Every year businesses and software developers become more and more technologically savvy, but the number of DDoS attacks and
InfoWatch analysts recorded more than 330personal data leaks in Russian commercial and government organizations in 2021. The total amount of stolen information is 80.5 million user records. These are official reports - in fact, the situation could be even worse.
Probability of a cyber attack on small and medium businesseshigh. Surveys show that 43% of cyber attacks target this segment, and only 14% of such companies are ready for them. Therefore, ensuring security is one of the key tasks that can significantly reduce reputational and financial risks. And you can do it in four steps.
Step 1. Determine the attack surface
The attack surface is the number of options andmethods that an attacker can use to penetrate a network or devices and extract commercial information from them. Its understanding and control allows reducing vulnerability to digital threats. Therefore, the IT department must thoroughly know the entire IT infrastructure of the company: computers, programs that are installed there, servers, available security tools, network devices, and so on. In short, to have a complete understanding of the internal IT landscape.
In addition, it is necessary to highlight the most criticalfor business systems and equipment - they should be paid the most attention in the future, because "slacks" and incidents in these areas affect revenue, efficiency, service and reputation.
Step 2. Refine the Attack Surface
Even with a cursory glance at the attack surfacepotential access points to the IT network are often exposed - vulnerabilities that can be exploited for a cyberattack or data theft. Knowing your IT landscape well, a company can easily identify these bottlenecks. For example, a business may not even suspect that a dozen of its databases are available on the Internet, and only because it publishes information from 1C using the insecure HTTP protocol.
The key components of the attack surface are −devices and people. Internet-connected devices provide attackers with additional entry points through which they can carry out a cyberattack. And the weakest link in the digital security chain is employees, or the human factor. The 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) study claims that 22% of data breaches are due to a common mistake. Therefore, the attack surface is mainly determined by these factors.
Step 3: Minimize the Attack Surface
Reducing the attack surface is a key security challenge. For example, a company may use a different protocol, HTTPS, and a certificate. The more reliable the supplier, the better.
It is best to reduce the attack surface at the stage of application development, and then gradually expand them. This will reduce the vulnerability as the system evolves. Among these measures:
- taking into account secure coding standards, thorough and regular software tests - this will help the company eliminate typical errors and the most known vulnerabilities;
- formation of recovery checkpoints and storage snapshots to which software can be rolled back - this will “mitigate” the consequences in case of failures;
- timely software updates to improve the quality of protection (for example, this will prevent hackers from using old attack methods);
- employee training: do not forget that the human factor plays a significant role.
Step 4: Increase the cost of a possible attack for attackers
Specialized tools help makeattempts to leak data are extremely expensive, where hackers will lose more than they will earn. The more such protections, the more likely that attackers will lose interest in these applications.
Protection tools, like hacker attack technologies, are constantly being improved, and it is worth paying attention to the following ones:
- virtual patches, or rapid developmentsecurity policies to prevent exploitation of the vulnerability (as a result, the company calmly waits for the software vendor to publish official patches);
- change in IT architecture, localization of the system;
- means of protection against telecom operators: for example, new traffic routing schemes, allocation of additional channels to expand bandwidth;
- firewall for web applicationsFirewall) for monitoring and filtering traffic, assessing the legitimacy of requests and checking for atypical behavior of information resources in accordance with the HTTP or HTTPS protocols;
- DDoS blocking services built to counter massive distributed attacks at L3, L4, L7 levels;
- other modern means of protection: new generation firewalls, firewalls;
- informing the staff - the more knowledgeable the employee, the more difficult it is for an attacker to influence his actions.
These steps are best followed continuously andcyclically. For example, once a company has made an attack on its infrastructure too costly for attackers, you need to look again at what hardware and software it has available. After that, analyze the list and evaluate potential risks - and so on a regular basis. Only in this way will the IT department get a true picture of the potential risks against the backdrop of infrastructure development and the emergence of new users.
Ensuring information security is nottakes place in a vacuum, without the involvement of business units and top managers. The IT department only generates recommendations after analyzing the IT landscape and assessing the criticality - what to implement from this is decided by the leaders. Therefore, pay attention to actively involving the business in the situation and try to assess the potential risks as specifically as possible (for example, in terms of money) in order to convince you of the appropriateness of the measures you need.
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