Posts in category: Cybersecurity

The use of IoT devices within organizations has risen at an exponential rate, increasing the number of security risks. Whether its building sensors, surveillance cameras, IP phones, conference room technology, and more, IoT devices are everywhere. Although these devices bring various benefits to organizations, they usually go unmanaged compromising network security. How can organizations continue to gain the benefits from using IoT devices while easing their security concerns? Continue reading to learn more about the overall problem and an easy-to-implement solution. 

Security Challenges of IoT Devices

IoT devices are typically connected directly to the organization’s networks yet are unmanaged. And different IoT devices have different hardware, operating systems, firmware, are unregulated, have unknown vulnerabilities, and are used past there, so-called, supported life. According to the 2020 Unit IoT Threat report, 98% of all IoT device traffic is unencrypted and 57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium or high severity attacks. 

One of the biggest fears associated with IoT devices is they can be weaponized for launching cyber-attacks. Cybercriminals know where to find vulnerabilities allowing them to attack VoIP phones, office printers, video decoders, and more to infiltrate corporate networks. With that, organizations are faced with assessing IoT devices risks and trying to implement security policies. 

To limit IoT security vulnerabilities organization’s must adapt their security policies and become aware of the IoT devices currently in their existence, isolate IoT devices on separate networks, restrict access, change credentials, and do regular updates and patches. Luckily for organizations, Fognigma is here to help! 

A Solution So Simple, Non-Technical Users Can Protect Their IoT Devices 

Fognigma’s patented portable misattribution device, Wicket, connects to a Fognigma VPN and completely protects IoT and other network-enabled devices. Whether organizations are looking to protect one VoIP phone system, multiple surveillance cameras, office printers, or multiple workstations, all they need to do is place a Wicket between their modem and router for complete security under a Fognigma network. 

Wickets are small, easy to carry, and simple to set up – allowing employees to protect their IoT devices at home and on travel as well as in the office. Everything on a Wicket is protected from observation, interception, and tracking. Wickets even obscure user’s physical location by connecting to  Fognigma Exit Points that are disposable and can be deleted and recreated with new IP addresses and new physical locations, with no user interaction required. 

Wickets are designed for complete ease of use – allowing even non-technical users to completely protect their IoT devices, anywhere. 

Did you know only about 12% of organizations felt prepared to shift their on-office workforce to work remotely? Most organizations lacked available technology, had unclear management structures, and weak risk management strategies in place. Now, fast-forward a few months and although many states are starting to lift their stay-at-home orders, organizations have decided to continue their work from home strategies. COVID-19 may have turned our world upside down, but it sure has accelerated the adoption of digital technology. Even though many organizations did not intended for this digital adoption, these practices are likely to stay. Here are a few ways COVID-19 is reshaping the workplace in organizations.

Less Employees In The Office

Aside from essential businesses, nearly all organizations shifted their workforce to work from home. And now that employees have gotten a taste of what remote work is like, many are asking to continue this structure. Since most organizations have realized employees are just as productive at home as they are in the office they are on board with this new work style. Additionally, by implementing more people to stay at home it reduces the number of people in the office which promotes employee safety. Organizations have started to implement flexible work schedules and unified communication and collaboration systems to keep their employees happy, healthy, and productive. 

Contactless 

Meeting rooms, shared offices, office lobbies, break rooms, company-wide coffee machines and fridges are germ magnets. With that, experts are predicting a huge increase in contactless amenities for workspaces.  This can include voice-activated lights, doors, coffee machines, and more. 

Focus on Digital Marketing Efforts 

Businesses that were focused on in-person sales and services needed to adapt to keep their business running. To do so, many decided to shift to marketing automation and digital marketing. Marketers were challenged to communicate digitally to retain loyal customers during this pandemic when in-person delivery was no longer an option. For example, trade shows were turned into virtual events and video marketing has increased even more than it already was. And this is just the beginning for digital marketing!

