This type of cyberattack occurs when the perpetrator gains illegitimate access to your organization’s digital infrastructure just by utilizing a third-party system (provider or partner) that is already connected to your infrastructure.
Basically, because the third party has been granted the rights to use and modify areas of your network, your applications, or sensitive data, the hacker has to penetrate the third party’s defenses to infiltrate your system.
Software supply chains are vulnerable because modern software is not written from scratch. It involves many pre-existing components, such as third-party APIs, open-source code, etc.
Supply chain attacks are diverse, often impacting large companies, as was the case last year with Okta and JetBrains in October, Norton in May, and Airbus in January.
How Do Supply Chain Attacks Work?
For a successful supply chain attack, hackers must find ways to either insert malicious code into software or compromise network protocols.
Many of the products or services that get compromised come from trusted vendors making it easier for supply chain attackers to infiltrate the targeted systems, underscoring the value of attacking the supply chain. Ironically, they may do so using software updates which are often designed to mitigate security vulnerabilities.
Therefore, supply chain attacks are some of the most difficult threats to prevent because they take advantage of inherent trust. Mitigating and remediating a supply chain attack isn’t as simple as installing an antivirus or resetting your operating system because these attacks are usually well disguised.
Common Sources of Supply Chain Attacks
Commercial software
Because hundreds of organizations may use the same software solutions, a supply chain attacker who penetrates a software company’s system or compromises the integrity of their product can eventually gain access to a great number of targets.
Open-source software
When it comes to open-source software solutions, any developer can contribute to the making of a program. Using this free access, hackers may implement vulnerabilities into open-source solutions.
Even though other members of the development community can see and evaluate the code deployed by perpetrators, they may not know what to look for, allowing hackers to initiate a variety of vulnerabilities.
Foreign-sourced software
In some countries where the government exercises granular control over what certain private companies produce, software products may contain malicious code allowing the beneficiary to understand more about the targets’ systems.
Types of Supply Chain Attacks
Based on the targeted software, there are several types of attacks, all of which involve creating or exploiting security weaknesses.
Compromised software development tools – attackers utilize these tools to implement security weaknesses in the development process.
Preinstalled malware – hackers introduce malware on mobile devices such as smartphones, cameras, etc., and when the target connects the infected device to a system or network, the malicious code is activated.
Stolen certificates – that perpetrators use to disguise malicious code under the appearance of a company’s certificate.
Compromised firmware – attackers can include malicious code in firmware to gain illegal access to a system.
The Supply Chain Security
Such cyberattacks are very sophisticated, therefore organizations often employ the power of behavioral-based analysis to determine indicators of attack to successfully defend their assets.
Mitigating the risks is paramount, consequently you should consider utilizing advanced security solutions such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions along with a Security Operations Center (SOC) which include 24/7 intelligent threat detection systems which collects logs, makes statistical correlations, analyzes threat alerts across your network, combines data from several different sources to help security teams remediate issues in a timely manner.
In some cases, all relevant analytics, threat intelligence, and forensic data should be passed to professional analysts, who classify alerts and determine the appropriate response to reduce the risks/effects of incidents. This is known as managed detection and response (MDR).
These services combine threat intelligence, advanced analytics, and human expertise in security incident discovery, investigation, and response deployed at the host and network levels to help keep your organization secure and reduce the ability for malicious activities to move laterally in your environment.
Enhance your readiness with proactive services to improve not only the supply chain security, but your organization’s overall security posture. For more information, please reach out to us. A member of our team will get in touch with you in one business day.
The Annual IT Security Assessment
/in IT Security /by MihaiRegular IT security assessments identify and address any weaknesses in networks, systems, and applications, to protect the organization from potential cyber threats.
Such assessments are essential for organizations of all sizes.
Why Are Security Assessments So Important?
Security assessments are crucial because they objectively evaluate the state of security of an organization identifying potential security flaws, weak points, risk areas, gaps in security measures and also help businesses develop cybersecurity plans to address such weaknesses.
By reviewing and assessing current security measures, organizations will ensure that their policies and procedures are optimal and security focused.
The annual cybersecurity assessment is a critical process for any business also because it can determine additional security measures that need to be implemented to keep all networks and systems secure.
