expertise, and their employees gain whole new lucrative career.
Patching systems and keeping them up-to-date is not an easy task. While many company are already equipped with built up infrastructure, including legacy equipment, frameworks, and equipment that has been tightly interwoven into their work processes, ripping out and replacing is not an easy alternative. CISOs are responsible for preserving and managing these older programs, while also using the most recent apps that are running in hybrid clouds and using contemporary frameworks.
However, cybercriminals are smart. When attempting to hack into a network or steal data, they nearly always seek for the weakest link, and such outdated frameworks, apps, and infrastructures are frequently the chosen targets.
Thus, CISOs are required to work on their maintenance plans for all legacy software. External access should be completely eliminated, if at all possible, but it is crucial that teams receive training in security best practices for all active programming languages through practical training methods and courses. Nothing gets left behind when the most recent technologies are used alongside outdated languages that have proper security support.
In order to improve security and ease the CISO's workload, the solution may not entirely depend on technology. The best way to genuinely establish a company where security is a top priority is through a shift in culture. CISOs are in a unique position to drive this transition, both with other executives and the people they lead. They are both members of senior management and members of the security team.
A security-first culture will thus implant security into every aspect of a company's operations. Instead of being a consideration until later in the SDLC, developers should be able to write secure code that is devoid of flaws and resistant to assaults right away. This effort should be led by designated security champions from among the developer ranks, who will serve as both a coach and a motivator. With this strategy, security is ingrained in the team's DNA and supported by management rather than being mandated from above.
While these changes cannot be met overnight, they may happen gradually with some combined efforts. Since, the threat landscapes remain complex, highly advanced and ubiquitous to be handled by any one individual or a small team. Thus, it requires every employee – no matter their role – to actively contribute to increased security; only then will a business have a chance to prevent costly breaches and downtime.
The lawsuit, filed across several states, asserts that DISH “overstated” its operating efficiency while operating with inferior cybersecurity and IT infrastructure. The objective of the lawsuit is to recover losses suffered by DISH investors who suffered adversities as a result of what has been referred to as "securities fraud."
After the issue came to light, at least six law firms are now pursuing a class action lawsuit against Dish to recoup losses for Dish stockholders due to the alleged "securities fraud" between February 22, 2021, and February 27, 2023.
The complaint alleges Dish Network of attempting to conceal its operational effectiveness while maintaining "deficient" cybersecurity and IT infrastructure.
"...As a result of the foregoing, the Company was unable to properly secure customer data, leaving it vulnerable to access by malicious third parties," states a court complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado.
The law firms representing the plaintiffs include Rosen Law Firm, Levi & Korsinsky, the New York-based Law firm of Vincent Wong, San Diego- based Robins LLP, Bragar Eagle & Squire, P.C., and Bernstein Liebhard LLP.
"The foregoing cybersecurity deficiencies also both rendered Dish's operations susceptible to widespread service outages and hindered the Company's ability to respond to such outages; and... as a result, the company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times," states the complaint.
DISH, a major American TV provider and satellite broadcaster, inexplicably went offline around February 24. Both its websites and applications ceased to work for several days. The "network outage" that the company had previously described also affected Boost Mobile.
On February 28, in an SEC filing, DISH eventually confirmed being hit by a ransomware attack.
After the disclosure, DISH continued to struggle for days to restore its IT infrastructure and the website Dish.com. Following the news of the ransomware attacks, the company’s stocks faced repercussions, with stock prices falling $0.79 per share, "or 6.48%, to close at $11.41 per share on February 28, 2023."
Since then, the company has kept up the battle against the widespread disruption to its cyber systems, notably the client site MyDISH. The company is informing its clients that they will be receiving paper bills for the month of March as a result.
The volume and sophistication of cybercrime attacks have sharply increased at the same time, causing concerns inside IT departments. According to the most recent study from Cisco AppDynamics, the shift to a security approach for the full application stack, 78% of technologists believe that their company is susceptible to a multi-stage cybersecurity attack that would target the entire application stack over the course of the following 12 months. Indeed, such an attack might have catastrophic results for brands.
The major problem for IT teams is the lack of the right level of visibility and insights in order to recognize where new threats are emerging across a complicated topology of applications. More than half of engineers claim that they frequently find themselves operating in "security limbo" since they are unsure of their priorities and areas of concentration.
IT teams can safeguard the complete stack of modern apps throughout the entire application lifecycle by using an integrated approach to application security. It offers total protection for applications across code, containers, and Kubernetes, from development to production. Moreover, with coupled application and security monitoring, engineers can assess the potential business effect of vulnerabilities and then prioritize their responses instead of being left in the dark.
In order to improve the organization security, tech experts are recognizing the need for adopting a security strategy for the entire application stack that provides comprehensive protection for their applications from development through to production across code, containers, and Kubernetes.
Moreover, IT teams are required to integrate their performances and security checks to gain a better understanding of the way security flaws and incidents could impact users and organizations. Tech experts can assess the significance of risks using severity scoring while taking the threat's context into account thanks to business transaction insights. This entails that they can give priority to threats that pose a risk to an application or environment that is crucial for conducting business.
Due to the complexity and dynamic nature of cloud-native technologies, as well as the quick expansion of attack surfaces, IT teams are increasingly relying on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify and fix problems across the entire technology stack, including cloud-native microservices, Kubernetes containers, multi-cloud environments, or mainframe data centers.
AI is already being used for continuous detection and prioritization, maximizing speed and uptime while lowering risk by automatically identifying and blocking security exploits without human interaction. Also, more than 75% of technologists think AI will become more crucial in tackling the issues their firm has with speed, size, and application security skills.
To safeguard modern application stacks, companies must encourage much closer IT team collaboration. With a DevSecOps strategy, security teams analyze and evaluate security risks and priorities during planning phases to establish a solid basis for development. This adds security testing early in the development process.
IT teams can be far more proactive and strategic in how they manage risk with a comprehensive approach to application security that combines automation, integrated performance, security monitoring, and DevSecOps approaches. A security strategy for the entire application stack can free engineers from their impasse and enable them to create more secure products, prevent expensive downtime, and advance into the next innovation era.