Modernized Workplace Communication and Collaboration

When more than half the US workforce was forced to work remotely, the need for modernized communication and collaboration had never been higher. This meant communication and collaboration between team members, leaders, and customers needed to be just as efficient remotely as it was in the office. Many organizations were challenged and are still challenged on coming up with an effective approach to help employees stay connected and do their jobs from their own homes. That’s where an all-in-one solution that allows organizations to message, file share, video conference, and secure their networks in one central location comes in. 

Bring Your Team Together – Virtually and Securely 

The time to adapt to the new normal telework lifestyle is now. It is imperative organizations improve their employee’s remote work experience with automation and new technologies. By doing this, organizations can ensure their team members have everything they need to do their jobs by providing effective communication and collaboration tools needed for virtual work. Unified communication and collaboration solutions, like Fognigma, combine secure networks, chat messaging, telephony, video conferencing, and file sharing into a single platform that allows employees to safely and securely do their job from anywhere, on any device. Solutions like this bring employees together no matter the distance. Providing your employees with this type of solution will significantly prepare organizations for this new normal remote workplace. 

Its imperative organizations realize fixating a threat is not the same as fighting it. According to the University of Maryland, hackers attack every 39 seconds on average 2,224 times a day. With that, cybersecurity is increasingly a top concern for businesses. 

To help minimize security vulnerabilities and protect user information and company data, many organizations invest in security solutions such as firewalls, VPNs, proxy servers, and other traditional secure access solutions. However, what they fail to realize is the flaws these solutions have which allows hackers to easily work around their security solutions and gain access to sensitive information. This problem is at an exponential growth rate with most businesses using cloud environments and enforcing mobility and always-on connectivity opening even more vulnerabilities for hackers. So, what’s the solution?  

Obfuscation

As cyber-attackers are becoming more sophisticated with their attacks, leaders need to learn to fight the attackers by embracing cyber defense and threat intelligence solutions that are just as flexible and sophisticated. That is where anonymizing, or obfuscating, sensitive data and user information comes to play. Obfuscation masks user and organizational data through a powerful transit cloud of encryption and IP hopping capabilities. How obfuscation works, is that a bundle of complex pathways and directory nodes send communications through multiple network hops that scramble user, location, IP address, and other data. This makes users completely invisible, untraceable, and their data unusable to potential attackers. 

Obfuscation does not just limit access to data, it makes the data unintelligible in cases where unauthorized access is gained. For example, with obfuscation, a Market Researcher who is in San Diego, CA, could show up as a Human Resource Representative in Madison, WI to a potential observer. 

Obfuscated Solutions For Your Cyber Security Strategy

Fognigma’s patented software solution creates on-demand virtual private networks (VPNs) that are completely secure, encrypted, invisible, and traceless. By using VMs leased from commercial cloud providers as Exit Points to the public internet, Fognigma allows your organization’s traffic to hide in the vast pool of IP addresses allocated to the millions of people who are using the Cloud at any one time, recycling IPs that have been used by others in the past and will be used by others in the future. All-access to the Fognigma network is protected by Fognigma’s cryptographic firewall solution, so your organization’s networks and nodes do not appear to exist when scanned, probed, or attacked. 

Additionally, Fognigma’s technology allows it to build networks out of resources leased from commercial cloud providers, without ever revealing to the providers or the networks themselves where your organization’s provisioning Fognigma engine is located. So no one, not even the cloud provider’s network admins, can trace your organization’s networks back to you. 

Fognigma VPNs are completed with obfuscated communication and collaboration solutions such as:

• • Video conferencing with screen-sharing and chat features
  • Private, encrypted telephony networks with conference calling, and chat server integration 
  • Secure file servers
  • Sandboxed VDIs with secure local file transfer, file server integration, and more 
  • End-to-end, user-specific message and file encryption 

Fognigma completely obfuscates your organization’s networks, communications, and collaborations. Contact us to start implementing obfuscation into your cybersecurity strategy today. 

Most businesses that support remote work are not entirely remote. According to Buffer, about 65% of businesses have a combination of office-based employees and remote employees. Businesses with this type of structure tend to face challenges such as unsecure and inefficient team communication and collaboration, outdated technology, unsecure network connections, insider threats, and more business security concerns due to their users being in various workspaces and not having the right tools to do their jobs.

