Blog by John Tolbert

Blog
High Assurance MFA Options for Mobile Devices
by John Tolbert
In recent years much of the focus in the authentication space has been on MFA, mobile devices, and biometrics. Many technical advances have been made which also serve to increase usability and improve consumer experiences. There are a few reasons for this. MFA Multi-factor authentication is the number 1 method to reduce ATO (account takeover) fraud and prevent data breaches. We all know password authentication is weak and the easiest way in for malicious actors. MFA has been mandated by security policy in many organizations and government agencies for years. MFA is now also required...
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Applying the Information Protection Life Cycle and Framework to CCPA
by John Tolbert
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) became effective on January 1, 2020. Enforcement is slated to start by July 1, 2020. CCPA is complex regulation which does bear some similarities with EU GDPR. For more information on how CCPA and GDPR compare, see our webinar . Both regulations deal with how organizations handle PII (Personally Identifiable Information). CCPA intends to empower consumers to give them a choice to disallow onward sales of their PII by organizations that hold that information.  A full discussion of what CCPA entails is out of scope. In this article, I want to...
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More SEs + TEEs in Products = Improved Security
by John Tolbert
Global Platform announced in 4Q2019 that more than 1 billion TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) compliant devices shipped in 2018, and that is a 50% increase from the previous year. Moreover, 6.2 billion SEs (Secure Elements) were shipped in 2018, bringing the total number of SEs manufactured to over 35 billion since 2010. This is good news for cybersecurity and identity management. TEEs are commonly found in most Android-based smartphones and tablets. A TEE is the secure area in the processor architecture and OS that isolates programs from the Rich Execution Environment (REE)...
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The 20-Year Anniversary of Y2K
by John Tolbert
The great non-event of Y2K happened twenty years ago. Those of us in IT at that time weren’t partying like it was 1999, we were standing by making sure the systems we were responsible for could handle the date change. Fortunately, the hard work of many paid off and the entry into the 21 st century was smooth. Many things have changed in IT over the last 20 years, but many things are pretty similar. What has changed? Pagers disappeared (that’s a good thing) Cell phones became smartphones IoT devices began to proliferate The cloud appeared and became a...
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The Information Protection Life Cycle and Framework
by John Tolbert
The Information Protection Life Cycle (IPLC) and Framework describes the phases, methods, and controls associated with the protection of information. Though other IT and cybersecurity frameworks exist, none specifically focus on the protection of information across its use life. The IPLC documents 3 stages in the life of information and 6 categories of controls which can be applied as controls to secure information. Stages in the life of information Information is created, used, and (sometimes) disposed of when it is no longer needed or valid. Information can be actively...
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Need for Standards for Consumable Risk Engine Inputs
by John Tolbert
As cybercrime and concerns about cybercrime grow, tools for preventing and interdicting cybercrime, specifically for reducing online fraud, are proliferating in the marketplace. Many of these new tools bring real value, in that they do in fact make it harder for criminals to operate, and such tools do reduce fraud. Several categories of tools and services compose this security ecosystem. On the supply side there are various intelligence services. The forms of intelligence provided may include information about: Users: Users and associated credentials, credential and identity...
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EU EBA Clarifies SCA and Implementation Exceptions
by John Tolbert
The EU European Banking Authority issued clarifications about what constitutes Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) back in late June. The definition states that two or more of the following categories are required: inherence, knowledge, and possession. These are often interpreted as something you are, something you know, and something you have, respectively. We have compiled and edited the following table from the official EBA opinion :  Inherence elements Compliant with SCA?  Fingerprint scanning Yes  Voice recognition Yes...
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Account Takeovers on the Rise
by John Tolbert
Account Takeover (ATO) attacks are on the rise. The  2019  Forter  Fraud Attack Index  shows a 45% increase in this type of attack on consumer identities in 2018. ATOs are just what they sound like: cybercriminals gain access to accounts through various illegal means and use these take over accounts to perpetrate fraud. How do they get access to accounts? There are many technical methods that bad actors can use, such as consumers responding to phishing emails; grafting through fake websites; collection of credentials from keyloggers, rootkits, or...
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How to Train Your AI to Mis-Identify Dragons
by John Tolbert
This week Skylight Cyber disclosed that they were able to fool a popular “AI”-based Endpoint Protection (EPP) solution into incorrectly marking malware as safe. While trying to reverse-engineer the details of the solution's Machine Learning (ML) engine, the researchers found that it contained a secondary ML model added specifically to whitelist certain types of software like popular games. Supposedly, it was added to reduce the number of false positives their "main engine" was producing. By dumping all strings contained in such a whitelisted application and simply appending...
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Will the Stars Align for Libra?
by John Tolbert
This week, Facebook announced details about its cryptocurrency project, Libra. They expect it to go live for Facebook and other social media platform users sometime in 2020. The list of initial backers, the Founding Members of the Libra Association, is quite long and filled with industry heavyweights such as Coinbase, eBay, Mastercard, PayPal, and Visa. Other tech companies including Lyft, Spotify, and Uber are Founding Members, as well as Andreesen Horowitz and Thrive Capital.   Designed to be a peer-to-peer payment system, Libra will be backed by a sizable reserve and pegged to...
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