Cybersecurity can often seem to present impossible challenges as organizations strive to repel attack attempts. But, really, cybersecurity’s is about risk management — layering on controls to reduce risk to an acceptable level.

Cybersecurity risk management requires a multi-faceted approach, and organizations should evaluate risk and choose the appropriate option(s) to address it. After a thorough risk assessment, the organization can choose to:

  • Accept the risk: Organizations can acknowledge the risk and choose not to resolve, transfer, or mitigate it if it is not feasible.
  • Avoid or eliminate the risk: This option may involve elimination of the risky service or feature to remove the risk from the equation.
  • Mitigate the risk: This option is where technical and administrative controls are implemented to reduce the likelihood or impact of risk.
  • Transfer the risk: This option assigns or moves the risk to a third-party via cyber liability insurance.

This blog post will focus on the option of transferring the risk. For people new to cybersecurity insurance, a brief primer might be helpful. Cybersecurity insurance is typically a “standalone” line of coverage that is separate from other general, property, employee, or professional insurances a business might have. It’s designed as a backstop to mitigate losses around cyber incidents, which can include data breaches, business interruption, and network damage. Data breach and liability coverage provide protection against cyber incident losses that businesses may suffer directly or cause to others. In addition to legal fees and expenses, cyber insurance typically helps with:

  • Customer data breach notifications
  • Identity recovery protection
  • Compromised data recovery
  • Repairing damaged computer systems
  • Credit monitoring and services
  • Extortion paid to recover locked files in a ransomware attack
  • Lost income from a network outage
  • Lawsuits related to customer or employee privacy and security
  • Regulatory fines

A lack of appropriate security controls contributes to many incidents, and insurance markets generally require minimum security standards for coverage. On top of meeting specific requirements, the policies encourage the implementation of best practices, and premiums are based on an insured’s level of self-protection. Insurers reward businesses for adopting and enforcing strong security practices and preventive measures in return for the potential of more coverage at more affordable rates. A requirement can be a technical, administrative, or physical control that mitigates risks associated with authentication, endpoints, malware, passwords, etc.

Citrix integrates with many of the solutions that address security control requirements with its approach to securing the workforce, their access, and the apps they access. Keep reading to learn about security controls and IT best practices and the corresponding Citrix capability solutions that can be implemented in Citrix environments:

Multifactor Authentication

Requirement: Multifactor authentication (MFA) for remote access, privileged access, partner and vendor access, cloud resources, and email access. This requirement applies to both on-prem and off-prem privileged accounts and cloud administrator accounts, as well as email on non-corporate devices.

Citrix Capability: Citrix goes beyond MFA with adaptive authentication, a critical security control to reduce risk across an enterprise. This control ensures that users not only know a password and a secure token, but also enables IT to use contextual information about the user, location, and device for setting authentication and authorization policies.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Secure Private Access

Endpoint Detection and Response

Requirement: Using an endpoint detection and response (EDR) tool and/or next generation anti-virus (NGAV) provides the ability to isolate and contain malware on user and server machines.

Citrix Capability: Citrix Secure Private Access provides capabilities to scan an end user device before and after a user session is established. Based on the results of the user location and the device posture assessment, an admin can define how they want to authenticate and authorize different levels of access within their apps. These policies can be implemented for all apps, including SaaS, private web apps, private TCP/UDP apps, and DaaS apps. Citrix is compatible with many advanced EDR solutions for endpoints and servers. Citrix Secure Internet Access provides protection from malware such as ransomware and other zero-day attacks.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Secure Private Access, Citrix Secure Internet Access, and Citrix ADC. Please check out the Citrix Ready Marketplace for compatible EDR solutions.

SIEM Tool (Security Information and Event Management)

Requirement: This enables logging for all systems, software, and perimeter devices and sends logs to a centralized logging platform or security incident event manager (SIEM) for storage and threat correlation.

Citrix Capability: Citrix Secure Private Access offers complete, end-to-end monitoring and visibility of user traffic to IT sanctioned apps. Customers who have multiple access solutions will benefit from having a single dashboard that helps simplify monitoring and that helps unify siloed environments. With insights into applications, files, devices, and networks, Citrix Analytics for Security helps automate security enforcements based on user behavior and anomalies detected in the system. This helps reduce manual work for IT, provides timely enforcement, and reduces risk of unauthorized breaches. Citrix is compatible with many centralized logging platforms and security incident event managers (SIEM) used for storage and threat correlation. Integrate Citrix Analytics for Security with Microsoft and Splunk to export and correlate the users’ data from your Citrix IT environment and get deeper insights into your organization’s security posture.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Secure Private Access, Citrix Secure Internet Access, Citrix Analytics for Security, and Citrix ADC. Please check out the Citrix Ready Marketplace for compatible SIEM solutions.

Privileged Access

Requirement: Enforce privileged access security measures through an integrated PAM tool.

Citrix Capability: For Citrix Workspace environments, organizations can add a layer of security to IT-sanctioned apps on top of just single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Citrix Secure Private Access enables IT to apply granular security controls to prevent data exfiltration.

Citrix is compatible with many Privilege Access Management tools used for managing access privileges.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Secure Private Access, Citrix Secure Internet Access, and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Please check out the Citrix Ready Marketplace for compatible PAM solutions.

Patching

Requirement: Demonstrate capacity to apply critical security patches immediately, particularly in response to high-profile zero-day exploits.

Citrix Capability: Citrix greatly benefits an organization’s ability to implement an up-to-date patch management program. A Citrix architecture with centralized delivery of apps and desktops accelerates software updates in a timely manner. With Citrix, patching efforts address operating system-level updates and commonly used software within the environment. For services within Citrix Cloud, Citrix does software life cycle management, auto software upgrades, config backup, config replication across multiple nodes. Citrix is compatible with many patch and update management solutions used to address critical updates.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix ADC

Backups

Requirement: Perform regular, air-gapped, and encrypted backups for sensitive data and critical applications.

