Cyber attacks are inevitable. Regardless of the size of your business or the sector you operate in, if you’re connected to the internet, cyber criminals will try their luck.
But there are steps you can take to keep your business as safe as possible from danger. You can massively reduce the business impact of a cyber attack by addressing these 11 common security mistakes.
1. Complacency
Too many companies still adopt the “it will never happen to us” mindset. Large companies may think they’re safe because they have a cyber budget and IT staff, and small companies may think they’re too small to be a worthy target.
The first step is understanding and accepting that your business will be attacked. Although not every company will be targeted by state-sponsored attackers (though they sometimes attack little fish to ultimately reach bigger fish), it’s likely you’ll experience some form of cyber attack at some stage. It’s important to prepare your IT estate for compromise, so in the event of an attack, you’re able to limit the damage that can be done to your operations, finances and reputation.
There’s an assumption that cyber security is a problem to be dealt with by the IT department but in reality, every user is responsible. The more aware your users are of the risks, the more resilient your business will become.
2. Weak or reused passwords
Hands up if you’re guilty of reusing one or more passwords, or not changing the default password your account was created with. Remembering multiple strong passwords for multiple accounts is no easy feat – cyber criminals exploit this and capitalise on the opportunity to compromise several accounts that use the same password in one fell swoop.
Passwords aren’t going away any time soon, but there are additional measures you can take to avoid them being compromised. Use strong, unique passwords and ensure all users do the same – the NCSC’s guidance encourages using three random words. Additionally, implement two-factor authentication (2FA) on internet-facing systems and all remote access solutions, and for privileged users and requests to sensitive data repositories.
For both professional and personal life, making use of a password manager means you only have to remember one strong, unique password instead of lots of them.
3. Insufficient backup
If your IT estate is compromised and your data lost, could you get it back? Implement a rigorous backup regime to ensure business-critical data can be recovered if you are attacked. Store this backed up data in multiple secure locations, including an ‘offline’ location where infected systems can’t access it.
Regularly test that backups are being done correctly, and that your data restoration procedures actually work as intended. Imagine only finding out they don’t work after an attack has stolen or blocked access to all your files…
4. Reliance on reactive rather than proactive technologies
Some attacks bypass firewalls and anti-virus programmes – you need to proactively hunt your systems for signs of compromise that haven’t been picked up by these traditional methods. The longer an adversary sits on your network undetected, the more damage they can do.
Email is the single biggest attack vector, so implement the same level of proactive security for your email client too. Firewalls and email security solutions can block known malicious senders and strip certain types of file attachments that are known to be malicious, before they have chance to reach your inbox. Users need to be given all the information about an email so they can instantly make an informed decision as to its legitimacy.
Email attachments are commonly used to transport malicious files and processes directly to your inbox. If a malicious attachment is opened, application whitelisting will ensure only approved executables can run. You can also configure Microsoft Office to ensure only macros from trusted sources reach your users.
Isolation ‘sandboxing’ technologies can prevent the download and execution of ransomware – these technologies separate the malware, before analysing and detonating it in a secure, isolated environment. This proactive approach ensures that if there’s an attempt to download ransomware onto your network, it never reaches its destination and your systems remain unaffected.
5. Use of removable media
Malware can easily be spread through infected flash drives, external hard drives and smartphones – anything that can be plugged in to a computer.
Always scan a device for malware before plugging it in. To minimise the level of risk, implement policies to control access to removable media devices. On particularly sensitive systems, consider disabling removable media altogether.
6. Generic user privileges
Users should only be permitted access to the information they need to do their job.
Limit the number of privileged user and admin accounts. For IT admins, adopt a least-privilege approach and consider using a privileged access management solution to restrict access throughout your network. The more users who have access to privileged information, the more targets there are for cyber criminals, and the more likely they are to succeed as a result.
Monitor all user accounts for unusual activity. If a user is accessing files or drives they have no reason to be interacting with or have never interacted with before, such activity should prompt a review.
Keep a record of all accounts each user has access to, and remove permissions as soon as they leave the company.
7. Poorly configured systems that aren’t kept up-to-date
Environments that are not configured securely can enable malicious users to obtain unauthorised access – it’s therefore imperative to ensure the secure configuration of all systems at all times.
Schedule regular vulnerability assessments to identify weaknesses in your organisation’s IT infrastructure that would leave it open to exploitation – use the results to define your detection and response capabilities, and ascertain if you need to outsource your cyber security to a managed security provider. To avoid allowing malicious access through unpatched vulnerabilities, apply security patches regularly and keep all systems and applications up-to-date.
To ensure security across your network, it’s important to have robust and secure standardised builds for servers, workstations, laptops and other network infrastructure. That way, as soon as new hardware is added to your system, you can be confident it is already secured to the same standard as the rest of your IT estate.
