Announcing Ordr 8.2 - The Most Comprehensive Single Source of Truth for Connected Devices Read more here!

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Month: March 2023

Great news! Ordr just announced the availability of the Service Graph Connector for Ordr in the ServiceNow Store. This integration is exciting for our customers, who can now maintain an up-to-date system of record for all assets so organizations can operate efficiently, react quickly, and manage risks more effectively.

Service Graph Connector for Ordr now available in the ServiceNow Store

Ordr provides the most comprehensive, accurate, real-time inventory of connected assets as a single source of truth. As the threat surface continuously evolves and expands, it is critical to ensure asset inventories are complete and provide the context to address risk proactively and reactively. With ServiceNow and Ordr’s bidirectional integration, Ordr’s device, network, and risk context are combined with the business context of ServiceNow. And the new Service Graph Connector for Ordr makes the integration more manageable and robust.

You now get a robust, most comprehensive, accurate real-time inventory of connected assets—from traditional IT to IoT, IoMT, and OT — and their risks in the ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to optimize enterprise-wide workflows and assess and manage risks.

Top Ten Security Risks of Incomplete and Outdated Asset Inventories

As given below, there are significant entry points that cybercriminals can exploit. With the combination of Ordr and ServiceNow, security and IT teams can identify and mitigate the following asset risks.

  1. Banned Equipment (Section 889)
    To protect national security, the federal government bans products manufactured by prohibited companies such as Kaspersky, Huawei, and Hikvision. These banned products can have vulnerabilities if exploited, resulting in the loss of intellectual property. The mandate covers new procurement and requires reporting within one business day if any prohibited asset is discovered in inventory.
  1. Unauthorized Devices
    Every unauthorized device that bypasses IT and operational tools and connects to a corporate network will expand the attack surface and could introduce significant risk. When the flash news of new vulnerabilities impacting corporate tools is announced, tracking all those instances of the compromised device can be challenging. This can include devices used in production and increasingly non-production or POV (Proof of Value) environments. The combination of Ordr and ServiceNow can proactively detect devices that can access other corporate servers and other precious devices and remove them from the network after the trial period.
  1. Orphaned/Missing Devices
    Maintaining good asset hygiene is always a best practice for improving security posture. It is critical to ensure that all assets registered and recorded by the procurement team are tracked and compared against all the devices connecting to the network. Any gaps should be reconciled proactively before it results in security concerns.
  1. Manufacturer Recall / FDA Recall
    Manufacturers may issue recall notices and security bulletins for significant vulnerabilities discovered. This is prevalent in regulated industries with mission-critical medical and industrial equipment devices. Similarly, from a federal regulation perspective, there can be recalls for sensitive equipment such as medical devices. Ordr can collate all recall announcements from multiple sources and tag all devices impacted; this context can be shared with ServiceNow.
  1. Default Credentials
    Business groups typically install IoT devices such as cameras in batches. The person responsible for the installation is usually not technical and often needs to gain knowledge or experience to change default passwords. It is unrealistic, if not impossible, to have a process to choose multiple unique passwords for physical security cameras when hundreds to thousands are going up in the ceiling. Think of the risk when hundreds of devices default to “Password1”. These passwords are not rotated periodically using over-the-air methods, like a password policy that enforces periodic password changes for laptops and desktops. An asset management system that combines the Ordr “default password discovery” feature with ServiceNow CMDB can alert administrators to update the credentials associated with these devices.
  1. Rogue Wireless/Switches that are bridging traffic to the internet (5G/LTE/Guest Wi-Fi)
    Unauthorized devices usually connect to a corporate open port and a set of devices using a daisy chain mechanism. Suppose the consumer-grade switches/routers come with LTE or link to the Guest Wi-Fi network. In this case, taking corporate data and exfiltrating without going through all the border controls exercised by firewalls becomes easier. It is a vast attack surface. Even when a good asset management and visibility solution is implemented, one needs a sophisticated tool to understand this daisy chain mechanism throughout the network to keep an exact list of these devices and implement a solution to eliminate them. An asset management system must integrate with a sophisticated visibility tool to detect and eliminate these daisy chain devices; this is why the Ordr and ServiceNow integration is so powerful.
  1. Non-Compliant Devices
    When a corporate Antivirus (AV)/Endpoint Detection Response (EDR) policy mandates that all IT endpoints (e.g., laptops, mobile, desktops) need to have a robust agent/software installed, it is not easy to audit all the devices and pull a list of those that do not have the required software installed. One step further than that is how challenging it is to ensure all those EDR agents are continuously running and receiving updates periodically to detect and thwart the latest attacks.Expired Certificates: We have all experienced how frantic it is to fix a certificate issue when a critical server stops working with expired certs. With a good asset management strategy, corporate IT can track all certificate expirations and implement a plan to address them periodically. Both these insights are readily available with Ordr and can be shared with ServiceNow.
  1. Local User Accounts without Domain Joins
    All users accessing a system must be part of Windows Active Directory (AD), if possible. This is especially critical in the case of older Windows machines that usually have a lot of unpatched vulnerabilities. Even if the device is part of the domain controller, sometimes operators can create local users on these machines. This practice must be watched closely, and a list of all locally-made user accounts must be extracted and reported continuously. When hackers create local user accounts and leave them dormant for later exploitation, it is easy to identify and remove those inactive accounts and fix the machines with malware infections.
  1. End-of-Life / Outdated OS
    Assets running end-of-life and outdated operating systems pose a significant risk to the organization. The first step is to identify these end-of-life devices. This can be a struggle without a solution like Ordr and ServiceNow that not only delivers accurate real-time inventory but now extends visibility to IoT, IoMT, and OT devices that often have longer operating cycles than traditional IT endpoints.Note that upgrading all devices running end-of-life or outdated OS is a logical way to address potential risks. But upgrading these devices in regulated industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and banking might not be possible due to backward compatibility issues. In some cases, an update to a device will trigger the need to re-certify the device with federal regulators. For all these cases, it is prudent to have a segmentation strategy to isolate outdated and at-risk devices from other parts of your environment, which could get be easily accomplished with Ordr’s behavioral baselining and automated Zero Trust policies.
  1. Unpatched Devices Vulnerable to Exploitation
    This is the most important reason one should embark on an asset management strategy to get an accurate view of all connected devices and their associated details. An asset management strategy must include identifying operating system (OS) versions and patch levels for each connected device. This makes it easy to highlight the exact CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) that are still open and vulnerable that a potential hacker could exploit. Having this list as a work item and tracking how the patching for these devices is progressing is one of the most foundational aspects of cyber security an organization can initiate.

