Oman VAT - 4 things you can do for compliance | Valto Technologies

Multi Factor Authentication – Why You Shouldn’t Wait Anymore

suniladmin — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 09:10:31 +0000

Multi Factor Authentication – Why You Shouldn’t Wait Anymore

Multi-factor authentication – it’s a familiar term in the corporate security domain. The simplest way to define multi-factor authentication is the upgrade from two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication uses a password and an OTP to authenticate your person before providing access.

Before we proceed with why to go ahead with multi factor authentication, we need to set some context. For this, it becomes important to state where two-factor authentication fails. Post this, we will proceed with how MFA addresses loopholes that 2FA couldn’t.

How does two-factor authentication work?

Two-factor authentication uses two criteria to confirm a user’s identity before providing them access to corporate resources. These two criteria were typically the user’s password and a one-time password, sent to the user’s official email address or phone number. 2FA was a big achievement when the rise in cybercrime threatened business operations.

But it didn’t take much time for cybercriminals to bypass the password and even the one-time password. It was easy for users to share passwords and OTPs over the phone or email to enable access from various devices. The principles upon which secure authentication rested needed to adapt. This led to the development of multi-factor authentication.

Multi-Factor Authentication - The Loopholes It Addresses

When it comes to multi-factor authentication, the approach to authentication is more refined. The different factors that can be used to authenticate a user are as follows:

What the user uniquely knows – Also called the knowledge factor, this relies on a unique detail known only by the user, like a password.

What the user uniquely possesses – This relies on something only the user has, like a security token, ID card or app that can validate the user.
What the user has on his person – this factor is something that the user carries all the time with them. Also known as the inherence factor, the way to check this factor was using biometric means.

In addition to this, multi-factor authentication can also consider factors like the current location of the user for validating their access.

Now that we’ve laid out why MFA trumps traditional 2FA methodologies, let us also paint a fair picture and understand the pros and cons of implementing an MFA solution for your organization.

How To Proceed With Implementing MFA

We have now explained the issues with using a 2FA approach to security, how MFA addresses these issues and the pros and cons of deploying an MFA solution. But what is the next step in taking this forward?

Here’s a set of guidelines to keep in mind before you roll out an implementation plan.

1. Understand the applications you want to manage using MFA.

Your organization uses a range of business-critical applications, which are usually distributed between your on-premises infrastructure and your private cloud. Does your MFA have to cater to all these applications? Can your requirements be addressed with an IAM or PAM solution?

Mapping this out will help you better understand which MFA solutions can meet your requirements.

2. Which user authentication factors are critical?

While MFA accommodates all known factors of authentication, requiring the user to submit multiple entries before access can hamper the user experience, which is a precursor to shadow IT activities inside the organization. The sweet spot is between 2-3 factors.

3. How widely the solution’s been used.

The test of a robust MFA solution is when they’re the first name in the heads of both small and large companies. Investing in an MFA solution is a time-consuming task, and the acceptance of a solution in the market is evidence of its offerings.

Future developments with an MFA solution come in the following areas:

Adaptive MFA: This development in MFA uses contextual policies to approve users on the go. This means that user access is restrained when your users perform actions out of the defined context. An example would be when your users use a VPN to access your corporate applications, when they don’t need to.
Push authentication: This utilizes an automated authentication which the user has to approve. But it removes the need for them remembering the specific factor. A push notification will pop up when the user tries to access an application. On performing the action required by the notification, they can gain access.
Single Sign On: Single Sign On requires the user to have only one set of user credentials for all applications. The device used by the user validates the user’s identity, and passes this on to all applications. A relatively new form of MFA, SSO simplifies the need to remember different factors.

MFA is becoming a critical part of an organization’s security policy. As the world moves into a hybrid form of working, it is necessary to take the right measures to maintain corporate integrity. If you’re interested to know more, sign up on the form below and someone from our team will get in touch!

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Intelligent Document Processing – An Introduction

suniladmin — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 08:19:22 +0000

Intelligent Document Processing – An Introduction

Intelligent document processing is a result of the progress in computing to eliminate repetitive tasks from the office workplace. To truly understand this concept, this article will take you through a real-life example that most of us have experienced at least once.

Let’s assume that you just got yourself a car. It’s a brand-new black Mercedes S-class, just a month out of the showroom. Driving it feels good, and you make sure that the car is clean enough to eat on top from. The car gets those heads turning, as you drive on your way to work. Your wife, your friends and your colleagues want to take it for a spin, and you relish the envy that they have for you.

One evening, on your way back from work, you stop at a traffic light. The car behind you was expecting you to jump the light, and so wasn’t prepared to apply the brakes on the car. Two seconds of miscalculation, and your shiny new black has its rear damaged because of a careless driver. Now, this makes you angry, really angry. But as per UAE law, you’re required to keep your calm and report it to the police and your insurance company. But what is the process of filing your insurance claim? Have you ever asked how many man hours are required to process an insurance claim, with all the verification and data collection required?

