Ways To Protect Your Digital Properties…

With the increase in the percentage of the population using the Internet, cybersecurity risks are also increasing day-by-day. You can lose your sensitive data or access to your financial accounts or anything/everything important online. You might end up under arrest if someone commits suicide using your identity.

What things can be done to head off these alarming possibilities? Here are some of the tips that can help you stay safe and protected against these online thieves or cybersecurity threats. None of these tips will guarantee your online safety who has targeted you personally but help you to make sure you and your digital properties are not easy pickings.

1. Look for ‘s’ in ‘https’ in any e-commerce address: 

When you are interacting with an e-commerce website, always pay attention to the URL address which should include ‘s’ after ‘HTTP.’ This extra character ‘s’ is very important as it indicates that the website you are interacting with is secured. It means there is a secured connection between the Web server and Web browser. It helps to protect & save sensitive data of the user that is sent across when a connection is established by encrypting the data in transit.

 

2. Use strong passwords:

The most important way to stay protected online is to pay attention to make your passwords strong. Never use a number or word that someone can relate with you like: your first name, middle name or last name, or your DOB. Always make a good practice to have a combination of letters, numbers, and other special characters. Additionally, never share your passwords with anyone. Make it a habit of changing your passwords many times a year.

 

3. Avoid phishing scams:

Scammers use emails or text messages to trap you into giving them your personal or sensitive information. They may try to steal your online credentials, account numbers, or your social security numbers so that they can get access to your emails, bank account, or any other account. To stay safe from such scams, never open an email or attachments if you think the sender is unknown, and do not click on unsecured links from strange emails.

 

4. Work with a trusted IT Advisor:

A reliable and trusted IT advisor can help your business deploy such online scams promptly, avoiding downtime before it affects you and your organization. Having the best IT security solutions beforehand is always advisory to stay safe and protected online from such cyber scams.

 

5. Be careful with your private information:

Be careful while sharing your private information or sensitive data like your financial information online. Legitimate websites and apps never ask for such sort of information, but on the other hand, hackers always look for such data via email or phone.

 

6. Backup your data regularly:

Whether it’s an accidental data leak or hacking of data purposefully, there is usually one layer of defense that can always save the day – is a regular, encrypted, and automatic data backup that helps in quick data recovery. This can be particularly important when a virus like ransomware attacks and attempts to lock important data down.

 

7. Do not click on any pop-up ads:

Beware of irritating popup ads with headlines that look too good to be true. One click on such popup ads can make you enter a world full of trouble and redirecting an unsuspecting user to an illicit external site that can make your devices like: your laptop, desktop or mobile devices full of malware or other viruses.

Follow these simple tips and you will have a very good chance to stay safe and protected from digital hacks.

 

JNR Management Resources Pvt. Ltd. has been a foremost player in the PKI industry for decades, catering to cutting-edge IT security solutions to safeguard government, enterprises, and other financial organizations. Moreover, our platinum partnership with DigiCert (formerly Symantec) and other renowned OEMs has further inspired us to do more in the industry, which has given new heights to our transcendence. We enjoy the honor of being acknowledged as a “Platinum Elite” certified partner of DigiCert in India & South East Asia.

Need For Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM)

 Certificate Lifecycle Management describes a complete system to manage all Digital Certificates throughout the complete lifecycle, right from acquisition till the expiration.

Without any doubt, Certificate lifecycle management is a critical part of any organization’s digital defences: expired certificates or weakly hashed certificates are always an invitation to online hackers, on the other hand, the absence of an SSL lock or SSL certificate on your website will promptly lead to browser warning and to users as well.

Certificate Lifecycle Includes the Following Processes:

• Generation of keys – both public and private keys and CSR (Certificate Signing Request) using an up-to-date encryption algorithm.
• Enrollment
• Certificate installation
• Certificate renewal
• Certificate revocation

 

Stages Of Certificate Lifecycle Management:

Certificate lifecycle management is a kind of discipline that has its own set of protocols and mainly focused on 3 things- discovery, management, and monitoring of Digital certificates. Once the digital certificates have been issued, they need to be managed through their entire validity period.