Identify Vulnerabilities
The first thing that needs to be done is to try to identify all the risks that could affect your business based on industry. This will help the designated team to assess the likelihood of an attack, the reasons behind it, and the level of impact. Afterwards, the team will have to document and track all these vulnerabilities.
Identify Internal & External Threats
Many types of cyber threats can affect your organization at any given moment. Therefore, it is essential to identify which threats are more likely to affect your organization, both internal and external.
NOTE! By understanding the vulnerabilities and threats similar organizations are facing, you can improve the IT security posture of your organization.
Determine Potential Impact
Determining, based on analysis, the likelihood of each threat and the potential impact it could have on your business is mandatory. This can be assessed by studying the occurrence of certain types of cyberattacks and the impact each attack has had or could possibly have.
Prioritize Your Resources
Next, you should prioritize your resources accordingly by tracking how often each type of threat occurs. It is crucial to develop and implement a cybersecurity strategy to include the best solutions and mitigations based on the type of cybersecurity incident.
Review Privileged User Access
Privileged user access audit involves a systematic evaluation of the access rights and permissions granted to privileged users within an organization’s digital infrastructure.
Assess Security Services
There is a plethora of IT security services available. However, every business is different and there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for cybersecurity. A professional IT security team can evaluate your needs and vulnerabilities and suggest the appropriate solutions according to best practices.
Assess Backup Services
Prioritize a backup service that offers both reliability and security and the features your business needs at affordable rates.
MFA/Passkey Assessment & Recommendations
For long-lasting security, it is vital to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all user accounts and devices. By utilizing a combination of different authentication factors like biometrics or one-time passcodes, you will create layers of security that will make it harder for hackers to gain unauthorized access.
Regularly monitoring and analyzing authentication logs for suspicious activities will provide an additional layer of protection.
Review Patch Management
Patch management tasks include deciding what patches are appropriate, ensuring that patches are installed properly, thoroughly testing systems after installation, documenting all associated procedures, etc.
A comprehensive cybersecurity assessment involves accurately determining your systems’ patch status.
Scan and Test Your Environment
Performing a vulnerability scan will help identify risk and attack vectors across networks, hardware, software, and systems. While a vulnerability scan uncovers risks, an internal and external network penetration test attempts to exploit those risks by trying to hack the network. Performing these scans and tests will help identify areas of improvement and investments needed to protect your infrastructure.
Don’t Settle For Good Enough
Unfortunately, cyber threats will never disappear, but by making cybersecurity a top priority, you will be able to safeguard your business assets both effectively and efficiently.
By identifying and documenting vulnerabilities, risks and likelihoods with regular cybersecurity assessments, you will be ahead of the game in protecting your organization from emerging cyber threats.
We can help you protect your sensitive data, implement proactive security maintenance as we perform vulnerability assessments and management to improve your IT security posture. Keeping your enterprise, your people, and your data safe is our commitment.
SMTP Smuggling: Overview
/in IT Security /by MihaiThe landscape of cybersecurity is evolving, so modern threats like SMTP smuggling are a stark reminder of the importance of staying up to date on defending against such cyberattacks. But what is SMTP smuggling, how does it work?
What is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol?
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a TCP/IP network protocol utilized to send emails between different servers. SMTP email clients include Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.
Basically, after an email is composed, using a client such as Gmail or Outlook, it is delivered to an SMTP server, which verifies the recipient’s domain to find the appropriate email server to deliver the email to. The SMTP server at the recipient’s domain processes the email, and either delivers the message or uses SMTP to forward it via another network before delivery.
What is SMTP Smuggling?
Security is the biggest problem with the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol because it lacks authentication. With the right tools, hackers can simply choose the sender’s name, so that their messages appear to have been sent from legitimate sources. They try to convince the recipients to take specific actions, such as clicking phishing links, downloading files infected with malware, sending sensitive information, etc.
The goal is to trick the recipient’s server into a different interpretation of the end of a message using SMTP commands so that the email appears as two separate messages.
How Does SMTP Smuggling Work?
To perform such attacks, hackers “smuggle” ambiguous SMTP commands to eventually compromise the integrity of the email-server communications. Basically, SMTP servers usually indicate the end of message data with the code <CR><LF> also known as “Carriage Return” and “Line Feed” or “\r\n.\r\n”. These are the standard text delimiters.
By changing this code sequence, hackers can alter the server’s understanding of where the message data ends. This creates an opportunity for smuggling extra data.