This is where Intelligent Document Processing comes in.

How does Intelligent Document Processing help?

When you submit your claim for reimbursement, a claims representative will contact you to collect all the relevant information. This typically includes your policy number, details about your coverage, description of the accident and the police report. Using this information, the claims department will then require a quotation from the workshop which will fix the car. Using all this information, the claims team will figure out what is the amount that is reimbursed to you.

By now, you probably understand where this article is going. This work takes considerable work and a significant number of hours, which can also run into days. This delays the processing, and therefore the reimbursement. Now consider an insurance company that processes claims by the thousands ever month. It is not uncommon that insurance companies are not able to process claims in time, and if they do manage to do this, it is because of a large workforce spending much of their time in these repeatable tasks. While we have taken the example of an insurance claim to break down the concept, every industry has processes where manual data entry and verification is still the backbone, though an inefficient one.

Intelligent Document Processing - How does it work?

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) uses a combination of technologies which include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). To continue with the example of the insurance claim processing, IDP can categorize the different documents, pull out relevant information from it, process it as per the standard business rules for claims processing and push this into the core insurance processing systems. To eliminate the number of work hours wasted on processing and verification of the claims, IDP understands the contents within a set of documents, and performs the required actions without requiring manual intervention, except in rare cases. In addition to this, the machine learning component also learns from its mistakes in time, further driving up the accuracy of the system.

To highlight the importance of this technology, it is important to understand that no two insurance claims will look the same. Documents like the police report and the insurance policy documents may have the same format each time, but this won’t be the case for quotations, invoices or other supporting documents. Because the documents themselves will contain different information each time, IDP needs to truly understand the language of the reports to apply the right business rules in each case. IDP is also capable of spotting anomalies in the information captured. This functionality allows large businesses to detect cases which deviate from normal behavior and prevent fraud cases from arising.

What industries can benefit from using Intelligent Document Processing?

Data is the backbone of the global economy. While digitization has been a common activity for businesses in the past decade, data capture, exchange and verification is still largely a manual activity. Some of the common processes include the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process, supplier invoice processing, logistics document processing, medical information capture, loan processing and legal documents processing.

The main pain points that IDP tries to address are listed below:

Industries that process a lot of documents, that come in various formats.
Industries that utilize a lot of manual data entry and verification of information.
Business processes where manual work results in data loss or error, causing liabilities to the business.

Information should be easy to access and use for all. But considering human behavior, no to humans will work with information in the same way. Instead of making humans work for the information, why not have the information work for us?

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Zero Trust for Hybrid Work – UAE’s New Guidelines

suniladmin — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 13:08:29 +0000

Zero Trust for Hybrid Work – UAE’s New Guidelines

The UAE announcing the introduction of the four-and-a-half-day work-week, with the motive to enable a better work-life balance to its business environment. As per the new guidelines, Fridays will be a half-day at work while Saturday and Sunday would be considered the weekend. With this move, the Government aims to make the business ecosystem friendlier to the employees, which has shown to have a significant effect on business growth in previous tests.

While this move is welcomed by the professionals in the country, it begs the question – Are we soon going to adopt a hybrid mode of working? If so, how would businesses securely access their business applications from anywhere, at any time?

During the global work-from-home phase when the pandemic was at its peak, governments and large businesses saw massive business disruptions due to cyber-crimes. To understand the scale in cyber-attacks, the frequency of such attacks on state and local governments across the world had risen by over 50% in 2020 as compared to previous years. And that’s not all. The extreme of such attacks have been in industries that produce our basic necessities- food, water and power.

Why are businesses under more risk today?

Because the pandemic has accelerated the acceptance of digital transformation. When push came to shove, businesses went through the pain, but then derived the benefits of having a hybrid mode of working. Providing secure access to the business infrastructure from anywhere without the worry of compromised data went from “nice to have” to “want”. Cyber criminals understand this, and it is only a matter of time before they show interest in taking on your industry.

How does an organization become a victim to a cyberattack? It is most commonly introducing using web and phishing-based malware or through vulnerabilities in an organization’s network, firewalls, or VPNs. Yes, the VPNs that your organization onboarded when the pandemic, they were never the solution. When an attack occurs, IT teams focus their immediate attention on getting their networks up and running and determining how the attack was successful. Besides the time and money lost during the attack, the cost of losing confidential information and the time to get your systems back up can be substantial. Let’s not forget, you can also be fined by the government for losing confidential information like hospital records or customer information.

Zero Trust and Organizations - Where to Start

A new approach, based on the Zero Trust security approach (“never trust – always verify”), is needed. Zero Trust is a broad security construct with recommendations on controls across several areas in your IT infrastructure.

