INFORMATION SECURITY EDITION
DECEMBER - 19 - 2019
WWW.ENTERPRISESECURITYMAG.COM
Top 10 Information Security Consulting/ Services Companies - 2019
T
he war between data defenders and data thieves has been described as a cat-and-mouse game. As soon as the white hats counter one form of blackhat malicious behaviour, another malevolent form rears its ugly head. Ensuring data privacy became the main challenge for many organizations in 2019. While Europe was desperately getting ready for GDPR compliance, the rest of the world was deeply affected by data privacy scandals around Google and Facebook. In 2020 and beyond protection of data privacy and security will become a key target for the majority of organizations. First, attention towards protecting personally identifiable information (PII) will lead to creation of new data security and privacy laws. Within the next five years, we should expect adoption of a national data privacy standard in the U.S., which would echo the GDPR. Organizations can get ready in advance by adopting
Nero Consulting recognized by
security best practices like ongoing IT risk assessment, regular auditing, and ensuring profound visibility into data repositories and user activity. General security best practices although will stay the same: Encrypt your data; grant access on a need-to-know basis; implement data recovery processes; be on the lookout for open or unprotected APIs; and streamline monitoring of your cloud infrastructure. To automate the execution of certain security operations and minimize human error risk, you will also have to consider AI and machine learning technologies. To stay safe in 2020, organizations are encouraged to employ basic security controls, understand and comply with any regulations they are subject to, and ensure to have visibility into the entire IT infrastructure and data. We present to you “Top 10 Information Security Consulting/ Services Companies - 2019�
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Nero Consulting
magazine as
The annual listing of 10 companies that are at the forefront of providing Information Security consulting services and impacting businesses
Anthony Oren CEO
Nero Consulting offers AI-powered cybersecurity services along with cybersecurity assessment services, incorporating firewalls, forensics, cloud security, open source tools, and complianceregulations audits
nero-consulting.com
TOP 10
INFORMATION
SECURITY
Nero Consulting
CONSULTING/SERVICES COMPANIES - 2019
How We Rescued A Million Dollars Using The Power of A.I.
I
Anthony Oren
ts 3:35pm on a random quiet Tuesday and all of a sudden one of our customer’s remote employees is tagged as logging in from two different continents seconds apart. Is this a case of a serious cyber breach in the organization or something more benign? How do you know? This scenario happened to the tech team at Nero Consulting several months ago when a customer’s security alert systems went off. A blurb about the customer; they raise millions of dollars for real estate development from investors around the world, so any breach can prove costly and time was of the essence. Within a few seconds, our security information and management systems (SIEM for short) determined this is in fact a breach and in real time our Technicians were witnessing this employee’s login credentials being active at two different locations at once via two different authorization protocols. One login was from a computer in America, the other via a web browser in Canada. Immediately, we called the employee and asked if by any chance she is traveling and/or has given out her password to anyone. She told us she had not. One of the Technicians now assigned to this investigation asked for permission to review her account to which she accepted. The Technician logged in as the employee from his computer and found a series of conversations taking place almost in real-time. Apparently, the investors were asked by the perpetrator (who is now masquerading as the
employee), who had logged in using the employee’s login details, to send money to a different bank account number. The same perpetrator had also edited previously shared email threads, between the employee and investor, and changed the recipient bank account numbers so that even if the numbers looked questionable, had the investor scrolled down to earlier conversations they would have seen the number repeated, which would appease any of their concerns. Very calculated move on the perpetrator’s part. However, this malicious attempt at extracting investment money was foiled by
handled by Technicians. This multilayer approach allows Nero Consulting to send/receive timely alerts about any employee’s multiple login locations or other suspicious behavior. It may seem like luck that we caught the cyber-criminal activity just in time to save our client from losing millions of dollars of investments, but the reality is that the cybersecurity tools that we have created using the power of AI in tandem with our brilliant Technicians ensured that Nero Consulting was able to act swiftly and deter any breaches and cyber phishing immediately with no losses to the client or investors.
help fight back against cyber criminals globally. Besides Nero Consulting’s major focus on cybersecurity services, as an owner, I also emphasize inperson training and education with our exceptionally skilled team of technicians. From discussing cyber threats, their inherent risks, and cybersecurity tools for performing audits and being aware of business vulnerabilities, Nero Consulting has embedded security deep within its work environment. For the past decade, I am happy to say that Nero Consulting has been steadily gaining traction in terms of
We place paramount importance on our team members’ knowledge and skill development to ensure that they are delivering the utmost benefit to our clients in the cybersecurity sphere
our meticulous Technicians and our A.I. assistant. This story illustrates the cyber-security power of NightCrawler. NightCrawler is Nero Consulting’s blend of AI-powered behavioral analytics algorithms along with various cybersecurity tools including Intrusion Prevention & Detection in firewalls, cloud based and local forensics, and other forms of security information and event monitoring
In many similar instances, Nero Consulting has implemented such enterprise-class cybersecurity technologies to help other organizations operating in scientific research, energy, legal, finance, hospitality, construction and architecture/engineering spaces to protect their sensitive data. These days we also receive regular support from FBI, Department of Defense (DoD), and DHS cybercrime communications to
customer base and our track record speaks for itself when it comes to improving our cybersecurity platforms (mostly using AI-powered services). Our firm is an ardent believer of continuous development and is consistently investing in AI, dark web monitoring, security audits, penetration testing and more securityrelated platforms to help our clients in deterring, preventing, and disrupting cyber attacks. ES