Citrix Capability: Citrix architecture helps create an air-gapped environment for encrypted backups. Apps and their data are centralized and kept off endpoints and easily backed up and encrypted. This allows for quick testing and recovery. Citrix is compatible with many solutions used to back up and encrypt user and app data.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix ADC

Remove End-of-Life (EOL) and End-of-Support (EOS) Devices and Software

Requirement: Keep EOL (end-of-life/unsupported) software segregated from the network, isolated from internet access, and decommission in a timely manner with extended support purchased where applicable.

Citrix Capability:­­­­ Citrix accelerates an organization’s ability to retire end-of-life or unsupported legacy operating systems by decoupling the application and user layers from the operating system layer.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Block Internet Access to Vulnerable Protocols

Requirement: Block remote access ports at the firewall or network gateway. Remote access protocols are commonly abused on the internet in ransomware cases. Block desktop access from the public internet to internal network.

Citrix Capability: Reduce your organization’s chances of being hit by a ransomware attack by implementing ZTNA via Citrix (in addition to the MFA requirement). Citrix Secure Private Access provides zero trust network access (ZTNA) to all private corporate applications whether these applications are web, SaaS, TCP, UDP, DaaS, or VDI and virtual applications, and are deployed on premises or on any public cloud and accessed from within or from outside Citrix Workspace. Citrix Secure Internet Access prevents malware, ransomware, and other zero-day attacks with SSL inspection.

Citrix Technology: Citrix Secure Private Access and Citrix Secure Internet Access

Citrix Secure Access

Citrix helps organizations add the necessary controls to secure their workforce against internet-based threats, secure their access to IT sanctioned apps, and secure backend apps and APIs.

Citrix can replace your existing on-prem virtual private network (VPN) and secure web gateway (SWG) solutions. It provides a cloud-native offering for users to remotely connect to any on-premises application without the need for a VPN plugin on the end user device, with or without the Citrix Workspace app. This is a more secure way to access IT sanctioned applications and does not require a Layer 3 access to the entire network, providing a better security approach.

Citrix solves many of our challenges with providing access to internal resources for external users

  • No network device to manage, maintain and secure
  • No public IP address required as the cloud services can contact internal resources via the cloud connectors
  • No firewall rules required as the cloud connector and virtual app/desktop resources establish outbound connections to the cloud-based services (no inbound communication required)
  • With a global deployment, organizations are automatically routed/rerouted to the optimal gateway service, greatly simplifying configurations required by the organization
  • No changes to the underlying data center infrastructure

Secure Your Workforce — Citrix Secure Internet Access

Citrix Secure Internet Access shifts the focus from defending perimeters to following users to ensure internet access is secure regardless of location. Citrix Secure Internet Access uses a zero trust role-based policy model. One of the core goals of zero trust is to assign policies and manage access to resources based on a user’s role and identity, and this is built into the solution’s policy engine. Citrix Secure Internet Access delivers comprehensive internet security to all users in all locations with:

  • Complete web and content filtering
  • Malware protection
  • Protection for outdated browsers and operating systems (OS)
  • SSL/TLS traffic management
  • Cloud access security broker (CASB) for cloud apps and social media controls
  • Real-time advanced reporting
  • Flexible data traffic redirection for any device, anywhere
  • Integration with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

To learn more, please read the Tech Brief: Citrix Secure Internet Access in the Citrix Tech Zone.

Secure Your Access — Citrix Secure Private Access

Citrix Secure Private Access is a cloud-native, fully integrated security stack that enables secure access to corporate apps and protects users and networks from threats. Citrix Secure Private Access enables IT to implement a holistic zero trust strategy across users, apps, files, and endpoints.

  • Zero trust network access (ZTNA) to all IT sanctioned applications
  • Adaptive authentication and adaptive access policies
  • Safely implement a BYOD program by protecting sensitive corporate data accessed from unmanaged devices
  • Protection against web-borne threats
  • Complete end to end monitoring of traffic across all apps
  • Automatically detect and defend against potential risk

To learn more, please read Tech Brief: Secure Private Access in the Citrix Tech Zone.

Secure Your Apps/APIs — Citrix ADC and Citrix Web App Firewall

Hosted in the cloud or on premises, Citrix Web App Firewall protects against known and unknown attacks, including application-layer and zero-day threats. Large enterprises may have hundreds or thousands of applications online that need to be secured, so matching attacks against unique web app flows to different applications at scale is a challenge. Citrix Web App Firewall detects and mitigates online threats around the clock, enabling SecOps teams to focus more on strategic security activities and address vulnerabilities elsewhere in the infrastructure.

  • Protections against OWASP’s Top 10 web app security risks and expands on those with ever-growing security definitions and countermeasures from multiple threat research sources.
  • Citrix Web App Firewall automates protection against internet-borne attacks keeping traffic at the cloud or on-prem edge.
  • Citrix Web App Firewall works on both a positive and negative attack model, identifying zero-day threats by looking for abnormal activity patterns and identifying previously documented attack signatures.
  • Distributed denial of service (DDOS) protection guards against internet-borne attacks that seek to disrupt access

To learn more, please read the Tech Brief: Citrix Web App and API Protection service in the Citrix Tech Zone.

Citrix secures access to any app, over any connection, no matter where your users are working. The Citrix approach combines unified access and unified security to help you solve performance and access-related experience challenges and IT security challenges. Learn more about Citrix’s secure access solutions for zero trust access to all apps.