Leap Year: 3 Things IT Security Pros Should Do More Often

Ah, Leap Year. That kooky once-every-four-years opportunity for timekeeping to catch up with our little blue marble’s rotation around the sun. I’ve always felt there is a certain weirdness about Leap Year. Every four years, you get an extra day on the calendar. Shouldn’t there be something special about it then? Like, we should get the day off! We wish. That it aligns with other major events such as the US presidential election and the (Summer) Olympics only adds to its cosmic weirdness. Of course, there are several tasks that we as IT security professionals should do more frequently than every four years. But, astonishingly, so many of us get caught up in the minutiae of everyday work that we forget about them. Below are a few tasks that every IT security pro should perform more regularly. 1) Cycle your enterprise passwords A regular rotation of enterprise credentials is essential to cutting off would-be external attackers who have gained some level of access, or employees with an axe to grind. Here are a few tips to consider as you build out your process of regular credential rotation:

• You can’t manage what you can’t find after all. Identify uncontrolled privileged accounts with regular account and asset discovery.
• On a scheduled basis or automatically upon check-in.
• Automatically rotate keys according to a defined schedule and enforce granular access control and workflow.
• Eliminate application credentials altogether by getting control over scripts, files, code and embedded keys.
• Ensure password strength by defining and enforcing password policy to meet complexity requirements.
• Proactively report on password ages and policy violations.

2) Audit user activity and permissions Don’t wait until the auditors are sitting in the conference room, and save yourself time-consuming forensic activity by performing regular change audits of your critical infrastructure. Here is a shortlist:

• Use entitlement reporting to ensure that users have access to the resources – and only those resources – they need to do their jobs. Privilege creep is an epidemic.
• Answer the all-important who, what, where and when of changes in your critical infrastructure, like Active Directory, Exchange, File Systems and your SQL database. This will give you regular, real-time visibility to address potential compliance concerns proactively.
• Provide rollback and restore of any Active Directory changes or deletions, and backup and restore of Group Policy to protect the business from downtime.

3) Scan for the most critical system vulnerabilities Performing vulnerability scans and patching on your network should be done regularly and without disruption. Here are some tips on how to do it:

• Assess network devices, operating systems, applications, ports and services against a constantly updated vulnerability database.
• Leverage ICMP, registry, NetBIOS, and the Nmap signature database, as well as proprietary OS fingerprinting capabilities.
• Automatically select the credentials with the highest level of privileges on each scan target to improve scanning efficiency.

There is so much more to include here, so don’t get caught up on what’s NOT on this list. Just remember that performing some of this activity on a regular basis will help you transform your IT security into a more proactive, and less reactive one. For more on growing your level of security maturity, check out our seven-step guide to privileged access management. If you would like to learn more about how BeyondTrust can help, contact us today. Enjoy your once-every-four-year day!