Let’s discuss the seven stages of certificate lifecycle management:

• Certificate Enrollment:

The first stage in certificate lifecycle management is Certificate Enrollment. A user or organization submits a certificate enrollment request to CA (Certificate Authority) which is a trusty third party entity, responsible for issuing and managing security certificates and public keys. After a complete verification of the information provided by the requestor, the CA issues the certificate. This certificate is entitled to be used for a specific purpose.

 

• Certificate Distribution:

In this stage of certificate lifecycle management, CA distributes the certificate to the user or organization who so ever is the requestor. As it requires management intervention from the CA, this process is considered totally different. In this process, CA sets the policies and shares them with the requestor that might affect the use of the certificate.

 

• Certificate Validation:

After the certificate has been issued, it is then sent for its validity. The serial number of the certificate is matched against the CRL (Certificate Revocation List) to confirm the operational validity of that certificate.

 

• Certificate Revocation:

A certificate can be revoked before its expiry. In order to revoke a certificate, CA is instructed to add the serial number of the certificate to its published CRL with the reason for certificate revocation.

 

• Certificate Renewal:

Every certificate has an expiration date. If a certificate reaches its expiry date, it becomes eligible for renewal. For this, a request for renewal can be made to CA for its renewal. The requestor can either use existing keys or can generate new public or private keys. It is always advisable to use a new set of public and private keys especially when it comes to SSL/TLS certificates.

 

• Certificate Destruction:

Once the certificate gets expired or no longer in use, it is necessary to destroy it. The certificate along with its shared copies including private keys need to be destroyed. This helps prevent online malicious activity.

 

• Certificate Auditing:

This stage includes auditing and requires tracking all functions and roles that CA performs, including creation, issuance, expiration, and revocation of the certificate.

 

Importance Of Certificate Lifecycle Management:

With the increase in cybersecurity attacks and security issues, it becomes even more important to have digital security certificates and to have the tools to track & manage your digital certificates effectively and easily. It is a must for all businesses to manage digital certificates across all networks to ensure protection and the prevention of failure. Adopting a lifecycle management system ensures a consistent approach, helps to meet all compliance requirements, and increased efficiency using automation.

Because the certificates have a finite lifespan, they need to be replaced or renewed at the time of their expiry in order to avoid service disruption. If a certificate expires, the vulnerability can be exploited and allow the hackers to gain access to the sensitive information available online. This will not only affect the day-to-day business and brand reputation of an organization but also result in a lack of confidence and trust from the users/customer’s side.

Conclusion:

In the absence of Certificate Lifecycle Management, certificates can be lost in the system, expire, and cause unforeseen disruption. Since these certificates are based on network security and play an important role in internal level trust, why should not we manage them effectively?

With the help of certificate lifecycle management, administrators can monitor their systems & digital certificates continuously with the ability to keep a track of top expirations and renewals to avoid any disruption in services.

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SSL PINNING : A COMPLETE GUIDE!

 

SSL certificate pinning is an optional mechanism that is used to provide extra security to the server or websites that already relies on SSL Certificates. Pinning allows you to specify a cryptographic identity that must be accepted by the users visiting the website. Instead of allowing any trusted certificate to e used, the operator ‘pin’ the certificate authority issuer, public keys, or even end-entity certificates of their choice. As a result, users connecting to that server will treat all the other certificates as invalid and refuse to make an HTTPS connection. SSL pinning identifies a specific identity and tells the clients that they should accept the same when making a secured connection.

 

In SSL pinning, browsers trust your website only if it:

• Uses an SSL/TLS certificate that is issued by a particular certificate authority (CA).
• Has a specific cryptographic public key, commonly known as HTTP public key pinning (HPKP).
• Has a particular intermediate certificate.