Cyber criminals primarily penetrate networks through compromised endpoints via an interaction with the open internet – an infected website, a download from the web, or an email link or attachment. Not all staff members are aware of links that they shouldn’t click. Legacy security systems are not updated fast enough to match the sophistication of the malware or the rapid pace at which new variants are released.

Another major vulnerability that businesses will see is the use of personal devices for remote work. These personal devices are not monitored by the IT teams and as such, can contain malware that passes over to the in-office network once they connect through the VPN. From there, it is only a matter of time before the malware moves to more business-critical resources like databases, servers or applications.

How does Zero Trust Network Access work to mitigate these risks?

By implicitly not trusting any website to be free of malware, Zero Trust policies make sure to create an effective “air-gap” between the devices and web-based threats like ransomware.
When users connect to the business network, all device information is captured and monitored before providing access to the in-office systems. This capability of device isolation vastly reduces the damage that ransomware can cause by making apps and data invisible to any unauthenticated program or device trying to discover and access network-connected resources.
With the microsegmentation of resources to the users in real-time, the impacts of ransomware – whether introduced within the office from a compromised device, or remotely through a crack in the network’s armor (such as a VPN vulnerability) — can be dramatically reduced.

Secure access to your business networks is business critical, with the UAE’s move to a more sustainable work-life for businesses. However, this does not mean that IT teams need to be worked to the bone to ensure secure remote access. Taking your corporate workplace online is easier and extremely cost-effective with advanced technologies like Accops HyWorks.

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Optical Character Recognition – What, How, Why.

suniladmin — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 07:01:13 +0000

Optical Character Recognition – What, How, Why.

Optical Character Recognition or OCR is the core functionality of Open Bee Portal or any document management system, for that matter. It is the technology used to identify printed text characters from a digital document or an image file. Why is this important? OCR allows you to transform these characters into code. This finds applications in multiple places, like removing manual data entry, data processing, converting text-to-speech for visually impaired people etc.

How does Optical Character Recognition work?

When OCR technology is applied on a digital document, the bitmap generated gets screened for light and dark areas. This screening allows the technology to recognise light areas as the background and the dark areas as the characters.

Once this separation is complete, the dark areas are identified as alphabets and numbers. Most OCR solutions work using the following two methodologies:

Pattern Recognition: The software recognises the patterns formed by the bitmaps and matches it with its character database. The database would already contain letters from various fonts and formats, most of which would be computer-generated.
Feature identification: The software would associate the features understood from the bitmaps to the database where pre-defined relations are present. The pre-defined features typically include crossed or angled lines, curves et cetera.

As an example, the alphabet “E” could be identified as three equally spaced horizontal lines perpendicular to the right side of a larger vertical line.

Post-identification, the characters are converted to code by associating it with the matching ASCII value. From here, the computer is now able to recognise the character and further act upon it.

How does Optical Character Recognition help in business operation?

For starters, it eliminates the need for manual entry into a log or system. With OCR technology, the computer is fed information directly from the digital document or the scanner. The only point of human intervention is when verification is necessary.

Recent developments in AI also show promise in identifying non-uniform handwritten messages. This is a field of promise because the possibilities are endless once you’re able to correctly identify text of any handwriting.

Some of the benefits of using OCR technology for your day-to-day business processes include:

Higher Productivity
Because information can now be retrieved faster, employees can be more productive at work. With digital documents, employees save nearly 4 hours every day by not searching for physical documents.
Cost Reduction
OCR technology Opting for OCR will help businesses on cutting down on hiring professionals to carry out data extraction, which is one of the most important benefits of OCR data entry methods. This tool also helps in trimming various other costs, such as copying, printing, shipping, etc. Therefore, OCR eliminates the cost of misplaced or lost documents and offers higher savings in the form of reclaimed office space, which would otherwise be used for storing paper documents.
High Accuracy
One of the major challenges of data entry is inaccuracy. Automated data entry tools such as OCR data entry result in reduced errors and inaccuracies, resulting in efficient data entry. Besides, problems like data loss can also be successfully tackled by OCR data entry. As there is no manpower involved, the issues such as keying in wrong information accidentally or otherwise can be eliminated.
Increased Storage Space
OCR can scan, document, and catalogue information from enterprise-wide paper documents. This simply means that the data can now be stored in an electronic format in servers, eradicating the need for maintaining huge paper files. In this way, OCR data entry serves as one of the best tools to implement “Paperless” approach across the organization.
Superior Data Security
Data security is of utmost importance for any organization. Paper documents are easily prone to loss or destruction. Papers can be misplaced, stolen, or destroyed by natural elements such as moisture, pests, and fire. However, this is not the case with data that is scanned, analyzed, and stored in digital formats. Furthermore, the access to these digital documents can also be minimized to prevent mishandling of the digitized data.
100% Text-searchable Documents
One of the huge advantages of OCR data processing is that it makes the digitized documents completely text searchable. This helps professionals to quickly lookup numbers, addresses, names, and various other parameters that differentiate the document being searched.
Massively Improves Customer Service
Several inbound contact centers often provide information that their customers seek. While some call centers provide customers with the information they need, the others will have to quickly access certain personal or order-related information of the customers to process their requests. Quick data accessibility becomes extremely important in such cases. OCR helps in systematically storing and retrieving the documents digitally at blazing speeds. With this, the waiting time is drastically reduced for the customers, thereby improving their experience.
Makes Documents Editable
Scanned documents need to be edited most of the time, particularly when some information must be updated. OCR converts data to any preferred formats such as Word, etc., which can be easily edited. This can be of great help when there are contents which have to be constantly updated or regularly changed.
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is one of the major benefits of using OCR for data entry. When data is stored electronically in secure servers and distributed systems, it remains safe even under emergency situations. When there are sudden fire breakouts or natural calamity, the digitized data can be quickly retrieved to ensure business continuation.

