Together with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a series of practice guides that focuses on data integrity: the property that data has not been altered in an unauthorized manner. Tripwire is very proud to have contributed and collaborated with other technology vendors in the development of these practice guides.

Challenges to Data Integrity

Destructive malware, ransomware, malicious insider activity, and even honest mistakes all set the stage for why organizations need to quickly detect and respond to an event that impacts data integrity. Businesses must be confident that these events are detected quickly and responded to appropriately.

Attacks against an organization’s data can compromise emails, employee records, financial records, and customer information—impacting business operations, revenue, and reputation. Examples of data integrity attacks include unauthorized insertion, deletion, or modification of data to corporate information such as emails, employee records, financial records, and customer data.

Some organizations have experienced systemic attacks that force operations to cease. One variant of a data integrity attack–ransomware–encrypts data, leaving it modified in an unusable state. Other data integrity attacks may be more dynamic, targeting machines, spreading laterally across networks, and continuing to cause damage throughout an organization. In either case, behaviors are exhibited—such as files inexplicably becoming encrypted or network activity—that provide an ability to immediately detect the occurrence and respond in a timely fashion to curtail the ramifications.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework

NIST published version 1.1 of the Cybersecurity Framework in April 2018 to provide guidance on protecting and developing resiliency for critical infrastructure and other sectors. The framework core contains five functions, listed below.

Full Framework

  • Identify – Develop an organizational understanding to manage cybersecurity risk to systems, people, assets, data, and capabilities.
  • Protect – Develop and implement appropriate safeguards to ensure (Read more...)