Covisint Details APT Strategy for Safely Engaging Digitally With External Stakeholders

October 13, 2011

Covisint's Chief Security Officer, Dave Miller, instructed organizations on ways to protect against APTs, otherwise known as "advanced persistent threats." Miller contributed to a panel discussion at SecureWorld Expo in Detroit, discussing the current APT "threatscape" and noting the proactive measures companies should take to mitigate, deter and prevent these elusive and ever-changing menaces.

Miller specifically discussed four areas: 1) key steps to prevent identity breaches from occurring; 2) APT evolution; 3) the difficulty of investigating different types of APTs; and 4) the sharing of key APT indicators. Miller also stated that the "bad guys often compromise the 'weakest cyber link'" by discreetly attacking low-value access points first, which then are leveraged to gain access to higher level and more impactful information--the IT-security equivalent, he noted, of leaving the keys under the corporate mat.

Several APTs have wrought corporate and often very public damage in recent years, including the Night Dragon style attacks, the attack against RSA and other ominous threats. Although there are multiple APT definitions, typically these tend to be:

"Companies that collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries--and today, that's virtually all organizations--are prime candidates for an APT threat," Miller said. "Enterprises need to separate or 'decouple' the identities from the information, and Covisint does this worldwide by segregating the management of external IDs from internal IDs through our secure portal infrastructure."