Share threat intelligence data with industry peers, suppliers or a global circle of Service Now customers with Trusted Security Circles. SecOps Roles and Responsibilities for your SecOps team – oversee any compliance needs; ensure security strategy covers prevention along with detection and response.
The spookiest time of the year has come, and across the globe, everyone’s planning their Halloween exploits once again. And like we all know, if you get a knock on the door on 31st October, you’d better have some treats ready for whatever ghouls and monsters are waiting on the other side! Recalling about trick-or-treating got us thinking about cyber security, which, similar to Halloween, requires constant vigilance to keep the cyber ghouls and monsters away. For every cyber trick, businesses and security experts need a cyber treat to avoid the pain and disruption that attacks might cause.
Primary Security Risks
The usual impact of cyberattacks can be destructive for any small or bigger firms – as they’re vulnerable to having their whole operations disrupted by the attack, and most of them would take a long time to recover or with small firms, there are high chances, they might not recover at all.
Generally, SMBs are at a higher risk for the following than their larger counterparts are:
- Cyber Risks: They come with external threats, as well as attacks that hit by malware like ransomware, cryptocurrency miners and botnets.
- Data Risks: They consist of the loss of critical data such as consumer database and trade secrets. Generally, the enterprises that outsource the data-related work of large organizations are particularly vulnerable to data breaches.
- Human Capital Risks: They occur due to a lack of trained IT security personnel, or because of a lack of cyber security education given to the company’s employees.
- Infrastructure Risks: They generally occur with the uncertainty on how to secure IoT devices properly, cloud services and server environments.
- Operations Risks: It generally involves financial damage, disruption of operations and often a loss of intellectual property, which can cause flaws in security infrastructure as a result.
Tricks or Treats?
- The Trick: Your biggest weakness is your people!
Even if you have invested in the most expensive and best technology, there are still going to be the chances where your biggest weakness is your employees. According to a 2017 Ponemon Institute Study, 54% of respondents said negligent employees were the root cause of a data breach. Social engineering is big business and one of the most effective ways of getting through your defenses.
- The Treat: Cloud security is increasingly effective
As we all know, cloud services are blamed for cyber vulnerabilities and loopholes but at the same time – thanks to SecOps, it has become more sophisticated to deal with the cybercriminals out there. Cloud-based security solutions are quick to set up and flexible, which is ideal for growing businesses and they are even more secure than installing security on your servers. According to research done by Intel – Those who trust public clouds now outnumber those who distrust public clouds by more than 2-to-1.
- The Trick: Cyber-attacks are on the rise
Risk of the cyber-attacks has increased for companies of all the sizes and across all the industries, and it sounds and seems quite scary as well. As per the research done by the Ponemon Institute for Keeper Security, “71% of SMBs worldwide have experienced at least one cyberattack in their company’s lifetime, and 66% have been attacked within the past year.” The quantity of stolen data on average breach has also nearly doubled from around 5100 to 9300 records.
- The Treat: Password management is improving
Thanks to SecOps executives, people are learning to not share their passwords with anyone. With a Guardian survey finding that 40% of users now change their passwords at least 3 times a year, while 56% of the other 100% create complex passwords, with a combination of alphanumerical and upper-lower case letters. More than half of the respondents shared they use two-factor authentication where possible.
- The Trick: Don’t let Ransomware fool you
Malware attacks have been always destructive. Whether you take the example of WanaCry or Petya. The rise of ransomware has taken its toll on small and medium enterprises, in particular, more than half of the companies represented in this research (51%) experienced a ransomware attack. This trend is only continuing and 2017 is hailed to be the year of ransomware.
- The Treat: Antivirus software is not better at blocking ransomware
The old school solutions like employee vigilance and regular back-ups still at the best defense from ransomware, but innovative anti-virus tools can give you some extra protection. Such as the Kaspersky anti-ransomware tool, use behavioral analysis to detect when ransomware is on a system, intercepting it before it does any damage to the system or the data. Tools like AVG’s decryption tools let you decrypt files in the event of a ransomware attack.
- The Trick: Cybercrime is becoming more organized
Wide-reaching and strong attacks like ‘WannaCry’ and ‘Petya’ show that cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated and more organized. A report by BT and KPMG warned that ‘today’s cybercriminals often work for complex operations which will act much like they want to get into businesses with HR and finance departments. And in usual cases, the group of cybercriminals sells the readymade attack tools on the dark web to almost everyone – who wants to buy them, and then, they can be deployed rapidly around the world.
- The Treat: Cyber security is becoming more predictive to head off potential threats
Nowadays, cyber security firms are working hard to counteract the ever-evolving threat, with the foresight of any potential attacks, and businesses can lock down their network before a hit. The enterprises have started to see more collaboration among security providers so that data can be pooled and predictions can be made more accurately.
- The Trick: Cyber-attacks are a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’
With the everyday updating of innovative tools, it is largely known that – it’s more a case of when your business gets hit, rather than if. And in major cases, we can’t predict that the threat is permanently gone. There are always high chances of its coming back or new threats can be deployed thanks to the everyday updating of IoT technology.
- The Treat: Cyber insurance ensures you can respond effectively
A quick response plan will make sure you can deal with both the physical damage following a breach, legal and PR issues. You can repair your systems and reputations as early as possible. Thanks to the insurance providers like Superscript, they keep the enterprises constantly updated with their cyber policies to cover the latest threats and ensure the support as well.
Conclusion
The benefits of network detection and the response of network traffic analysis go far beyond the traditional realm of NetOps. By cooperation, NetOps and SecOps teams can create a solid visibility architecture and practice that strengthens their security posture, leaving organizations well prepared for attacks that take place.
Full network visibility allows the security team to see all the relevant information through a security delivery layer, use behavioral based or automated threat detection methods, and be able to capture and store relevant data for deep forensics to investigate and respond to any incident.
