It’s critical for IT security teams to stay vigilant not only when it comes to major security issues, but also to minor challenges and always following security best practices.

Putting yourself in the shoes of a hacker is beneficial. Sometimes you have to poke holes to point out flaws. Get together with your team and discuss system vulnerabilities, potential threats against your organization’s data, etc.

People having different perspectives is a huge edge because it may lead to identification of exploitable security issues and addressing these issues will eventually improve the state of security of your company.

As IT security threats evolve, chief information security officers and their teams must be prepared for everything from zero-day exploits, deepfakes, supply chain threats, malware, etc.

By ensuring visibility across your infrastructure, encouraging employee training, and supporting bug bounty programs, your organization will improve its security posture and be better prepared to overcome security obstacles.

The No.1 Security Ally Is Your Team

Recent breaches have shown us that the level of sophistication and damage caused by malicious actors doesn’t slow down. Unfortunately, hackers who breached casino giants MGM, Caesars few months ago also hit other international organizations over the past few years and allegedly collected more than $300 million in ransom so far.

So, if hackers are staying up to date on the latest threats and risks, it goes without saying that we should as well. Creating a “security champions” program across the company is a great way to instill security. Therefore, you should have a team member from your legal department, sales, finance, etc., who can connect with your security team and be a liaison for security.

A widely known saying is you need to create a “human firewall”.  One way to help this is to implement Security Awareness Training to help your team understand proper passwords, types of phishing attacks, etc.

Bug Bounty Contests

The easiest way to access ethical hacking is to organize bug bounty contests. Executives should reward good behavior.

Encouraging employees to attend hackathons, even if it is only to observe or learn at first, is very important. It’s one step in the right direction for cybersecurity education.

The increased need for internal cybersecurity education and support for bug bounty programs will continue growing in order to keep up with rising threats.

For hands-on IT security learning, you should arrange company-wide competitions and games that encourage employees to figure out how cybercrime could potentially harm and ways to protect themselves and the overall organization against such threats.

Simulations are very effective for preparing your staff against a real breach. Teamwork is a valuable resource in developing and implementing a viable cybersecurity solution.

Many companies combine bug bounty programs with third-party penetration testing. Every organization should have a bug bounty program, but if you’re not ready yet, just make sure you have a way for users to report security issues to you.

In addition, there are automation tools that can perform Penetration Tests, a platform that combines the knowledge, methodology, processes, and toolsets of a hacker.  To put it in simple terms, the automated application will try to hack your network to test your security.

Increase Visibility

With 93% of malware hiding behind encrypted traffic and only 22% of organizations claiming that can prevent malicious access to their service accounts, it’s no wonder that there were more ransomware attacks in the first half of 2023 than in all of 2022. Once a cybercriminal has made their way into the network, you must act within a limited time interval. Clear visibility over network traffic will help stop the cybercriminal from gaining access to company data.

Without full visibility, there will undoubtedly be a way in for hackers without your team spotting them because they typically infiltrate an organization’s network via hidden or sneaky entry points. This way, cyber criminals continue to hide within your network and grant themselves access to the organization’s sensitive information.

Implementing a Security Operations Center along with Endpoint Detection and Response and/or Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools can increase visibility into your organization.

If IT security professionals can better understand “the hacker’s approach” and their “modus operandi”, they will be able to protect their own systems, employees, and customer data.

Traditional IT security tools like antiviruses or firewalls function based on a predetermined structure. Such tools come equipped with a list of malware types or blacklisted websites, which must be regularly updated – a system with obvious limitations.

AI combines large data sets and utilizes them based on intuitive processing algorithms. It helps automate operations by processing large amounts of data faster than humans ever could.

Today’s cybersecurity tools integrate such capabilities intended to work with big data.

Artificial intelligence is generally used in cybersecurity for behavioral analysis, threat detection, vulnerability assessment, and incident response.

AI algorithms can analyze network traffic data, learn what normal network traffic patterns look like and based on that can detect patterns and anomalies indicating suspicious attempts and attacks.

AI-powered behavior analysis is used to successfully indicate malicious activities. This makes user activity monitoring and threat detection more effective.

Also, AI-based systems can be used to automatically respond to various threats by limiting user access, terminating connections, quarantining infected devices, disabling user accounts, etc.

Proven Benefits

AI requires preparation and providing the learning models with data to be used as a reference when identifying patterns, but the benefits are obvious. Here are just some of them:

Self-improving models

AI models utilize machine learning to analyze user behavior. After an anomaly is discovered, the system triggers various response actions. Such a system refines its model over time, making it increasingly more accurate.

Secured authentication

The IT security industry is moving away from old security methods such as user/password combinations and looking for ways to make IT security smarter. AI is a valuable addition as it can be integrated with multiple authentication layers to verify a user’s identity.

Using fingerprint scanners, facial recognition, and other AI solutions will help identify fraudulent login attempts, creating a much tighter security mechanism.