Spoofed emails are usually just a part of targeted phishing attacks. Organizations are particularly vulnerable to SMTP smuggling because it can be easy to spoof their domains and use social engineering to send phishing emails or launch spear-phishing attacks.
How to Avoid SMTP Smuggling Emails
Manufacturing companies of the most popular mail servers, such as Postfix, Exim, and Sendmail have released solutions to defend against SMTP smuggling. Several other measures can be taken to minimize the threat.
We strongly advise running regular IT security checks on your organization’s infrastructure to monitor possible attack vectors and vulnerabilities.
Check the email-routing software being used. If the software is known to be vulnerable, update it to the latest version and use settings that specifically reject unauthorized additions.
Conduct security awareness training regularly, teach employees how important it is to always verify the sender’s email address and full name before proceeding with any actions.
What Does SMTP Email Spoofing Look Like?
To be alert to the threat of SMTP smuggling, it is critical to know what a spoof email might look like. A spoof email may take several forms.
There is the case of display name spoofing, where the sender’s name is spoofed, most times by using the real name of an organization’s employee. Most email clients automatically hide the sender’s email address and show the full name next to “From:”, which is why recipients should always check the email address to make sure it corresponds to the sender’s name to prevent downloading suspicious attachments, clicking links, or replying to deceitful emails.
Lookalike domain spoofing is a more complex cyberattack because it requires the perpetrator to register a domain like that of the target organization, set up the e-mail service, etc. There are two similar approaches that hackers take to domain spoofing: a misspelling of a legitimate company domain and Unicode Spoofing, where hackers replace an ASCII character in the domain name with a similar-looking character from Unicode.
At StratusPointIT we help organizations defend against various types of cyber threats, such as spoofing attacks. For more relevant information, or for a cybersecurity audit, please reach out to us.
Security Fatigue on Management
/in IT Security /by MihaiStress and burnout caused by difficult situations, such as the pressure to understand and choose from all different cybersecurity solutions: multi-factor authentication, managed detection and response, mobile device management, DNS filtering, etc., can impact not only the decision-making process, but also the cybersecurity posture of your organization.
One of the reasons why managers get to a high level of security fatigue is because so many security solutions that were previously utilized by enterprises are now necessary for small and medium businesses too, in addition to regulatory and cyber insurance requirements. To help mitigate supply chain attacks, customers are starting to ask their vendors about their internal security or even mandating specific security requirements for you to do business with them.
Software solutions are organizations’ primary course of action to mitigate cyber threats. Hackers are aware of this and capitalize on the psychological gaps in cybersecurity and the lack of professional guidance because often organizations integrate inappropriate technological solutions, don’t have a cybersecurity response plan, leave the human element vulnerable, etc.
Hackers put significant effort and resources to target the whales of the corporate world – the senior executives. After all, who has more access to systems and data than an executive.
Decision-Making Tips
IT security is constantly evolving, making security fatigue difficult to solve. Below are just a few security pointers executives should be aware of in order to prevent any intrusive tactics that would permit cybercriminals to gain illegitimate access to a business system.
Sometimes, we think we must solve all problems internally, but reaching out to cybersecurity professionals for advice, people who bring valuable experience and judgment, will boost the likelihood of making well-informed decisions.
This can be helpful for preserving your decision-making capacity.
Practice human-centered cybersecurity.
As cybersecurity continues to evolve, complexity increases, making it difficult for employees to manage and fully understand a system. The human-centered cybersecurity approach is crucial to ensure people are a centric pillar when developing systems, IT security policies, and so on.
Complex activities such as cybersecurity-related processes require deep focus on people and organizations when designing systems to ensure human performance does not deteriorate when interacting with modern technologies, security policy compliance, change management and regulatory guidance.
Facilitate and reward a culture of cybersecurity.
A viable solution to security fatigue is the creation and maintenance of a security-focused company culture.
Regular, high-quality cyber awareness training, the right threat detection and prevention tools, effective incident reporting channels, and offering rewards to proactive employees can all contribute to sustainable cultural change at your company.
In Closing
Decision and security fatigue can have serious cybersecurity related implications. By understanding how security fatigue operates and how to prevent it, you will be putting yourself in a better position to make optimal decisions.
