Securing data and maintaining compliance in ServiceNow

By Neeraj Nayak, Senior Manager, CipherCloud

2019 was one of the worst and shocking years in cybersecurity. Worst because of the scale of data exposure - 5183 breaches, exposing 7.9 billion records in just the first nine months of 2019 [1]. Shocking because of the post-mortem reports - most of the breaches were the result of security oversight and loose controls, something which could have been easily avoided by following basic security practices. For example, you might have invested heavily in securing your assets in the cloud, but how do you prevent human error, which according to Gartner, may become the cause for 99% of cloud security failures by 2025 [2]?

Take the example of ServiceNow - the leading IT Service Management (ITSM) application. To help organizations manage their IT workflows and streamline service delivery, ServiceNow hosts a large amount of enterprise data in the cloud and takes great measures to protect the data within the service. But how do you prevent insider threats and bad actors from accessing and misusing the data in ServiceNow? How do you protect the data once it leaves ServiceNow environment and gets shared offline? Are you aware of who is accessing which data in your ServiceNow cloud at any point in time?

In the world of data breaches, ITSM data may rank among one of the most frequently targeted. Most of the cybersecurity failures happen in the world's top tech companies. Yahoo, Uber, eBay, Twitter - every fort has been breached. When sensitive data leaves a business and enters the cloud, the risk for mistakes and breaches amplifies. Companies today must adopt advanced next-generation cloud security solutions to prevent and mitigate security threats in their IT environment, protect the privacy of their data and comply with a growing number of global regulations.

So what is the solution? Cloud Access Security Broker!

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) are designed to protect your data in ServiceNow and other SaaS/IaaS applications and expand their use for business processes that handle private, sensitive, or regulated data. CASB enables deep visibility, end-to-end data protection, advanced threat protection, and comprehensive compliance capabilities to support cloud users, ensuring confidential and sensitive data is protected across all locations - in the cloud and on users' devices.

How CASB secures data and helps organizations maintain compliance in SaaS applications such as ServiceNow cloud:

● Deep visibility and control over the sensitive information users are uploading, downloading and sharing, especially with personal devices and from risky locations. This allows organizations to identify confidential and sensitive information related to PII, PHI, PCI, HIPAA and many more and enforce remediations to preserve data integrity and compliance.

● Real-time content identification through advanced DLPs. During policy violations, DLPs will enforce actions to include alerts, restricted sharing, or automatic encryption of sensitive files.

● Automatic detection of anomalous user behavior through User & Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), and context-based data access through Adaptive Access Controls. The context may include user group, time, location, and more that might suggest the theft, compromise of authentication credentials, or a sophisticated cyberattack.

● Secure offline data sharing and access through native digital rights management. During violations, administrators have the ability to retract access to the data, even if it was downloaded and copied to another device.

● Advanced data protection schemes that encrypt sensitive data and convert it into unreadable text before it is delivered to ServiceNow cloud so that in the event that the data is compromised, it is unusable and may not be considered a breach.

Watch this webinar for useful insights on how organizations can secure their ServiceNow cloud with a data-centric approach, while preserving user features and automated IT processes, along with enabling continuous assessment, detection and mitigation of user risks in ServiceNow using Adaptive Access Controls and UEBA.

References:

1. https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/91267-9-billion-records-exposed-so-far-in-2019
2. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/is-the-cloud-secure/