How Can Businesses Solve These Problems? 

To continue business operations without security concerns, businesses must invest in proper technology that allows their employees to do their job effectively and securely from anywhere. Rather than businesses investing in different software solutions for different business needs such as messaging, telephony, video conferencing, VPNs, VDIs, and file sharing. They can make it easier on themselves and their employees by investing in a solution that allows them to do everything in one invisibile, secure workspace. Fognigma’s patented software solution spins up virtual private networks equipped with completely secure and encrypted communication and collaboration tools.

Even before COVID-19 sent non-essential businesses to work remotely, remote work has increasingly become the new normal. According to Global Workplace Analytics, in the U.S., 4.7 million employees (3.4% of the workforce) work from home at least half the week. While according to Owl Labs, 30% of people report working remotely full-time and 18% work remotely one to three times per week. These numbers are bound to increase as many businesses will continue to allow their employees to work remotely post COVID-19. Although studies indicate that remote work has many benefits, it also has its challenges.

Two of the biggest challenges of working remotely is effective communication and collaboration within organizations. When users are working in a single office environment, people and data are easily accessible. When users are working in their own environments, several variables make secure, effective communication and collaboration a logistical nightmare. Whether its outdated technology and software, unsecured home networks, or limited access to company information, effective communication and collaboration is not only difficult, it increases security threats. 

How can organizations move past these challenges? With Fognigma’s patented software solution, secure, effective communication and collaboration is not only solved, but it is made simple! Organizations can communicate and collaborate seamlessly and securely from anywhere, with anyone, and without leaving a trace that users were ever connected. 

ON-DEMAND, SECURE COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION TOOLS

With Fognigma, you can create and deploy custom VPNs in minutes, complete with secure communication and collaboration solutions. Using simple software or hardware solutions, users can secure their connections and safely access resources, allowing them to communicate and collaborate with other uses whether they are working remotely at home or traveling. Fognigma’s communication and collaboration solutions include: 

Video Conferencing 

Fognigma’s video conferencing solution is set up with push-button simplicity. Users can create custom URLs for each conference for ease of use and obfuscation of participants’ locations. Additionally, video conferences are completely protected with end-to-end, cascading AES-256 encryption, and are equipped with chat and screen sharing capabilities. 

Encrypted Telephony

Fognigma’s secure telephony solution wraps VoIP calls in two layers of AES-256 encryption for end-to-end protection. All calls work on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices and extend capability to over 150 data centers in over 50 regions around the globe. Fognigma’s telephony is simple to set up. Users can create call chains, conference calls, and telephone numbers in a matter of minutes. 

Secure File Servers

Fognigma’s secure file servers are entirely encrypted and a safe, secure place to store company policies, intellectual property, company communication logs, marketing collateral, and many other important company files. Fognigma’s solution is designed to allow users to access necessary files from anywhere without anyone else knowing where they are. Administrators can control which users in the company access which folders and files. Additionally, special links can be created to share files or folders with parties outside of your organization.

Sandboxed VDIs

Fognigma’s sandboxed VDIs include all the standard VDI features and more. Fognigma’s VDIs are proven to be 50% faster and more responsive, come with secure local USB capabilities, have dynamic exit switching, nomadic profile ability, drag-and-drop file sharing within VDIs, DNS routing at the exit, proxies audio, multiple language support, and have access to other Fognigma components. 

User-Specific Message and File Encryption

Fognigma’s communication solution simplifies and automates end-to-end encryption, so that content never exists in the clear outside of the user’s device. The manual steps normally associated with private key encryption is transparently handled, allowing users to maintain proper security practices without needing specialized knowledge or extensive training, and without interrupting their regular workflow. A user’s private keys are stored only on the user’s devices and are never shared within the network or the server, protecting your organization from internal and external threats. Encryption keys are specific to each user and each individual interaction; even other users on the same server will be unable to decrypt them. Only the intended recipient’s device will have access. 

Fognigma was purposely designed to be owned and operated by the customer, giving organizations all the tools they need to securely and effectively communicate and collaborate wherever they are. With Fognigma, communication and collaboration is not only secure, its simple. Contact us to schedule a demo today. 