Also, choosing the right cybersecurity solutions can be overwhelming. Collaborating with a managed security service provider (MSSP) is beneficial. MSSPs provide organizations with guidance and services that imply specific threat prevention, detection, and response methods and protocols to protect their business assets.
Security Fatigue on End Users
/in IT Security /by MihaiAs information security threats are multiplying, security measures are multiplying too.
Employees are regularly informed of more threats to watch out for and more security policies to follow, creating additional workflows and distractions for their already busy days. This is very likely to have an impact on their daily tasks. For instance, just a simple task like reading a new email can take twice as long as the recipient will probably double check if the attachment is safe before opening it.
Consequently, employees can experience reluctance to deal with computer security. Being overwhelmed by security policies can lead to lower levels of security and higher risks for the organizations.
Why is it happening?
People generally agree that security is crucial, but some of them fail to comply for several reasons.
While security is a top priority for security professionals, many employees are focused on productivity and getting their job done. If the security measure is making it harder to complete a task, some employees can perceive the measure negatively, and while balancing between security and productivity, the wrong decision can be made.
However, it can also be unintentional. For example, some people may not be aware of certain security policies, a consequence of having too many policies to keep track of.
Also, the level of self-control decreases when more decisions need to be made in a short interval. If the users are required to make numerous security decisions during their workday, they are more likely to make poor decisions.
The Impact
Security fatigue has a direct impact on the organization’s security and in some cases, it may affect productivity.
Therefore, risk mitigation is less effective, and the organization might be vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches. In some unfortunate cases, this may result in:
The Solutions
Security policies are necessary to secure the organization and to be compliant with security standards and legislation.
Conclusion
Security awareness should be a joint, regular effort. Thinking that what you are doing is simply not interesting for hackers and assuming your organization won’t be targeted is dangerous. No organization is safe from malicious actors.
To overcome the risk of security fatigue, organizations should make sure their security policies are proportional and efficient.
Types & Signs Of Brute Force Attacks
/in IT Security /by MihaiA brute force attack is just another hacking method where an attacker tries many password combinations or encryption keys until the right one is discovered. Basically, this method relies on the perpetrator’s skills and tools used to crack a password through multiple attempts to eventually get access to a system, account, database, or network.
Brute force is less sophisticated than other techniques. Once hackers gain access, they may steal sensitive data, install malware, disrupt services, etc.
NOTE! According to a 2021 Verizon security report, 95% of the monitored organizations were targeted by brute force attacks.
Attackers can use brute force attacks to:
Hijack Devices for Malicious Activity
Botnets, networks of compromised computers, can be utilized to speed up malicious activities.
Spread Malware
Gain control of a target’s system to use it as a launching pad for wider attacks against other connected networks or systems.
Exploit Activity Data
Perpetrators may place spam ads on popular websites, rerouting traffic to certain websites, testing network security or encryption protocols used by targeted organizations.
Steal Data
Hackers can steal data such as passwords, usernames, and PINs for illegitimate financial gains.
Damage Website or App
Ruin the reputation of an organization by damaging its website or app by altering confidential information, leaking data, or spreading false information online.
Types of Brute-Force Attacks
Understanding the most common types of brute-force attacks can help organizations take efficient protective measures.
Hackers utilize automated software to test thousands of possible combinations to decode mainly passwords and PINs.
Perpetrators crack password-protected accounts by using a list, a dictionary of common words and phrases – basically reused, common passwords.
Cybercriminals combine automated software while using lists of common words to increase the success rate of the attack. They utilize automated systems as well as dictionaries which they constantly improve.
By utilizing common passwords, such as “password1” or “12345”, makes it easier for hackers to guess usernames. The attacker knows the common password and is trying to guess which username goes with it.
Hackers may use valid credentials that have been exposed in cyberattacks to access different accounts. This is possible because people tend to use the same username and password across multiple platforms.
Such attacks are mainly utilized against mobile devices. An automated system can be set up to try tens of thousands of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) until the correct one is found.
Signs of a Brute Force Attack
To prevent any unauthorized access and minimize the potential damage, businesses must deploy measures for early detection. Here are the most common signs you should be aware of:
Prevention Methods
Brute force attacks are based on credential compromise, so requiring employees to create complex passwords is imperative. Implementing a Security Awareness Training program can help educate your employees on proper password hygiene.