Who Can Leverage OCR?

Any firms and enterprises planning to do away with paper documents can leverage OCR data entry. OCR can also be used to transfer important documents to tablets, computers, smartphones, etc. Right from businesses in banking, mortgage, and financial sectors to those in legal, payroll, and healthcare sectors anyone can leverage this tool. Outsourcing OCR based data entry services to a reliable partner can help you save huge costs and valuable time. Some documents which are extensively being digitized include, but not limited to –

Invoices
Industry articles
Tax documents
Payroll information
Legal filings
Contact information
Business cards and fliers
Financial investments

Optical Character Recognition Use Cases

OCR can be used for a variety of applications, including:

Scanning printed documents into versions that can be edited with word processors, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Indexing print material for search engines.
Automating data entry, extraction and processing.
Deciphering documents into text that can be read aloud to visually-impaired or blind users.
Archiving historic information, such as newspapers, magazines or phonebooks, into searchable formats.
Electronically depositing checks without the need for a bank teller.
Placing important, signed legal documents into an electronic database.
Recognizing text, such as license plates, with a camera or software.
Sorting letters for mail delivery.
Translating words within an image into a specified language.

Benefits of Optical Character Recognition

The main advantages of OCR technology are saved time, decreased errors and minimized effort. It also enables actions that are not capable with physical copies such as compressing into ZIP files, highlighting keywords, incorporating into a website and attaching to an email.

While taking images of documents enables them to be digitally archived, OCR provides the added functionality of being able to edit and search those documents.

The video below summarizes the arguments made in a quick 2-minute video.

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Oman brings VAT into effect from April 2021- What this means for businesses

suniladmin — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 08:18:12 +0000

Oman brings VAT into effect from April 2021- What this means for businesses

Oman has set its sights on implementing a Value-Added Tax system, making it the 4th country in the GCC to do so. With a standard rate of 5%, businesses are given a six-month window from April 2021 to realign their business models to ensure VAT compliance.

The oldest consumer tax system, VAT compliance, acts as an indicator to the overall technological wellness of a country’s private sector. Here are a few of the insights we’ve studied from various resources:

The speed of VAT compliance is faster in developed countries than in developing countries.
The compliance procedure drags on depending upon the number of documents required.
Countries that follow a process of online filing and payment, typically take less time and face fewer hassles.

More details can be downloaded from here.

What does this mean for businesses?

VAT processes bring in an added layer of complexity to the finance operations of a business. Departments now will have to maintain all records for the required period. Housing these paper documents becomes a challenge in terms of:

Storage space.
Retrieval time.
Time for proper filing

On average, each employee spends 5 hours every week searching for documents. In one year, that comes up to 30 work days every year spent searching paper records. If you maintain a good practice of filing and storage, this number may come down, but by how much?

As a business, is it profitable to pay one month’s salary in excess, because your processes are not well-adjusted to the times?

What can be done about this?

The VAT laws consider electronic documents as admissible proof for auditors and the courts. Furthermore, some of the benefits of using electronic documents include:

Faster search and retrieval.
Secure storage without risk of natural damages. This cannot be said about paper.
Easy collaboration on documents.
Approval processes can take place on-the-go.

These activities are possible when you route the electronic documents through a document management system.

A document management system acts as a central repository for all documents created inside and outside the organization. Such a central repository can be integrated with your existing systems to store all documents created at any time.

Businesses will feel hesitation when considering a document management system. Most organizations consider one of the two options:

Use and store the paper documents in their premises for the required time period.
Scan the documents and dump it onto a cloud storage space/ existing file server.
We’ve made the argument against the file server in this article.