8. Lack of guidance for remote working
If any of your users work on the move or from home, it’s important to have policies in place that will protect any sensitive corporate or personal data in the event of a mobile device being lost, stolen or compromised.
Many corporate mobile devices – laptops, phones and tablets – not only contain locally saved sensitive data (client contacts, emails, photos, documents, etc.) but are also connected to the company’s internal network through VPNs and workspace browsers, giving attackers a direct route to the heart of a business.
To enforce secure remote working practices, employ a suitable and robust enterprise mobile management solution and policy, applying your secure baseline and build to all devices.
9. Inconsistent monitoring
If you’re not monitoring your systems, you could be overlooking opportunities that attackers won’t miss.
Continuously monitor all systems and networks to detect changes or activities that could lead to vulnerabilities. Consider setting up a security operations centre (SOC) to monitor and analyse events on your computer systems and networks. If you don’t have the resource or skills in-house, outsource these tasks to a specialist managed security service provider (MSSP).
10. No incident response plan
Write one! Make it specific and ensure it accurately reflects your company’s risk appetite, capabilities and business objectives.
Being adequately prepared for a security breach will go a long way towards minimising the impact to your business. Know exactly what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, and make sure you have the necessary information, resource, skills and capabilities to do it effectively and efficiently.
Test your incident response plan on a regular basis, using a variety of different scenarios, to identify where improvements can be made.
11. Expecting users to protect you from attacks
If your users are your first line of cyber defence, your defences are going to succumb to attack.
Humans make mistakes, and no amount of training will negate that. Most users can’t be trained in complex IT processes, simply because they’re not IT experts. It’s unrealistic and unfair to expect otherwise.
Invest in cyber security solutions that remove the burden of being on the frontline of email security defence, allowing your users to get on with their day jobs.
Get help from the experts
Enlist the advice and services of dedicated cyber security experts to ensure none of these cyber security mistakes leaves you vulnerable to compromise.
CORVID’s Consultancy Service can help you understand and overcome your cyber security challenges in the most efficient way. Our specialist consultants have extensive experience supporting both private and public sector organisations, providing tangible expertise, advice and guidance on all aspects of cyber security. Get in touch today to find out how we can help you.
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Cyber Incident Response for decision-makers
It is not unusual for an organisation to have a cybersecurity incident. It may be discovered through internal security controls (such as Anti-Virus, or a Security Operations Centre) , or it may be that a third-party notifies the organisation of an event.
When an organisation becomes aware of an incident it creates a chain of events that benefit from good decision-making. Most Boards are advised that they need to rehearse and prepare for a cyber incident. This can help. However, the majority of incidents do not need, or benefit from, Board-level oversight.
Whilst the decision-maker of an organisation is rarely a cyber-expert: they can play a critical role in achieving an optimum outcome. The following five-points are provided as a guide to the decision-maker.
1. Appoint the right leadership for the incident.
Incident response is a specialised field within the specialised subject of cybersecurity. The majority of people that work in IT or IT security (cybersecurity) have no experience overseeing a security incident. They may have a policy or strategy background and, whilst they may know the theory of how to respond to an incident, have very little hands-on experience.
The first decision that needs to be made is regarding the incident leadership. It may be that an in-house IT or InfoSec lead is exactly the right person to take-charge. If there is uncertainty that a suitable internal person can carry the responsibility the options are to bring in:
- a suitably experienced person to act as a mentor and guide to the in-house lead,
- an external specialist company to support the in-house lead,
- an external specialist company to take-over incident management.
It can be difficult for non-expert decision-makers to gauge whether an internal person is the suitable leader for the incident. Watch-out for the following warning signs that someone may be out of their depth:
- They are trying to apportion blame before the incident is remediated.
- They are using more jargon than usual and it’s hard to understand all the points they are making.
- Terms like “best practice” are used to justify an activity as opposed to an explanation.
The organisation must have confidence that the right expert is leading the response activity. But scared people rarely make the best-decisions. So even if the right person is on-point: they will probably benefit from some reassurance.
2. Set the communication tempo that is needed and try to stick to it.
Whilst it is tempting to want to know everything, every step of the way, this is rarely the most productive way of dealing with the matter. Minimising the communication burden can help maintain the focus on remediating the issue rather than communicating the issue. It is helpful to explain the tempo of communication updates or triggers that necessitate an additional briefing and then encourage the incident responders to get on with the job in-hand.