Asset Management Aligned to Risk Reduction

An incomplete and inaccurate asset inventory poses many risks. The risks can extend from non-compliance to safety and regulatory concerns. On top of that, add the problems of security breaches, which can cause high financial and reputation costs to organizations.

Understanding your attack surface by implementing a robust asset management strategy that identifies and closely tracks vulnerabilities and threats from the entire asset universe of IT, OT, IoT, ICS, BMS, and IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) will minimize the risk imposed on an organization. We are proud to offer the Service Graph Connector for Ordr to help customers achieve the comprehensive and accurate asset inventory they need to simplify workflows, improve security, and accelerate incident response.

When the Biden-Harris Administration issued its National Cybersecurity Strategy on March 2, I was thrilled to see the high profile focus on this topic. Social media was quickly buzzing as bloggers, influencers, and just about everyone with an opinion to share were in a rush to be first out of the gate with their hot takes. There was a lot of energy surrounding the announcement, and that’s a good thing. The cybersecurity community benefits from the attention when the White House lays out a vision for cyberdefense that highlights many of the issues that have plagued industry for years.

From within the team here at Ordr there is consensus that one of the biggest takeaways from the document is the “we’re in this together” message that pervaded the memo accompanying the strategy. Although that has been true for nearly fifty years—since the advent of the first computer virus in the early 1970s–cooperation among private enterprises and government has not been the way the industry has operated.