A document management system allows your employees to efficiently work in a collaborative environment. Any document you require is available with a few keystrokes, because of the powerful OCR engine running in the backend of the solution. Other important features include:

Document indexing and metadata capture.
Automatic filing from emails and Microsoft applications.
Workflow engine to define both linear and conditional workflow processes.
Secure storage of your documents with AES-256 encryption.

A document management system works as a foolproof solution to your VAT-compliance requirements. Open Bee has been used by over 35 clients in the UAE for their VAT storage purposes. With experience across multiple sectors, we’d love to advise you on how you can start your digital journey.

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The Case for Document Management V/S File Server

suniladmin — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 14:39:40 +0000

The Case for Document Management V/S File Server

Modes of information transformed over time. From messenger pigeons to emails, technology has enabled exponential growth in the way we communicate with each other. Businesses being at the forefront of this wave, need to adapt faster to constantly improve and innovate their processes to serve their clients better.

An important aspect of information sharing is the change from information on paper to digital documents. Enterprise technology, with its complex systems, makes it easier for employees to share information and collaborate on work faster than ever before.

However, while these digital documents are created easily, are you able to leverage the information completely? That’s what we hope to answer in this article.

What is a file server?

A file server, as the name suggests, is a server that is used for storing your electronic files. This is usually the first step for companies as they dip their toes into digital transformation.

File servers are generally centralised in a computer network. Employees traditionally work on documents and files on their local systems during business hours and at the end of the day, upload these documents to the file server.

Administrators are largely able to control who gets access to what files. By doing this, organizations ensure information security to a large extent. For instance, the administrator can set which users or groups have the permissions to see, open, add, edit or delete information.

For users working on-the-go, file servers can be accessed through remote access solutions. This is usually the point where companies realise that digital transformation improves turnaround times for both internal and external processes. File servers also double down as a repository for programs, running programs that are accessed by multiple network participants.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Even if you are using a file server, you do not leverage the information completely.

Your digital documents now become just like your paper documents, stored away in a file. To find the desired PDF, it is like searching for a specific paper document in a filing cabinet. Except now, instead of searching for 15 minutes, it takes 2 minutes.But if there are more documents added, the server speed will go down, increasing the retrieval time.

File servers also do not provide an audit log of the activities taken. If someone has the credentials to access the system, be it theirs or someone else’s, they can easily enter it. The layer of security only extends till the credentials.

This poses another threat when it comes to collaboration outside the file server environment, leading to the rise of Shadow IT, which we will explain in another article. Employees resort to bypass the existing system, as it does not offer all the required features they need.

When these business risks are brought up, how do you choose to handle them?

The way to address these concerns is by investing in solutions that offer security, ease of collaboration and access control to business information.

This calls for a document management system!

What is a document management system?

A document management system works in the following ways:

It offers secure access to your business information by enforcing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users.
It offers faster search and retrieval of business information, with powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and tagging features.
It makes collaboration with internal and external parties easier, throughs secure sharing.
It can act as the central repository for information created across all business software, emails, paper documents received etc.

To put things in perspective, if you could bring down searching from 15 minutes to 2 minutes, a document management system brings it down to under 15 seconds.

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Accops – The Supplement to Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktops

suniladmin — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 12:40:29 +0000

Business continuity favours remote work, even with vaccination drives happening across the world. The reduced overhead and smooth transition are factors to be considered for this change.

Microsoft has come out with its latest offering for the remote access market – the Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD). This late entrant enables secure Desktop-As-A-Service (DaaS) while meeting all compliances necessary for office and WFH-users. As is standard with traditional VDI. Microsoft WVD is able to provide smooth access to the virtualised environment running on your Azure cloud.

Unique Features of Microsoft WVD

A significant offering by Microsoft through WVD is the simplified VDI on Azure, which allow for multiple concurrent interactive sessions. The WVD also comes with the built-in connection broker, load balancing and traditional remote access functionalities. Some of the newer features include AppAttach and FSLogix.

In a scenario where businesses are yet to deploy a remote working policy, Microsoft WVD is available for ue right out of the box with zero management requirement and infrastructure support to run virtual desktops.

Limitations of Microsoft WVD

While Microsoft WVD comes with an ease of deployment, this also causes the solution to have far fewer features than an enterprise-grade VDI solution. In such situations, Accops places a foot in the door and provide an enterprise with a rich feature set, scalability and customisability. We list below some of the areas where Microsoft WVD falls short when compared to Accops

1. Microsoft WVD consumes more resources and a higher Azure consumption.

VMs cannot be shared for both apps as well as desktops. A VM in a pool can be either used for app delivery or for shared hosted desktop

2. A weak end-user experience

No option to upload/download files from web client
No support for USB redirection
No Single Sign On for remote desktop connection
No printing from web client, Limited support for driver free printing
No application self-service
Difficult to add new value add features as MS controls the sessions
Limited support for MFA

3. Platform limitations

Only supports 64bit server OS
No support for Linux based guest OS
Only support Azure, on-prem and other cloud options are not supported

4. Limited end user device support

WVD client not available for Linux OS and thin client

5. Difficult to administer

Limited management console, PowerShell expertise needed.
No delegated administration for helpdesk teams.
No user activity and admin activity logs for WVD

6. Limited data security controls

Data copy-paste restrictions
No watermark.