Benefits of SSL Pinning:

• Helps in making the connection more secured.
• Better protection against a compromised CA
• Stronger protection against CA mistakes
• Complete protection against any malicious certificates added by users.

 

Is SSL Certificate Pinning Necessary?

Although browsers or CAs now do not recommend SSL certificate pinning it is used to be considered a good idea. The reason being there are three main threats related to SSL/TLS certificate that SSL pinning tries to address:

1. SSL Stripping:

SSL stripping is a man-in-the-middle attack technique where an attacker sits between a user and the website and uses an SSL strip tool to force the browser to load the website via the insecure connection i.e. via HTTP protocol. It means, every time the browser tries to connect to a website, the attacker downgrades the connection and establishes an insecure connection between the browser and themselves.

The connection between the website visitor and the hacker is HTTP but the connection between the hacker and the website’s server is HTTPS. It means the attacker can steal all user’s sensitive data as it remains in plaintext format in the HTTP channel. On the server end, it is showing an HTTPS connection and the server is unable to realize what exactly is happening.

In SSL stripping, if the SSL certificate is pinned and the browser cannot find the pinned SSL attributes in the website’s header, the browser gets alerted. The browser will not be establishing a secured HTTPS connection with predefined attributes and will show an error page that visitors of that website cannot bypass.

 

 2. Certificate Authority Compromise:

If the CAs’ server hacked or their private keys are compromised, attackers can issue an SSL certificate for any domain by attaching their own server’s public key & private key. This is a rare issue but if such things happen and you have pinned your certificate authority or public key, then the browser will not trust any certificate that:

• Is issued by any other certificate authority.
• Contains a different public key.

3. Certificate Mis-issuance:

If cybercriminals appeal to themselves as legit domain owners and convince a CA to match the wrong public key set in a domain name’s an SSL certificate, then all the customer’s original data will be transferred from the customer’s server to the hacker’s server. In the same way, if there is any bug in the CA’s system, certificate mis-issuance might take place.

In such cases, if you pinned your SSL certificate, CA would not trust any other public-key offered by cybercriminals.

 

Conclusion:

SSL certificate pinning surely has some benefits, but its configuration is a little complicated and there is a lack of flexibility even if you have a valid reason to change the pinned criteria. Basically if,

• Your private key is compromised.
• Need of changing the CA or the certificate.
• The certificate gets revoked.
• Wrong keys are pinned by attackers.

 

Implementing SSL certificate pinning on intranet websites is a wiser decision than public-facing websites.

Multi-Factor Authentication Solution : A Complete Understanding | PKI Blog

 

 

MFA or Multi-Factor Authentication was designed and developed to add more security checks to the login process. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions help to improve the security of the business by adding multiple authentication measures. Before getting access to something, the user is required to submit additional information to verify their identities such as a text message, or OTP (One Time Password), or your biometrics like a fingerprint before the user can access the account that may have sensitive or important information or controls. By adding multiple authentication measures, you can better prove that someone is whom they say they really are. On the other hand, it is a way harder for someone else to get access to your accounts or sensitive data.

 

Multi-factor Authentication Solutions Helps to Protect Your Account With:

1. Something you know: like a ‘password.’
2. Something you have: like a ‘phone’ or ‘security key’ you have.
3. Something you are: like ‘biometrics.’

If your password is stolen, scammers will be requiring these factors to access your account.

 

Is two-factor authentication the same as multi-factor authentication?

A two-factor authentication solution is a form of multi-factor authentication. However, 2FA is not same as MFA. 2 factor authentication solutions require only two authentication measures: your password and a code generated by an app or your smartphone, or a fingerprint.

Multi-factor authentication solutions on the other hand goes beyond two authentication measures and include three or more such as password, push notification, fingerprint, or contextual factors. The best multi-factor authentication solutions include a combination of biometrics and contextual factors. True Multi-factor authentication solutions are the strongest options because the ability to add more authentication measures is a result of proving someone’s identity and significantly reducing the risk of successful attacks.