That has to change if we are to make meaningful progress toward a stouter national cybersecurity posture. As the president said, “to be able to trust that the underlying digital ecosystem is safe, reliable, and secure” requires “robust collaboration, particularly between the public and private sectors.” That means going beyond merely trying to protect individual enterprises, but striving for greater cooperation in areas like sharing threat intelligence, greater interoperability of tools and platforms, and building technology products with a security-first philosophy.

A Cohesive Vision

After reading through the National Cybersecurity Strategy, it struck me that at its core the strategy is about accountability. The emphasis of its content was on consolidating a number of policies that have been announced previously, and expressing them in a single, cohesive document that lets everyone affected by these policies know what is expected of them. Accountability and simplicity are important for public and private organizations that need to draft their own cybersecurity strategies; and it is important for technology innovators and service providers who must develop the tools we will rely on to meet the goals of this ambitious strategy, namely increased security and resilience for, and trust in, the infrastructure of our digital economy.

Complementing the National Cybersecurity Strategy, the White House also released a Fact Sheet to summarize and reiterate the Strategy’s goals, describing five pillars on which the plan will be built, including:

  • Defend Critical Infrastructure
  • Disrupt and Dismantle Threat Actors
  • Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience
  • Invest in a Resilient Future
  • Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals

To achieve these ambitious goals demands an acknowledgment that business-as-usual cannot continue, and that cybersecurity must be elevated as a priority for all organizations from small companies to large enterprises. This requires making greater investments in effective security programs and calls for a seat at the table for CIOs and CISOs to advocate for such programs at the board level. Some key points from the Fact Sheet that stand out as vital to doing this are:

  • “[Expand] the use of minimum cybersecurity requirements in critical sectors.”
  • “[Enable] public-private collaboration at the speed and scale necessary to defend critical infrastructure and essential services.”
  • “[Address] the ransomware threat through a comprehensive Federal approach and in lockstep with our international partners.”
  • “Place responsibility on those within our digital ecosystem that are best positioned to reduce risk.”
  • “[Reduce] systemic technical vulnerabilities in the foundation of the Internet and across the digital ecosystem.”
  • “[Prioritize] cybersecurity R&D for next-generation technologies;” and,
  • “[Develop] a diverse and robust national cyber workforce.”

A Plan for Today and Tomorrow

The Cybersecurity memo demonstrates a vision that takes into account both current needs  and reliance on connected devices comprising the Internet of Things (IoT)–an issue near and dear to our hearts here at Ordr. In Strategic Objective 3.2: Drive the Development of Secure IoT Devices, the National Cybersecurity Strategy accurately observes that “many of the IoT devices deployed today are not sufficiently protected against cybersecurity threats. Too often they have been deployed with inadequate default settings, can be difficult or impossible to patch or upgrade, or come equipped with advanced—and sometimes unnecessary—capabilities that enable malicious cyber activities on critical physical and digital systems.”

No Time to Waste

Establishing regulations that address the weaknesses of IoT devices are necessary, but they will take years to draft, enact, and enforce. In the meantime, there are tens of billions of connected devices in operation today, many of which fit the description defined by the White House. These risks need to be addressed today whether or not there is a law compelling compliance.

“We must ensure the Internet remains open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure—anchored in universal values that respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

Fortunately, the methodologies and applications to close the IoT security gap are available now, and embodied in the Ordr platform and our See, Know, Secure approach to connected device security. Ordr’s platform has been built to discover every connected device operating in a network while profiling and monitoring each device for known risks and risky behavior. Then, taking that information and automating the segmentation and policy enforcement necessary to prevent threats targeting IoT and stop active threats from moving laterally within an environment. This philosophy is one the federal government already acknowledges as effective, and was mandated for all executive branch agencies by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in its recent Binding Operational Directive 23-01 (BOD 23-01), issued last October and going into effect next month.

As we have with previous policy announcements such as Strengthening America’s Cybersecurity, the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act, the PATCH Act, and Zero-Trust initiatives, Ordr supports–in word and action–the White House’s efforts to advance the protection of cybersecurity. We agree wholeheartedly with President Biden when he said, “We must ensure the Internet remains open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure—anchored in universal values that respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. Digital connectivity should be a tool that uplifts and empowers people everywhere, not one used for repression and coercion.”