How Accops worked to integrate with WVD

Understanding the gap in the offering, Accops HyWorks worked to integrate with Microsoft WVD to provide all the benefits of Microsoft WVD along with the security features of Accops. The combined offerings are listed below:

Windows Virtual Desktops can now be connected to using Accops connection broker, load balancing & gateway deployed in Azure.
Windows 10 Multi-session OS is also usable now.
Using Windows 10 multi-user session integration to easily deploy support and power management.
AppAttach and FSLogix features are supported.
Cost of Azure consumption & License requirements are same as WVD

The Final Result?

1. Reduced Cost

Use same VMs to deliver apps as well as session-based desktops.
Concurrent licensing for Contextual Aware MFA & Zero trust

2. End user experience

Feature rich best Web HTML5 client
Seamless file, upload download
Seamless copy-paste across browser
Seamless USB redirection
SSO for remote app and remote desktop launch
Driver less printing for modern as well as legacy apps
Self-service enabled
Extensive support for MFA

3. Better Platform support

Support legacy OS to support legacy 32bit, 16bit apps
Support Linux based apps & desktops
Any cloud, on-prem supported
Limited end user device support
Linux client and thin client device support: Accops provided thin clients
Simplified management console with delegated administration
Data security controls like data copy-paste restriction, watermark, Device entry control

Now, what can you do? If you’re interested to know more about how we can help you, fill the form and sign up for a free session!

Stay Safe From Cyber Security Threats With These Holiday Tips!

suniladmin — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:22:43 +0000

Stay Safe From Cyber Security Threats With These Holiday Tips!

With 20%-25% of annual retail sales taking place during the holiday season, one can only assume that retailers have spent the last few weeks busy beefing up their cyber security – and network capacity – in readiness for the huge influx of traffic, whether naughty or nice. But the truth is, businesses in all industries need to take extra precautions during this time of year. Employees will be employees and, in all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, their internet behavior might expose enterprise data to exceptional risk.

A Litany of Attacks

Thieves of money and cyber data relish the holiday season. They save up some of their most aggressive tactics to trick employees into divulging valuable data, allowing the thieves to invade enterprise networks and make off with the goods. Below are just a few types of attacks that skyrocket around the holiday season.

Season’s Greetings

Many enterprises witness a sudden rash of electronic greeting cards sent from one employee to another, or received by employees from external sources. The Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued a warning that e-greeting cards, even from seemingly reputable websites, may contain malicious links including false ads. Clicking on these links and ads can activate malware that quickly spreads throughout the enterprise network.

Phishing for Data

Widely used phishing scams involve sending seemingly innocent and helpful e-mails to employees, directing them to spoofed websites where data thieves lie in wait. Users are misled into providing personal or company data that allows hackers to attack additional users on the network – or the business itself.

Holiday-themed phishing scams are especially effective. Hackers know that during the gift-buying season people are particularly susceptible to emails containing awesome sales come-ons and discounts. Falsified FedEx, UPS, DHL and postal service emails trick users into clicking through to sham websites and unwittingly sharing information with cyber criminals.

Let’s be honest: Especially in the run-up to the holidays, a good deal of personal business is conducted from company endpoints. One wrong click and the hacker hits pay-dirt. He can now download malware onto the endpoint and, from there, get at the enterprise network, servers and customer data. After that, anything goes.

Malicious Ads

Enterprising hackers don’t only hack online ad systems to inject fake ads. They also buy ad space on legitimate web sites. Once again, a single click on a seemingly innocent ad – even on a reliable site – may inject malware onto an endpoint and lead to the next full-blown ransomware attack.

Cyber-Protect Your Enterprise During the Holiday Season

What can businesses do to protect their networks and data during this time of year? After all, nothing spoils seasonal festivity and joy quite like a badly timed cyber security incident.

There are many immediate steps that businesses can take to bolster enterprise security and mitigate the risk of cyberattacks. Do them now and start the New Year right!

Making Employees Aware

First and foremost, make sure that employees are aware of the threats. It is never too late to start or update an employee-training program to make people more alert to cyber dangers. 80% of data breaches are due to insider threats. While a small portion of these are intentional, the vast majority are simply the outcome of ignorance and negligence.

Many companies include cyber-security awareness training in their orientation of new hires. However, research shows that knowledge retention improves significantly when training sessions are held at regular intervals. The start of the holiday season is a great time to schedule the next session.