 

Various Significant Benefits of Using Multi-Factor Authentication Solutions:

1. Improve Security:

The primary benefit of adding a multi-factor authentication solution is that it provides additional security by adding multiple layers of security and protect sensitive data from being hacked.

 

2. Improved Reliability:

Multi-factor authentication solution is a cost-effective way of solution for businesses to improve the reliability of the fraud prevention efforts and add another layer to the access process making it difficult for hackers or scammers to get access to the business or users’ sensitive data.

 

3. Assures customer Identity:

By implementing multiple authentication measures, the security of the username and the password is enhanced by adding more layers to the protection process. Now, the criminals have a hard time successfully access the account as it is either protected with SMS or through an automated phone call or with the fingerprint of the true owner (possession).

 

4. Increase Flexibility & Productivity:

Multi-factor authentication solutions allow users to add multiple layers of protection and replacing the burden of passwords with alternatives that have the potential to add productivity and bring a better usability experience due to the increased flexibility.

 

5. Effective Cybersecurity Solutions:

2 factor authentication or MFA is an effective cybersecurity solution. By implementing strict security measures, users make the task of hackers or scammers difficult by using complex passwords.

 

JNR Management Resources Pvt. Ltd. has been a foremost player in the PKI industry for decades, catering to cutting-edge IT security solutions to safeguard government, enterprises, and other financial organizations. Moreover, our platinum partnership with DigiCert (formerly Symantec) and other renowned OEMs has further inspired us to do more in the industry, which has given new heights to our transcendence. We enjoy the honor of being acknowledged as a “Platinum Elite” certified partner of DigiCert in India & South East Asia. Our IT Security solutions include SSL certificate, HSM (Hardware Security Solutions), MFA (Multi-factor authentication solutions), email security solutions, and much more.

Know How To Send & Receive Encrypted Emails : Email Encryption | PKI Blog

When emails were invented by Ray Tomilson in the 1970s it was not designed keeping security or privacy in mind. Of course, email security has advanced since the 1970s, but it is not a secure method of communication. When you write an email, it is more like a postal letter. You write an email, mentioned address on which is to be delivered but you are relying on other people in between to deliver the letter for you, hoping that the letter or email lands with the right person and nobody reads it along the way. Means the communication happen in the form of encrypted emails.

But unfortunately, you cannot be certain, yet businesses of all sizes are using email to communicate very sensitive information related to business over email. However, there is a way to secure your information, it is called email encryption which basically means that your email data is encrypted into an unreadable format using one of various encryption mechanism which is quite advanced now, at source and decrypted at receiver’s end and is also encrypted throughout its course.

Emails are essentially the most vulnerable source for information leaks and distortion, and it is our responsibility to keep our information safe. Imagine, sending an unencrypted email to someone and in transit, an attacker captures those packets of data to extract sensitive information and use it against you and your company. To safeguard ourselves from such threats we need to ensure that all our teammates are aware of the threats and companies make necessary investments in email encryption mechanisms.

 

End to end Email Encryption:

End-to-end email encryption, also known as public encryption, ensures that email messages are encrypted on the sender’s device and decrypted on the receiver’s device only. Servers in between cannot read the messages/communication.

Both parties send signed test emails to each other in order to exchange their public key. Public key is now deposited in each other repository.

Now, sender and receiver will use each other’s public key for encryption and both will use their own private key to decrypt the messages.

 

 

In end-to-end email encryption, encryption is performed by using the public keys and private keys. The sender uses the public key of the receiver to encrypt the message and on the other hand, the receiver decrypts the message by using a private key that is stored on their device.

 

End to end Email Encryption is important because:

• Privacy:

  Every company or government organization wants to keep their information or data private and utilizing encryption completely secures the data and keeps it private from unauthorized access.