3. Agree the desired outcomes at the start.
Unfocussed incident response can quickly spiral into a mess. Set realistic outcomes such as:
- Contain the incident to as few hosts and users as possible: this helps recovery and reduces impact,
- Minimise downtime for the organisation and users: this helps maintain business as usual,
- Reduce the likelihood of this impacting other organisations: this helps protect reputation,
- Identify how the attack occurred: this helps prevent future incidents,
- Identify which files have been compromised (exfiltrated, changed, deleted): this helps comply with legal requirements of reporting and assess the longer-term business impact. This is critical.
Setting the priorities at the start helps direct the response. As more information is discovered the priorities may change. But when an incident takes on a life of its own it can be more damaging than necessary.
4. Forensic images are almost never necessary.
The main benefit of a forensic image is if there is a likelihood that there will be a court case at some point and evidence needs to be presented in such a way that it can withstand challenge.
The percentage of court-cases that result from a cybersecurity incident is very close to zero. The cost of capturing, recording and processing computers to a forensic-level is non-trivial. It will cause significant downtime, delay the determination of the impact to the organisation and potentially cost a lot of money.
If there is reasonable suspicion that the incident was triggered by an insider: then using computer forensics may be the right route to take. If this is the case consider the use of a specialist dedicated computer forensics team that are experienced at providing expert-witness.
Taking forensic images is no longer the standard approach taken for cyber incident response and it is rarely beneficial.
5. Make sure the response is less damaging than the incident
Rebuilds are often undertaken “to be safe”, even though the technical need for this is rare. This causes downtime and increases cost. If a rebuild takes place before the incident is analysed, it could result in critical evidence of attacker-activity being destroyed.
It is difficult to respond to a situation that is not understood unless an organisation is lucky. Relying on luck is rarely a good strategy.
There are cases of organisations switching off Internet connectivity, powering down server racks and shutting down critical systems. Whilst there may be a few catastrophic scenarios where this is the right thing to do: this is incredibly disruptive to an organisation and more often than not a panic-response. Make sure that the post incident assessment considers the disruption versus the risk to determine whether the response was reasonable and proportionate. Every incident is a learning opportunity.
Finally
There is no such thing as “perfect-defence”. Many organisations will deal with cybersecurity incidents at some point and the costs associated with data-breaches is reported as averaging millions of pounds. As an incident may involve PR and legal experts as well as the cyber incident specialists: costs can mount quickly. The decision-maker can play a key role in ensuring the right business outcomes are achieved.
An introduction to cybersecurity for decision-makers
Cybersecurity is an industry, a field of academia, a buzz-word, a science, an art and a bogeyman. And whilst cybersecurity cannot be avoided within any organisation that relies upon computers and data: there needs to be a way by which senior decision-makers can be involved in, and make decisions on, cybersecurity matters.
Cybersecurity is a highly specialised subject. It is complex and requires significant of knowledge and experience that is different from normal IT-knowledge. Knowing jargon and buzzwords does not mean that someone is an expert so always check the credentials of your “trusted advisors”.
Despite its overuse as a term, cybersecurity is fundamentally about protecting computer systems and data.
There are rules
Most territories now have laws around Data Privacy and many industries have regulations around information security. These must always be complied with and, irrespective of whether they are useful, they are necessary to operate in specific sectors.
Whilst the regulatory requirements may originate from the best of intentions: it is likely that organisations will need to do additional things to have the right type of cybersecurity for their specific profile and operations.
Why does anyone need cybersecurity?
Questioning why cybersecurity is needed is a good starting-point as it helps anchor solutions and initiatives to the fundamental driver behind activity in this space.
- The more you rely on (take advantage of) IT, therefore
- The bigger an impact to the organisation if something goes wrong, therefore
- The more you need cybersecurity
Cybersecurity needs to be seen as an enabler to using IT. Without cybersecurity, reliance upon IT is an incredibly risky thing to do. In-fact, one of the oldest risk equations in InfoSec (Information Security) works as follows:
Threat[1] x Impact[2] x Opportunity (Vulnerability)[3] = RISK
In mathematics if anything is multiplied by zero then the answer is zero. If there were no Threats there would be no Risk. If there was no Impact there would be no Risk and if there was no Opportunity to compromise a system there would be no Risk.
There are formal methodologies to measure the level of risk to an organisation as a result of a computer security breach. Sometimes formal assessments are useful to help shine a light on the scale of the issue. But if you are not required to undertake them then, in most cases, there is little benefit in going down this route.
Cybersecurity is a cost and, like other costs, it should be managed. For many organisations this means that the goal is to spend as little as possible on cybersecurity whilst having a proportionate level of protection considering the risk. Getting that proportionality right can be a challenge. Cybersecurity is routinely both a victim to underspending, where there is a lack of appreciation of the subject, and a cause of overspending, where the expenditure has not been objective focussed and consequently failed to achieve a useful outcome.