Securing Passwords

An effective password policy is essential. For some strange reason, many enterprises still use default passwords. That’s the first course of action by the hacker, so let’s stop that practice in its tracks.

New password guidelines were recently issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Now is a good time to implement them.

Setup User Group Policies in Active Directory to enforce password policies based on NIST recommendations such as:

Simpler – NIST no longer recommends enforcing specific combinations containing special characters or a mix of lower and upper-case characters, so you don’t need to require them
Longer – at least 8 characters, but longer is better
Memorable – something that users will remember; NIST recommends using passphrases containing typical English words
Different passwords for different services – don’t re-use the same password across services
Forget about expiration – NIST has determined that requiring frequent changes to passwords just confuses users, while contributing nothing to security

Freezing Production Systems

The lead-up to your business’s busiest season is not the right time to introduce new production systems or changes to existing ones:

Don’t implement any new software or technologies within your production systems until after the rush
Ensure that essential systems are running smoothly and properly
Make cautious exceptions to these rules for critical security patches, but test them carefully before rolling out the patches

Managing Software

Throughout the network, make sure you regularly update:

Antivirus software on all endpoints and servers
Operating systems and application software with the latest security patches

Have a careful look around your network: Remove unused, end-of-life (EOL), unsupported, or unapproved applications

Filtering Web Content

Web filters and secure web gateways screen incoming Web pages, allowing the enterprise to block pages that are likely to include objectionable advertising, spyware, viruses, and other risky or undesirable content. Some Web filter products also provide the ability to report on the kinds of traffic being filtered, and where it originated.

Install a web-filter program to block access to malicious websites, restricting employees from viewing certain websites or categories of websites
Implement secure browsing solutions to neutralize any threats that may be lurking in ‘uncategorized’ websites (or even within the browser itself)

Securing Wireless Access Points

Did you know that Wireless Access Points are easy to hack?

It’s surprising how many enterprises still don’t secure access points, even though doing so is easy and provides a significant layer of cyber security:

Don’t broadcast the internal WiFi network
Make sure that all routers use WPA2 802.11x security protocols, which are more difficult to crack than WPA or WEP
Set up a separate, public WiFi network with a unique password for guests.

Sharing and Following Threat Data

Many criminals share attack methods and use them to strike at multiple enterprises. Take pre-emptive action by learning what’s happening to other enterprises and share what’s happening at yours. By sharing threat data, such as malicious techniques and indicators of compromise (IOCs), enterprises can stack the odds in their favor by taking preemptive steps to curb cyber-attacks:

Subscribe to multiple threat-intelligence feeds
Notify open-source threat-intelligence communities whenever your enterprise suffers a cyber incident

Conclusion

Cyber-security is a never-ending battle. At this time of year, many enterprises are especially susceptible to attacks. An extra bit of attention now can go a long way to securing your network and data during the holiday season.

Implement our tips and finish 2017 as a security success!

Source- Ericom.com

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Why Remote Browser Isolation Is The Future For Organizations

suniladmin — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:09:06 +0000

Why Remote Browser Isolation Is The Future For Organizations

The Internet is far from safe as we all know. It is statistically shown that 10,000-30,000 new malicious websites are identified each day. With the spread of malicious content across the web, individuals are becoming more and more prone to having their information stolen. Which when considered taking place at a corporate premise, can lead to severe data breaches because of an employee who didn’t know better.

Most organizations have their own way of monitoring what websites their employees access. But in today’s world, one can never be too sure even about the most securest of websites. All it takes for a hacker to manipulate these sites is to insert code that attacks our browser without triggering your firewalls. This can even happen during the loading of the websites, which shows why it is time for organizations to consider working on virtual premises to prevent the the possibility of losing sensitive data due to ignorance. Keeping this in mind, keep reading this article to find out why Remote Browser Isolation is the way forward for organizations.

Why Remote Browser Isolation?

What makes it so different from the other virtual computing solutions? Because it takes the concept of a virtual browser a step ahead. As the name suggests, this method of browsing takes place in a remote location inaccessible from the local network by operating the virtual browser inside a dedicated lightweight Linux container. In Remote Browser Isolation, a separate dedicated Linux container is initiated for each tab the user opens.

Upon launching a new browser session, either by clicking a link or by entering a URL, a container is selected from the pool of containers available. Remote Browser Isolation makes sure that active web content is converted into images and sound within the container and real-time streaming takes place to provide a browser experience just like the experience of using a physical PC in front of you.

But how are your network and endpoints kept safe from malware? Since there is no web code running on your device, the possibility of threats from the browser is completely removed. When the user’s session is done and the browser is closed, the container is discarded, destroying all traces of malware that could have breached the organization’s defenses.

How does Ericom here?