 

• Cost-effective:

  A cost that incurs in the process completely depends on how your email encryption service is set up. If companies use an email service with encryption integrated directly into the server, they need not purchase any other server for encryption purposes and thus saves cost.

 

• Efficiency:

  Email encryption does not require a multi-step process. Users can type the emails and send them quickly and more securely.

 

• Authentication:

  Spamming of emails is alive but using end-to-end encryption can help users identify an authentic sender. Utilizing encryption with digital signing ensures that the sender is authentic, and the message is untampered. This method prevents spoofed emails.

 

• Secure Communication:

  It does not allow any third party to read the message. Communication happened only between the sender and receiver.

 

Initial Setup for Encrypting Emails with S/MIME:

In order to set up email encryption with S/MIME, individual should look for the following points:

• Get an email encryption certificate, import it into outlook, and finally share it with the intended recipients.
• Verify that each intended recipient has purchased an email encryption certificate and installed it into outlook or on another alternative S/MIME compatible email platform. This email encryption certificate should be shared with the sender.
• Gain a clear understanding of the required steps to send an encrypted email.

 

End to End encryption for email or for any other communication over the internet is essential and they are vulnerable particularly phishing attacks, intermediary attacks, and so on.

JNR Management offers the best in industry consultation to get you the best email encryption certificate and helps in establishing an encrypted email system to secure all the communication happens inside the organization and the data/information.

What Is End-To-End Encryption? JNR Management | PKI Blog

End-to-end encryption is a system that protects the data/message and all your files in the form of videos, photos, online conversations, etc. by making them unreadable by the unauthorized person who is not the recipient. The message travels in an encrypted form from sender to receiver. Both the service provider and the person with access are not able to decode the conversation or the documents that are exchanged. In this manner, end-to-end encryption guarantees you maximum security.

All communication systems cannot guarantee communication protection between the sender and receiver as they do not use end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption is considered the safest as it reduces the number of participants in the process of encryption who can decode or change communication.

 

How End To End Encryption Works?

End-to-end encryption facilitates communication that is totally in encrypted form and only the sender & receiver can see or read the message. No one in the middle can see or encrypt the message being sent from one device to another device.

The messages you send or the communication that happens are decrypted at the endpoint – the device you are sending messages to. The server you are sending the data through will not be able to decrypt or view the message. In other words, end-to-end encryption uses the server only for transmitting the data through the two devices, it does not allow the server to decrypt the data. Therefore, the server is just a medium to transfer the data of encrypted information.

 

Why Is End-to-end Encryption Important?

• It is a security measure that is built into your devices. So, you do not need to think about data security. Your data is protected, and no one is going to encrypt the data.
• It provides a high level of private communication between the sender and the receiver.
• It can help to assure privacy between two endpoints in a given system.
• It reduces the number of participants in the process of encryption who can decode or change communication.
• No one can read or see your messages. You have full control over who is authorized to read your messages or information.

 

Conclusion:

End-to-end encryption, nowadays, is a very important and most effective solution to protect the data.

Security professionals and privacy experts highly support the idea of end-to-end encryption as it better protects your data from unauthorized access or hackers and other parties who may want to steal your information. It protects the data and information of millions of people and assures the privacy of their information. For this reason, experts are advocating the use of end-to-end encryption in messaging apps. 

What Happens When Your SSL Certificate Expires? - JNR | PKI Blog

 SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer which acts as a channel between Server and Browser and encrypts the transmission of data between the two. A valid SSL certificate is the first line of defense for your website. It acts as a medium that authenticates the website, a user is viewing, is legitimate and is not fake.

HTTPS is changed to HTTP which is not a secured channel. Intangible benefits of having SSL like user’s trust are also lost when the SSL certificate expires.

Consequences of Expired SSL:

Unlike the other online security services which get renewed automatically until specifically canceled, SSL Certificates have a specific expiry date and do not get renewed automatically.

This means the SSL Certificate must be replaced every 1 year.