Meetings are an everyday part of professionals’ workdays. Whether you are a large or small enterprise, meetings are key for effective communication and collaboration.

Even before the recent COVID-19 pandemic, meetings have increasingly become virtual due to users traveling, working remotely, or meeting with external parties. However, virtual meetings can severely limit productivity when there are internet connection delays, compatibility issues, and security concerns.

With Fognigma’s video conferencing solution, meetings are faster, entirely secure, and easier to use. Users simply click the designated meeting URL and enter in their user credentials created by the organization’s administrator. Video conferences live inside encrypted, invisible networks ensuring organizations complete security. 

Fognigma’s video conferencing solution includes these features:

1. Compatibility With Any Device: Using Fognigma’s video solution, users can virtually communicate face-to-face using any device running any major operating system, eliminating the risk of compatibility issues. 
2. Chat and Screen Share: To maximize communication and collaboration in virtual meetings, Fognigma’s video conferencing solution has chat and screen share capabilities. 
3. Global Accessibility: Whether your users are in the same office or on the other side of the world, Fognigma’s video conferences can be accessed. 
4. Encryption: Fognigma’s video conferences live inside networks completely protected by FIPS 140-2 validated, cascading AES-256 encryption. 
5. Entirely on Servers Owned by You: Video conferences live on servers owned entirely by your organization. No one else runs your servers, meaning no one else has access to see your private company information, whether it is shared on a file server or communicated in a video conference. 
6. Completely Private and Invisible: With Fognigma, there is no man-in-the-middle controlling your video conferences. What is said, who said it and where the conference lives, is completely private to only those involved. Video conferences are entirely invisible to the outside world, only the parties involved know a video conference is happening.

Fognigma’s revolutionary patented software redefines meeting space by providing a secure, invisible, traceless space for enterprises to communicate and collaborate. Contact us to learn more about the communication and collaboration tools we offer. 

Even before the COVID-19 work from home order, the business world has increasingly become a remote occupation. Whether organizations let their employees work remotely a few days out of the week, work completely remote, or have employees that travel frequently, a proper Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution can allow organizations to seamlessly maintain the benefits and feel a single office location offers. 

Learn more about how Fognigma VDIs can secure and unify your organization, no matter where your users are. 

Benefits of Fognigma VDIs

Anonymous Access: Fognigma VDIs allow users to browse the internet in a sandboxed computing environment that protects their actual computer from attack. 

Disposability: When VDIs are no longer in use, they can be destroyed in just a few clicks, and leave absolutely no footprint that links users’ actual computer to the work that was being done. 

Centralized File Sharing: Users can save files and profile information on one VDI and then access them later on another as if it were the exact same one. Any data or files downloaded to a VDI can be virus-scanned in the safe sandboxed environment of the VDI itself, before being transferred to the user’s local computer or a file server.  

USB Capabilities: Fognigma VDIs have local USB compatibility with most peripherals, including Custom Access Card (CAC) readers, printers, keyboards, and more. 

Customization: Fognigma VDIs can be integrated with custom programs, allowing businesses to tailor the sandboxed environments to their needs. 

Proxied Audio: Audio transmitted through the VDI is filtered to ensure no IP leaks occur. 

How can Organizations Benefit from using Fognigma VDIs While Working Remote? 

Fognigma VDIs are Easily Deployable: Organizations can have VDIs in just the click of a mouse for any of their users. 

Paired with Fognigma Secure Communication and Collaboration Tools: Fognigma’s video conferenicng, file servers, and encrypted messaging components can be used within Fognigma VDIs which allows organizations to remotely communicate and collaborate in a secured, sandboxed environment, just as if they were in the office. 

Burned After Use: When organizations VDIs are no longer needed, they are fully destroyed, and then can be spun back up in a click of a mouse. 

Fognigma VDIs live inside of Fognigma’s Virtual Private Networks. These networks are entirely controlled by your business, invisible to anyone (trying) to watch your operations, are completely disposable, and fully encrypted.

Fognigma VDIs give businesses everything they need to protect their users, communications and data.  Contact us to learn more or schedule a demo.