Page 42 - Security Today, March 2020

Common Mistakes
With a cybersecurity skills gap and a growing threat landscape, attacks have become a regular occurrence
BAy Dan Hoban
s the cyber threat land- scape has matured and evolved, cybersecurity incidents have become a regular occurrence. Data
breaches occur daily, and headline-worthy ones at least weekly. These data breaches can cost their victims millions of dollars, damage their reputations and can even force them out of business.
As cyber threat actors become more skilled and sophisticated, they pose an ever-increasing threat to the average busi- ness.Development of advanced malware and the use of automation allow hackers to attack, scale their operations and in- crease their probability of success.
As a result, even the smallest organi- zation requires comprehensive cyber de- fenses to protect themselves from attack. However, the cybersecurity industry is ex- periencing a massive manpower shortage, and skilled cybersecurity practitioners are becoming increasingly harder to come by.
As organizations try to make do with underskilled and understaffed cybersecu- rity teams, they don’t have the resources to create a mature security program, and es- sential tasks tend to slip through the cracks.
Weak Policies
Human beings have become the main tar- get of cybercriminals trying to gain access to an organization’s network. While most modern software has bugs, and it is pos- sible for an attacker to identify and exploit these vulnerabilities, it is much easier for an attacker to take advantage of simple mistakes that human beings make while using business accounts and devices.
For example, it is commonly known that many people use weak passwords and reuse them across multiple accounts. These passwords are frequently exposed in data breaches and can be a threat to an organization’s security.
If a business does not have a strong password policy and doesn’t test to deter- mine if an employee is using a password
revealed in a breach, it can be exposed to credential stuffing attacks.
As ransomware attacks become more frequent, and businesses increasingly move to the cloud, strong controls limit- ing access to sensitive data are becoming more important.
If an employee account is compro- mised, it may allow an attacker to access sensitive data (either on-premises or in the cloud) or give ransomware the access nec-
essary to encrypt this data and demand a ransom from the organization.
Achieving compliance with most regu- lations requires an organization to have appropriate cybersecurity policies in place. However, these policies only help the orga- nization avoid cybersecurity incidents and data breaches if they are enforced.
Organizations need to have visibility into the events and the ability to take prompt re- mediation actions if violations occur.
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CYBERSECURITY
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