Regularly check the web server log files to identify suspicious web sessions and remove abusive IPs from loading or accessing website resources.
On the account security side, do not use the same credentials over several accounts. Also, for all utilized apps, administrators should implement lockout policies to keep cybercriminals out of a system after too many incorrect login attempts.
Make the Zero Trust approach a priority and make sure your organization utilizes multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all applications and services. MFA is one of the strongest solutions for preventing fraudulent access.
In addition, implementing a Mobile Device Management (MDM) service like Microsoft Intune will allow you to manage user access to corporate devices and applications, ensuring you meet compliance requirements and proper passwords are being deployed. This will help reduce the ability for hackers to gain control of your data.
At StratusPointIT we help organizations protect their assets against complex brute force attacks. For more relevant information, please contact us.
The Supply Chain Attack: Overview
/in IT Security /by MihaiThis type of cyberattack occurs when the perpetrator gains illegitimate access to your organization’s digital infrastructure just by utilizing a third-party system (provider or partner) that is already connected to your infrastructure.
Basically, because the third party has been granted the rights to use and modify areas of your network, your applications, or sensitive data, the hacker has to penetrate the third party’s defenses to infiltrate your system.
Software supply chains are vulnerable because modern software is not written from scratch. It involves many pre-existing components, such as third-party APIs, open-source code, etc.
Supply chain attacks are diverse, often impacting large companies, as was the case last year with Okta and JetBrains in October, Norton in May, and Airbus in January.
How Do Supply Chain Attacks Work?
For a successful supply chain attack, hackers must find ways to either insert malicious code into software or compromise network protocols.
Many of the products or services that get compromised come from trusted vendors making it easier for supply chain attackers to infiltrate the targeted systems, underscoring the value of attacking the supply chain. Ironically, they may do so using software updates which are often designed to mitigate security vulnerabilities.
Therefore, supply chain attacks are some of the most difficult threats to prevent because they take advantage of inherent trust. Mitigating and remediating a supply chain attack isn’t as simple as installing an antivirus or resetting your operating system because these attacks are usually well disguised.
Common Sources of Supply Chain Attacks
Commercial software
Because hundreds of organizations may use the same software solutions, a supply chain attacker who penetrates a software company’s system or compromises the integrity of their product can eventually gain access to a great number of targets.
Open-source software
When it comes to open-source software solutions, any developer can contribute to the making of a program. Using this free access, hackers may implement vulnerabilities into open-source solutions.
Even though other members of the development community can see and evaluate the code deployed by perpetrators, they may not know what to look for, allowing hackers to initiate a variety of vulnerabilities.
Foreign-sourced software
In some countries where the government exercises granular control over what certain private companies produce, software products may contain malicious code allowing the beneficiary to understand more about the targets’ systems.
Types of Supply Chain Attacks
Based on the targeted software, there are several types of attacks, all of which involve creating or exploiting security weaknesses.
Compromised software development tools – attackers utilize these tools to implement security weaknesses in the development process.
Preinstalled malware – hackers introduce malware on mobile devices such as smartphones, cameras, etc., and when the target connects the infected device to a system or network, the malicious code is activated.
Stolen certificates – that perpetrators use to disguise malicious code under the appearance of a company’s certificate.
Compromised firmware – attackers can include malicious code in firmware to gain illegal access to a system.
The Supply Chain Security
Such cyberattacks are very sophisticated, therefore organizations often employ the power of behavioral-based analysis to determine indicators of attack to successfully defend their assets.
Mitigating the risks is paramount, consequently you should consider utilizing advanced security solutions such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions along with a Security Operations Center (SOC) which include 24/7 intelligent threat detection systems which collects logs, makes statistical correlations, analyzes threat alerts across your network, combines data from several different sources to help security teams remediate issues in a timely manner.
In some cases, all relevant analytics, threat intelligence, and forensic data should be passed to professional analysts, who classify alerts and determine the appropriate response to reduce the risks/effects of incidents. This is known as managed detection and response (MDR).
These services combine threat intelligence, advanced analytics, and human expertise in security incident discovery, investigation, and response deployed at the host and network levels to help keep your organization secure and reduce the ability for malicious activities to move laterally in your environment.
Enhance your readiness with proactive services to improve not only the supply chain security, but your organization’s overall security posture. For more information, please reach out to us. A member of our team will get in touch with you in one business day.