There are three fundamentals that an organisation needs to do regarding cybersecurity:
- Prevent an incident from occurring[4] – not all incidents can be prevented
- Detect an incident that has occurred – anti-virus cannot detect all incidents
- Respond well to an incident that has occurred – a good response can negate the impact of an incident
There may be exceptions to the above; but in-general all cybersecurity expenditure should be aligned to at least one of those three. Therefore, mapping initiatives against them can be a useful activity. Combining this with an articulation of effectiveness (a metric is best) is useful as it helps focus the initiative on the right outcomes for the organisation. At the risk of repetition: remember that cybersecurity is highly specialised. It requires specialist tools in the hands of specialist practitioners. Whilst an organisation could build their own Security Operations Centre (SOC), the question of “why?” should be raised. A company could generate its own electricity: but why would it do so?
Cyber expenditure almost always consists of both:
- Anticipated expenditure – the cost of the tool, service or technology
- Additional impact – specialist and (or) additional people, extra-training, recruitment, facilities and a distraction from core business
The following matrix (with a made-up example) is provided to help characterise cybersecurity initiatives. It is intended to be completed quickly, on the back of a post-it note, to help rapidly focus attention on the nature of the investment and whether the benefit, costs and approach have been considered. It is not intended to replace a full-investment case.
Final notes
No matter how much is spent on cybersecurity, and no matter what you are told, no company or product can guarantee safety. All anyone can do is make it less likely that an organisation will be compromised or reduce the impact of compromise. The inverse, i.e. not spending any money on cybersecurity, does not guarantee that an organisation will suffer a security breach. Not every organisation gets hit and some organisations are lucky. However, a strategy requiring luck is not recommended.
Whilst cybersecurity should be on the agenda: it should not monopolise it. Cybersecurity should be frictionless and, ideally, left to the professionals who should take the pain of it away. If cybersecurity is routinely causing you pain it is worth asking whether it is being managed as well as it could be.
Footnotes
[1] “Threat” refers to the groups or persons who do the attacking: Hackers, Nation States, Hacktivists. The entities that undertake the attack.
[2] Impact is not just the confidentiality breach of information. Depending on the circumstances, availability or integrity compromises can be highly impactful.
“Impact” is the impact to your organisation if they succeed in stealing, destroying, changing or making your systems and data unavailable.
[3] “Opportunity (Vulnerability)” is a measure of how accessible the systems and data are to attackers. Very secure government systems are not directly connected to the Internet and this reduces the Opportunity of attack considerably.
[4] Attackers have access to all the same technology that the defenders have and despite the prevalence of firewalls and anti-virus (both of which are much needed by the way), they are still able to breach organisations security and gain access to systems and data. Prevention is better than cure, but it’s just not practical to rely solely on this element.
Patching up life support: why critical care is at critical risk
Keeping people alive is unquestionably more important than patching software, but unpatched software is vulnerable to exploitation, and won’t keep anyone alive if it leads to a breach of your IT systems, rendering them unavailable.
After WannaCry exploited unpatched Windows XP vulnerabilities and cost the NHS £92m, healthcare providers across the country carried out a mass upgrade to Windows 10. Making the move to the newer OS is synonymous with increased security (you’d be worried if it wasn’t…), but there is growing concern that it was seen as a tick box, one-off exercise. Now the OS that was exploited is no longer in use, healthcare providers feel safer. This is a dangerously complacent assumption – new vulnerabilities are identified almost daily, creating an ‘arms race’ between attackers and vendors; one looking to exploit the other looking to get patches out.
The issue is further compounded as not all systems made it to Windows 10 – legacy IT systems remain where the service they provide can only run on the legacy OS. This particular stumbling block can make the health sector an easier target. Cyber attackers aren’t renowned for being a particularly moral bunch, so if they can shut down a hospital’s life support system and demand a hefty a ransom to get it back up and running again, they’ll take that payday without a second thought as to the consequences.
Let’s not forget that despite its wealth of valuable confidential data, the healthcare sector isn’t always necessarily the prime target for cyber criminals.
In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, certain threat actor groups have claimed they won’t be targeting healthcare providers, but can’t rule out accidentally compromising systems if they’re not patched properly. Without a robust patch management programme in place, the sector can easily become an unintentional casualty of cyber attackers looking to exploit any vulnerabilities in any business. Just look at WannaCry.
The NHS is the nation’s beating heart, and healthcare providers know better than anyone that a beating heart stopping is a very bad thing. You can’t fix vulnerabilities you don’t know about, but you can guarantee threat actors will find them. You need full visibility of where your IT estate’s weaknesses are, and clear guidance on how to fix them. Even if you’re not a target, an unpatched infrastructure leaves you open to exploitation by opportunistic cyber attackers and widespread malware campaigns.
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