When you visit any website, the browser checks for the authenticity of the SSL Certificate and verifies the same. 

Once an SSL certificate gets expired, there is several consequences for both website owner and website user.

Website owner:

• As the site becomes unsecure, it reduces the trust between the website and its user.
• Decrease in sales & revenue.
• Bad reputation in the market seriously mars the “Brand” besides the business at risk.

Website user:

• Warning error messages showed by a browser on visiting the website.
• Personal information becomes unsecured and risks of man-in-middle (MITM) attacks increase.
• Increase in the chances of fraud and identity theft.

 

Apart from this, there can be several other consequences also which might include:

• A drop in website traffic:

Users who encounter notifications such as ‘this site’s security certificate has expired’ may find the resource is unsecure and therefore will not interact with the website or share their personal or sensitive information to that website.

• A drop in sales:

Because the site displays security warnings users may find the resource unsecured and will not make any purchases even though they have purchased previously from the same website.

• A drop-in site ranking:

if your SSL Certificate gets expired or your website is not secured, the ranking of your site will gradually fall in the search results. The reason being, the search bots take into consideration many factors such as visitor behavior, website traffic, etc.

Take a step forward towards a secured and stable future altogether.

 

Google SSL Certificate Requirements: How It Will Affect Your Website?

If you do not have an SSL Certificate, Google will flag your website. Today online security has become a necessity as we turn to the internet for everything.

Undoubtedly, Google is coming up with all possible ways to make us feel secure on the internet. Therefore, Google has made it mandatory to have an SSL certificate with all websites to enhance the online security and user’s experience as a whole.

How to keep track of your SSL certificate expiration date?

Now the question arises, how can you avoid waking up the next morning and see your website showing SSL Security Warning on your website?

• You can check its expiration date directly from your browser. All you must do is simply click the padlock next to the URL, go to the certificate and check its expiration date in the General Tab.
• Also, you can set a reminder about the SSL certificate renewal or ask your CA (Certificate Authority) to send an SSL Certificate renewal reminder via email server notifications in advance.
• Another way to find the date of your SSL Certificate expiration is by log into your SSL Account and simply check the ‘Next Due Date’.

SSL certificate lifecycle includes the following processes:

• Generation of keys – both public and private keys and CSR (Certificate Signing Request) using up to date encryption algorithm.
• Enrollment
• Certificate installation
• Certificate renewal
• Certificate revocation

 

In the absence of Certificate Lifecycle Management, certificates can lost in system, expire and cause unforeseen disruption. Since these certificates are base for network security and play an important role in internal level trust, why should not we manage them effectively?

With the help of certificate lifecycle management, administrators can monitor their systems & digital certificates continuously with the ability to keep a track of top expirations and renewals in order to avoid any disruption in services.

With so many reminders, there are no excuses left to miss the expiry date and compromise with your website’s security and user experiences.

 

Protect your website and visitors:

Today, the websites become prime targets of cyberattacks. Therefore, it is important to ensure website security without any delay or gap in between to eliminate risk and chances of data lost, whilst encouraging website visitors to react appropriately to potential vulnerabilities and continue to build their trust & brand of the business.

If you allow your SSL Certificate to expire, it becomes invalid, and your website will no longer be able to have secured connection/transactions between the website and the users. The CA (Certificate Authority) will prompt you to renew the SSL Certificate beforehand before the expiration date.

We do realize that SSL certificates are more important, and we need to ensure that our website’s SSL is a valid one. SSL Certificate expiration will allow online hackers to seek to sensitive data available online. But how do we get one is still a mystery. Certificate authorities like DigiCert are the ones that provide SSL certificates. JNR management is an elite platinum partner with DigiCert and provides the best-in-class service for buying SSL certificates.

Note: A certificate can only be renewed up to 120 days before the expiration date and 30 days after the expiration date. You can always apply for the renewal credit 60 days before expiration or 30 days after the expiration of your SSL Certificate.