Addressing Web-Based Access and Authentication Challenges

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Many incidents occur through access control and authentication vulnerabilities. Just consider the recently reported Fruit of a Loom incident that allowed easy access to 1,006 names and Social Security numbers of former employees. It is likely poorly constructed and inadequately tested applications controls resulted in this breach, not unlike so many other breaches that have occurred.

Significant security vulnerabilities can exist if Web applications do not implement authentication mechanisms appropriately. The U.S. government saw these risks and reacted to protect consumer PII by recently requiring banks to implement multi-factor authentication on their Web sites. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) considers single-factor authentication as inadequate for transactions involving PII, and on October 12, 2005, issued updated guidance requiring financial institutions engaging in any form of Internet banking to use effective methods to authenticate the identity of customers using those products and services.

I just posted a new paper, "Addressing Web-Based Access and Authentication Challenges" to this site that focuses on these two important aspects of applications and systems security: authentication and access controls. Business leaders must ensure authentication and access controls are implemented effectively, based upon risk and legal requirements, to help protect the business as well as PII.

Please let me know your feedback. What other issues related to access controls and authentication worry you, or do you have plans to address?

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Rebecca Herold's Bio:

Rebecca Herold,CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, has been providing information security, privacy and regulatory assistance and services to organizations from a wide range of industries for over 18 years. Rebecca was instrumental in building the information security and privacy program while at Principal Financial Group, which was awarded the CSI Information Security Program of the Year Award in 1998. IT Security ranked Rebecca as one of the top 59 IT security influencers, and Computerworld put Rebecca their list of the 25 top privacy experts and on their list of the 9 best privacy consulting firms. Rebecca has been CPO for two consulting organizations, and has had her own information privacy, security and compliance business since 2004. Rebecca has written chapters for several books, dozens of articles, and has been writing a monthly privacy column for the CSI Alert newsletter since the beginning of 2001, and is working on her 11th book. Some of her other books include The Privacy Papers, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program, The Definitive Guide to Security Inside the Perimeter (Realtime Publishers), The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL (Realtime Publishers), and The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance. In addition, Rebecca is the leader of The Realtime IT Compliance Community where she posts to her IT Compliance weblog. You can contact Rebecca at: rebecca_herold@realtimepublishers.net.

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