Overhead: The need for having high-end hardware for operating your employees’ needs is eliminated with the use of Remote Browser Isolation. They consequently need significantly lesser server infrastructure that most virtualization-based solutions, which equates to significant cost savings. Scaling up your RBI solutions exponentially is also possible at lower costs.

User experience: Virtual browsers take time to launch a session. The containerized remote browsers used for RBI solutions launch instantly. Besides, within a remote browser it is possible to surf internal and external websites, which is slightly trickier in virtual browser solutions where it uses separate browsers or tabs to do the same.

Security: The immediate disintegration of the container after the user closes their browsing session eliminates the possibility of malware spread. Ericom Shield in particular offers an additional level of security by providing built-in sanitization of any downloaded files to protect against hidden malware that might be embedded within.

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Virtual Desktop Infrastructure- A Step Into The Future Workspace

suniladmin — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 12:56:57 +0000

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure- A Step Into The Future Workspace

The good old days of uncomplicated tasks in the office are long gone. The dynamic change in technology over the years has only allowed businesses to save the time spent in technical work. This, in turn, has given us more time to spend on the optimization of enterprises. It is only a matter of time before the current model of business management becomes obsolete with newer technology on its way.

Many studies have shown that there are three trending technology solutions extensively used by enterprises. These are cloud computing, the “internet of things” or IoT and virtual desktop infrastructures or VDI. While cloud computing has been around the block for a while and the applications of IoT currently have, in theory, no limits. But, it is virtual desktop solutions that play an essential role in today’s workforce being mostly mobile.

Why Use A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure?

Think about it. Offices no longer need to invest in computer hardware. All it takes is a server that is configured to contain the private interfaces of each employee. The workspace is made accessible from any device with a secure network connection. The data never leaves the company as all the work takes place inside the server via a secure connection to the employee’s device. VDI thus scores points for the security of data, as no one from outside your company can access it. It is also possible nowadays to monitor the type of data viewed by your employees, to protect the company from unwanted malicious threats.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure offers a more economical and secure technology solution to growing businesses looking to make the most out of fewer resources.

Before picking out a virtual desktop solution for your business, below are some points you have to consider before finalizing.

Picking your VDI solution

Here’s a guide to things you should look for when selecting a VDI or remote access platform for your organization:

– Feature Set– What are the features required by your organization? It is necessary to address this since a simple solution may not have the answer to all your needs. Alternatively, a full-fledged infrastructure may have more answers than your organization’s needs and can also bring in unnecessary costs and complexity.
– Security– How secure is the solution that you are considering? Is there a need for installing applications to the client devices? While standard offerings include a Secure Gateway, VPN integration along with two-factor authentication, it is good to see what else the solution can offer. For example, Ericom Shield® provides its users with secure browsing using an innovative technology called Remote Browser Isolation, which allows you to perform browsing operations in a secure Linux compartment and keeps your device from harm.

– Ease of use– How closely does the VDI solution compliment the work environment in your office?

–Scalability– How quickly can you scale up the number of users? As the number of employees grows, can your solution grow with them accordingly?

–Operational data– Can your solution provide insights into how the IT resources can be better utilized?

–Ease of installation and management- Will your virtual desktop infrastructure become a headache for your IT team?

VALTO specializes in providing world-class solutions to help accentuate your business’s growth. We know that investing in a VDI solution is a big decision, but we assure you that with us, you have nothing to worry. We are partners with Ericom Software, which is one of the most significant names in the virtual desktop infrastructure space. Check out our website to know more about our product.

Image source- Microtel Technologies

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Multi-Factor Authentication - The Loopholes It Addresses

How To Proceed With Implementing MFA

1. Understand the applications you want to manage using MFA.

2. Which user authentication factors are critical?

3. How widely the solution’s been used.

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Intelligent Document Processing - How does it work?

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Oman brings VAT into effect from April 2021- What this means for businesses

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Limitations of Microsoft WVD

1. Microsoft WVD consumes more resources and a higher Azure consumption.

2. A weak end-user experience

3. Platform limitations

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The Final Result?

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Stay Safe From Cyber Security Threats With These Holiday Tips!

Stay Safe From Cyber Security Threats With These Holiday Tips!

A Litany of Attacks

Season’s Greetings

Phishing for Data

Malicious Ads

Cyber-Protect Your Enterprise During the Holiday Season

Making Employees Aware

Securing Passwords

Freezing Production Systems

Managing Software

Filtering Web Content

Securing Wireless Access Points

Sharing and Following Threat Data

Conclusion

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Why Remote Browser Isolation Is The Future For Organizations

Why Remote Browser Isolation Is The Future For Organizations

Like what you read? Share it

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure- A Step Into The Future Workspace

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure- A Step Into The Future Workspace

Like what you read? Share it

Why are businesses under more risk today?

Why are businesses under more risk today?