The Security Risk Assessment Process
/in IT Security /by MihaiIn our last blog post we defined security risk assessment, we mentioned who should run a cyber risk assessment and why is necessary to perform such assessments at least once a year. The next step in our analysis includes relevant details of the risk assessment process.
The Extent of The Security Risk Assessment
The first step of the process is to determine the scope and the limits of the assessment. This can encompass an entire organization, an operating unit, a subdivision, or certain components like the payroll process.
Once you determine the extent, you need to inform all relevant executives, particularly those whose activities fall within the scope of the assessment. Their input is crucial to identifying the relevant processes and assets, locating risks, assessing impacts, and defining risk tolerance levels.
All parties involved in the assessment process should learn the relevant terminology, including risk likelihood and impact (the risk matrix). It helps standardize and ensures accurate communication. In addition, organizations should review risk management frameworks like NIST SP 800-37 and standards like ISO / IEC 27001 for guidance on security controls implementation.
Threat and Vulnerability Identification
Simply put, a vulnerability is a weakness that exposes your organization to potential threats.
A threat is any event that can damage your company’s assets or processes.
Vulnerabilities can be identified using several methods including automated scanning, performing security audits, penetration testing, vendor security advisories, following application security testing protocols, etc.
Your analysis should cover as many types of flaws as possible, such as technical, physical, and process flaws. For instance, a company that does not have physical access control is vulnerable to physical intrusion, while a connected device that does not have malware protection is vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Analyze Risks and Potential Impact
The third step of the process is to determine how the risk scenarios your team has identified can impact the organization. In security risk assessment, potential risk (the probability that a particular threat can exploit a vulnerability) is calculated based on several factors:
Prioritize Risks
A risk matrix can be used to classify each risk scenario based on likelihood and impact. It is crucial to define a risk tolerance ratio and specify which threat scenarios should be addressed by third parties along with other relevant details, such as preliminary measures, specific security protocols, etc.
Based on the risk matrix you can choose one of three actions:
Avoid – if the risk level is low and it is not worthwhile to mitigate it, you may decide to take no action.
Transfer – if the risk is significant but difficult to mitigate internally by your designated team, it is advisable to share the risk by transferring responsibility to a third party, by contracting an outsourced security service.
Mitigate – all risks that can be addressed internally should be handled accordingly. You can do this by implementing specific security controls and other similar measures.
Note! Security risk assessments usually include a certain level of residual risk that will be either missed or not fully addressed mainly because of the complexity of certain emerging threats. Therefore, business executives should be aware of this and always refer to residual risk within the organization’s cybersecurity plan.
Document All Risks
It is extremely important to document all identified risks. All findings should be reviewed and updated regularly to provide visibility and for maintaining the state of security.
Risk documentation usually includes relevant details of the risk scenario, information about the existing security controls, the risk level, the risk mitigation plan, the residual risk expected, etc.
Also, every risk category should have a risk owner, basically a person or a team responsible for keeping the threat to an acceptable level.
Organizations must discover and address any emerging threats in a timely manner. Therefore, a solid initial security risk assessment will provide a good basis for any further assessments.
Conclusion
Security risk assessment is a large and ongoing effort which requires time, resources, and more than anything, a professional approach. For more related information, please reach out to StratusPointIT.
Security Risk Assessment: Overview
/in IT Security /by MihaiAll your business processes, technologies, and business operations involve inherent security risks, and your organization is the only one responsible to make sure those risks are both acknowledged and addressed.
Regardless of the size of your organization, the need for a technology security risk assessment is obvious because the threat is imminent. Many organizations do not have one performed, exposing their assets to cyber-attacks.
Who Should Perform a Cyber Risk Assessment?
The process requires organizational transparency, typically provided by internal teams. However, organizations with no skilled personnel can outsource risk assessment to a third party.
An in-house team will include technicians and engineers with a deep understanding of the organization’s network infrastructure and flows of information for any process or system.
Why Perform a Security Risk Assessment?
Protects Your Reputation
Without regular assessments, the danger of security breaches is high, putting your organization’s reputation on the line with clients and vendors for not adequately protecting their data against an attack. This would affect your reputation and impact the potential of your business.
Avoid Security Breaches
Regardless of how sophisticated your systems are, your organization will always be a target for cyber criminals. Hackers are constantly looking for fraudulent means to take advantage of any vulnerabilities in your system.