Better vulnerability management

Artificial intelligence solutions analyze existing security measures to identify potential gaps, enabling organizations to focus on the most critical areas. This makes troubleshooting more efficient and provides insight into the circumstances faster than any human could.

Improved security-related processes

There are some cybersecurity tasks which are repetitive and monotonous, tasks that may slip by. Fortunately, AI-driven tools can perform all those recurring tasks automatically and only require confirmation before making any changes.

Improved efficiency

Human attention is limited, while AI can cover multiple tasks simultaneously. AI solutions are both time and cost effective.

Balanced workloads

Skilled work isn’t cheap to hire or maintain, so it is in a business’s best interest to ensure the IT security staff’s experience is used on complex tasks. While AI can take care of most manual tasks, human personnel can develop other ways to improve the organization’s cybersecurity posture.

AI-powered Cybersecurity Solutions

Today’s AI capabilities include advanced models allowing them to process large amounts of data in real-time. Here are a few technologies that integrate AI for cybersecurity.

Endpoint Security

Endpoint security uses AI to tack and analyze processes on laptops, desktops, and mobile devices allowing your IT security team to shut down threats before they cause any damage.

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

AI-powered intrusion detection systems are capable of autonomously identifying threats using machine learning models. With enough data to work with and professional training, such models can be very accurate when dealing with potential threats and can help identify signs of intrusion early on.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Data loss prevention tools automatically encrypt data before it is transmitted or restrict any unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information. DLP tools are now using AI and machine learning to improve their functionalities and performance.

DLP tools monitor, analyze, and successfully detect potential data exfiltration attempts preventing unauthorized or accidental data leaks.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

AI-powered SIEM tools use behavior analytics and cybersecurity threat feeds to detect abnormal activities. SIEM solutions automate many time-consuming manual tasks such as suspicious activity detection allowing faster incident response.

In Summary

AI can detect in real time potential vulnerabilities within systems and networks, alert security teams, shut down network parts, etc. Unfortunately, cybersecurity threats are increasingly more complex, which is why static models are too slow in today’s cyber landscape.

In today’s dynamic business world, many users are no longer confined to an office. However, the need for secure and convenient access has grown due to emerging cybersecurity threats.

For cybersecurity professionals, it is crucial to understand which remote access security technologies can enable employees to increase productivity, while protecting the organization from malicious actors. For this purpose, companies use remote access security solutions which allow users to authenticate and access business resources from outside the organization’s private network.

A clever remote access solution will always involve the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) functionality to verify the remote user’s identity and the Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality to simplify the remote access process and improve user experience.

Multi-Factor Authentication

The MFA functionality helps organizations defend against credential theft attempts and user impersonation by verifying and confirming the user’s identity.

With MFA, a remote user is required to present several pieces of evidence to gain access to a network or cloud-based application or system. For instance, some information the user knows, like a user/password combination, or something the user possesses, such as an access card or a mobile device for fingerprint or facial scan recognition. Some MFA solutions also take the user’s location into account when applying the access factors.

NOTE! Many compliance standards require MFA for privileged remote access.

Single Sign-On

The single sign-on functionality allows remote users to access multiple applications and systems using just a set of credentials (username and password) or a one-time password. Therefore, single sign-on boosts the user experience by preventing password fatigue and mitigates risk by eliminating reckless user behavior like writing passwords on a piece of paper or using the same credentials for many applications or services.

Adaptive Authentication

Some of the latest remote access security solutions support adaptive authentication which uses relevant data such as the IP address, the device type, user location, time-of-day, etc. and business logic to determine which authentication factors should be applied to a specific remote user in a specific situation. For example, an employee can easily load a business application from a trusted home desktop just by entering the username and password, but to access the same app from a foreign country, the user might also have to enter a one-time access code sent to his mobile phone.

Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Many companies rely on third-party organizations to manage users’ secure remote access. These organizations need privileged access to corporate IT systems to maintain and update access data.

Privileged access management (PAM) solutions allow organizations to securely extend privileged access to third-party vendors without installing any endpoint software, or using a VPN, etc. Such solutions utilize multi-factor authentication to validate and authorize third-party clients.

Best Practices

Enforce a set of protocols that allow admins to control sessions and restrict remote users from certain activities. So, make sure that only authorized users can access and manage resources remotely.

Always apply the least privilege policy to ensure that employees and third parties are only granted the minimum access required to perform their tasks. It is critical to know who or what is requesting access, why, and from where.

Monitor logs and user behavior in real time to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access. A complex cybersecurity audit will help identify vulnerabilities and trace suspicious sessions.

Train your employees and ensure they strictly follow the security standards before connecting to the enterprise network. Conduct regular training on the importance of basic cybersecurity policies involving the integrity, confidentiality, accessibility, and availability of critical data.

Final Thoughts

Remote access security solutions allow teleworkers to safely utilize business applications and services. Contact StratusPointIT and find out how to better protect your organization against identity theft.