Application Security Review

Business Case:

The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) has been maintaining and managing user access to the Wage File System (WFS) since its inception in the mid 80’s. New regulations, best practices and standards addressing emerging threats which include identity theft, have modified the security landscape. The VEC decided to conduct a security review in order to gain an understanding of the Wage Files System’s exposure to new security threats and what could be done to remediate any risk encountered.

Solution: 

With the data being accessed from three different channels and by more than 6,200 users (excluding VEC users) every quarter, the review had to use a holistic approach and look at all of the main components: the Inter Agency Agreements, the WFS itself and the External Users process and procedures.

In three months, one of our Security Consultants executed a full analysis of the application including, but not limited to:

  • Identity Management processes
  • Log and Access Analysis
  • Support and Configuration  Management
  • Customer Agreements and Usage Statistics
  • Multi Channel Access Analysis

The resulting security review listed all of the findings along their associated vulnerabilities, risk ratings and recommended remediation approach.

Tools: 
  • Microsoft Access
  • Microsoft Office
Results: 
  • Comprehensive security report with findings and action items providing a full security status picture of the target application
  • Whenever possible, the findings were immediately remediated by CapTech thus addressing some 15% of all findings
  • Log analysis database with automated audit letters to be sent to end users increasing Internal Audit’s capabilities