Performing frequent risk assessments can help your team identify security issues and ensure that relevant policies and controls are put in place before a breach.
Keeps Systems Updated
Security protocols are always changing, and your organization’s technologies and processes are changing as well. Conducting security risk assessments regularly allows you to consolidate the state of security of your business.
Reduces Costs
Depending on the size of your organization, a breach can cost you thousands of dollars or even more just to get your data back and business operations up and running.
However, there is the cost associated with clients leaving or time spent reassuring clients. All those costs mentioned are usually unplanned expenses and can become a heavy burden to your budget. A security risk assessment allows you to plan and reduce such costs.
Avoid Violations
Organizations that handle sensitive data, such as protected health information, are required to abide by security and privacy laws. Failing to perform a security risk assessment is a violation of these regulations.
Also, if a breach does occur, there is the potential of fines and long and costly lawsuits. One of the easiest ways to avoid non-compliance is by performing a security risk assessment.
Increase Self-Awareness
Another major benefit of such an assessment is the ability to provide you with a detailed report about your network and how it is being utilized. This could also highlight inefficiencies within your network that could be costing you money and could be easily streamlined with an adequate solution.
An IT security risk assessment can help identify exploitable vulnerabilities that your team might not be aware of. Unfortunately, without proper insight over their network, an organization cannot efficiently secure its infrastructure against an attack.
A Culture of Safety
Creating a culture of safety should be more than just a legal requirement. As an organization, it is your responsibility to build an environment where your staff and customers feel safe and valued.
Developing skills for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating security risks is crucial. Therefore, investing in security risk assessment training will help your organization in the long run.
NOTE: Cybersecurity awareness training can serve as a starting point for empowering workers with a clearer understanding of security risks.
As you can see, there are several benefits to an organization for having regular security risk assessments performed. Our seasoned team has the necessary resources to provide you with top-notch cyber risk assessment, security awareness training, network security services, and more.
The Hacker Mindset
/in IT Security /by MihaiIt’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.
Data Loss Prevention
/in IT Security /by MihaiData loss prevention (DLP) includes tools, processes, and policies specifically used to ensure that sensitive information is not lost, leaked, or misused.
DLP tools help classify data and identify violations of predefined policies. Once identified, DLP enforces remediation, it triggers alerts, utilizes encryption, and other actions to prevent users from accidentally or maliciously sharing data that could expose organizations.
DLP Adoption
According to Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise DLP of 2017, Gartner estimated DLP market would reach USD 1.3 billion in 2020. In 2022, Grand View Research – DLP Market Size and Share Report estimated the global data loss prevention market at USD 1.8 billion and expects an annual growth rate of 22% until 2030.
The data loss prevention market has evolved, now it includes cloud storage, complex security services, such as advanced threat protection, multi factor authentication, etc.
The massive uptick in DLP adoption is not accidental. Here are the main reasons that are driving the wider adoption of data loss prevention programs:
DLP Best Practices
Determine your main data protection objective.
Are you trying to protect your intellectual property or meet regulatory compliance? Having a clear understanding will allow you to easily determine the most appropriate DLP architecture.
When searching for DLP solutions, cover as many aspects as possible.
Also, a comprehensive DLP solution will provide the IT security team with complete visibility into all data on the network:
Data in use: Protecting data being used by an application or endpoint through user authentication and access control.
Data in motion: Securing transmission of sensitive information while it moves across the network.
Data at rest: Protecting any network-stored data including cloud through access restrictions and user authentication mechanisms.
Always collaborate with all business units and with your IT security provider to define the DLP policies that will govern your organization’s data. This will ensure that all business units are aware of the policies in place.
Define success metrics and share results with business executives. Determine measurable key performance indicators and monitor them closely to determine the efficiency of your DLP program and areas of improvement.
Contextualize suspicious attempts to strengthen prevention measures and remediation activities.
Document your processes carefully. This will help you implement policies consistently, give you a document of record for when reviews are needed, and will also be necessary when onboarding new team members or employees.
Perform regular audits to ensure that your DLP program is working as intended.
Conclusion
DLP is a program, not a product. Observing how users, systems, and events interact is crucial for data protection. Understanding that DLP is a constant process to be continuously worked on will help you achieve long-lasting success.