Technology is an ever-evolving thing that also comes with certain amount of risks. Cyber attack is one such serious threat that we need to understand. It is really necessary to avoid these problems and focus on your business’s protection. Small businesses are relatively less worried about the cyber security when compared to the large businesses. But for hackers, it is just a matter of time to turn you as a victim of cyber attack.
But why have cyber attacks become so fearsome in the recent past? According to an E&Y report, these are the primary reasons:
- Barriers to entering the world of cyber crime have reduced dramatically: Nowadays, cyber criminals are using malware-as-a-service posted by criminal masterminds on the dark web. Anyone with or without the knowledge of computers can get malware from the dark web and deploy it against their selected targets.
- Cyber criminals have gotten really sophisticated now: Yeah,that’s right, today’s cyber-criminals are no longer just ‘script kiddies’ who run around with newly discovered tools to cause random violence; they are advanced ‘professionals’ who stalk their targets patiently for months, and launch sophisticated attacks at the right.
- Attack Surfaces are expanding: The various points of vulnerability of a system are collectively known as the attack surface. Needless to say, the larger the attack surface, the greater the threat or cyber-attack. With the increasingly online-centric business models, mobile workforce, greater digitalization and connectivity with customers and supply chains, the attack surface of the modern organization has increased manifold. Adding to that the proliferation of IoT devices, which can be taken over and manipulated – and the vulnerability skyrockets!
In such an alarming scenario, how are modern organizations responding or planning to respond? The one realization that is common across all organizations is that the security measures must be proactive, which means they must be ahead of the game. A systematic, military-style cyber defense mechanism involves the following:
- Identifying the most critical assets that need to be protected.
- Identifying and profiling the actors most likely to be interested in breaching/stealing these assets.
- Hunting for, trapping and coercing the actors through deception mechanisms like honeypots and fake systems that lead to the attackers revealing themselves and getting trapped.
- Active involvement and interest in cyber-security on the part of the senior management and C-Suite of the company, seeking regular reports and digging out concerns; authorizing and funding proactive action against the cyber threat.
Apart from these, few more steps that can be taken into consideration by CISOs include purchasing domains which look very similar to their own domains, beefing up email security by enabling anti-spoofing features like SPF, and email validation through DKIM, simulating phishing attacks on their own employees to identify vulnerabilities and create the awareness, and so on.
In conclusion, with the increasing sophistication of the present day cyber-attackers, the proliferation of cyber-criminals, and multiplying attack surfaces of the organizations, it is the need of the hour for CISOs to launch and run consistent proactive measures to actively secure their environments. And this requires increasingly sophisticated cyber security tools and frameworks.
At Seqrite, we specialize in handling the modern cyber security scenario and have developed a suite of products that enables organizations to secure their enterprise through proactive and reactive mechanisms. Seqrite’s Managed Security Services (MSS) allows enterprises to take help of the state of the art tools and a highly trained and specialized workforce that is equipped to handle the most sophisticated cyber-attacks.
Seqrite helps businesses simplify IT security and maximize business performance. To know more about our products and services visit our website.
