LRQA Nettitude Blog

The wait is finally over and PCI DSS v4.0 is released today, 31st March 2022. Whatever the size of your organisation, volume of payments or size of in-scope network, there will be an impact to you of some kind, but for today it's business as usual.

In this post, we discuss six areas in PCI DSS v4.0, which we think you should be aware of today, with much more detail to come.

For now, we will take it easy and focus on the key themes and changes:

October 2021 saw our vulnerability research team uncover a Microsoft vulnerability dating back 14 years. In the wrong hands, it would have caused untold damage to businesses reliant on Microsoft’s VPN.

While your business might have the latest technology to safeguard its private information, the reality is that your employees may be the weakest link in your organisation when it comes to cybersecurity. In fact, human error is still widely considered the number one cause of cybersecurity breaches.

So, what can you do to ensure your employees don’t make mistakes? The most straightforward approach is a detailed cybersecurity training course that educates employees on spotting common threats.

Here, we highlight some of the best places to start when teaching your employees about how they can avoid becoming a victim of a cyber-attack.

Phishing has been around since the early days of the Internet, but it remains a major thorn for businesses and individuals. These deceptive emails attempt to trick users with harmful attachments and misleading links, using convincing promises, requests or anxiety-inducing news that leads people to not think clearly.

While you might think you can spot a phishing email from a mile away, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) found that more than 240,000 people fell victim in the United States alone in 2020. Whether you need to protect yourself or educate your employees against cybersecurity risks, consider these tips to detect phishing attempts that land in your inbox.

Firewalls are designed to form a protective barrier between your internal systems and untrusted outside networks. However, you must be certain that this part of your IT infrastructure has been installed and configured correctly. Otherwise, you risk malware being inserted or valuable data being stolen from your private systems.

This is where rigorous firewall penetration testing comes in. These simulated cyber-attacks locate, investigate and test for vulnerabilities from both outside intruders and internal threats. This way, your company will know where its weaknesses exist and have a plan to address any cybersecurity concerns.

Ransomware attacks are on the rise. Whether you’re a small business or a large organisation, you’re at risk and ransomware prevention is always better than recovering after an attack.

What is the Log4Shell Vulnerability?

Log4j is a logging library written in Java and the vulnerability, CVE-2021-44228, also commonly known as Log4Shell, allows a remote actor to send a crafted HTTP packet to servers or other software suite exposed to the internet, running the version below Log4j 2.15.0.

There are exciting times ahead for the PCI DSS as it aims to shift its position and up its game. Historically the PCI DSS has been criticised for being behind the technology curve, but as its latest iteration (version 4.0) is prepared for release by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, we anticipate changes that will keep the standard in the here and now.

6 PCI DSS v4.0 changes we are anticipating:

It’s impossible to totally eliminate the risk of a cyberattack. No reputable cybersecurity company could give that assurance. For the same reason, you cannot simply pass or fail a TIBER test.

In fact, it would pose a higher risk to state you’d passed as you might take no further action.

Complacency in cybersecurity is risky.

Protecting your organisation from cyberattacks should be continual. And it must be specific to your risk profile and particular operations. As attacks become more sophisticated, so must your testing to keep one step ahead.

By Mike Buckley | Pre-Sales Consultant at Nettitude 

Firewalls have been around for many years in various shapes and sizes, from simple Access Control Lists, to full “Next-Gen” threat prevention and sandboxing. They have evolved to (mostly) embrace Cloud strategies and remain an important security tool, protecting important assets and securing workspaces. However, they are usually perceived as a necessary evil.

It can be common to encounter applications not working as they should be after a firewall has been implemented. By their very nature, Firewalls should be preventing a lot more traffic than they permit, and it can be a challenge to configure them correctly to allow this access whilst at the same time not reverting to an overly permissive policy. As a result, organisations can rush through the process, sending applications live with rules in place that are designed as a quick fix, rather than a long-standing solution.

In order to correctly onboard clients to NOC services, Nettitude’s Network Operations experts must examine the integrity of a firewall and its setup to ensure the basics are in place. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the basics of configuring a firewall policy.