Cybersecurity

Some businesses don’t realize the risks cyber threats pose to their reputation, revenues, and operations until they become victims of such attacks. While investing in monitoring tools, security awareness, multi-factor authentication, and cybersecurity practices can help protect your company, these safety measures may not always guarantee the safety of your business data. It is why you should focus on proper cybersecurity planning.

Effective cybersecurity planning is critical for businesses to address potential threats and future security requirements, like threat containment. However, if you don’t know where to start, here are the strategies and tips you should consider for your cybersecurity planning:

1. Hire The Best Cybersecurity Team

One strategy you should know for your cybersecurity planning is the importance of hiring the best team for the job. Regardless of your industry or business size, ensure to hire the most reliable cybersecurity professionals as they’ll serve as your company’s first line of defense.

When looking for experts, check their experience, education, and knowledge about the constantly changing world of cybersecurity. Having qualified and certified professionals for your team also helps train your other departments’ employees. After all, training your employees on cybersecurity is a great way to increase your online security.

If you have a tight budget and can’t hire more employees, consider working with a third-party cybersecurity provider. These professionals can help you create the best possible cybersecurity plan for your company. While others may think it’s unnecessary, cybersecurity providers are worth investing in because they also:

• Understand the latest trends your business should know
• Know the threats to avoid
• Have technology that may benefit your organization over time

2. Include Response Plan Development

Every company must include a response in its cybersecurity plan. Hackers have evolved in that they can get through the most advanced security solutions. Therefore, an incident response plan can help you and your employees know who to call and what steps to take during a crisis. It helps prevent cyber threats from escalating further.

When developing a response plan, you should include the phases of cyber threats, such as preparation, eradication, identification, lesson learned, containment, and recovery. Once done with the plan, test it to ensure it’ll work against a data breach. Doing so will help you know which parts require improvements for better protection.

3. Use A People-Centric Security Approach

Your employees can either be your company’s security defense or security risk. Hence why using a people-centric security approach for your cybersecurity planning is crucial.

These days, a tech-centric approach isn’t enough to protect your business from hackers because they often use employees as the entry point. So, to mitigate human-connected risks, it’s wise to use a people-centric approach.

Here are the ways to implement this approach:

• Establish Accountability

Establishing accountability is one of the best ways to ensure that your employees are serious about the company’s security. Employees should realize their role in securing the company from potential attacks or threats.

• Spread Awareness On Cybersecurity

Unaware employees may result in catastrophic damage to your business. They might be easy to fool and likely fall into phishing and social engineering attacks. Therefore, it’s critical to spread awareness of the rising cyber threats. Employees must also be knowledgeable and aware of the practices they must adhere to in case of cyber-attacks. This way, your employees will know the proper steps to resolve the issue.

• Provide Cybersecurity Training

Another way to implement a people-centric approach is by training your employees regularly. Technology constantly changes, which means your cybersecurity practices should also be up-to-date. Remember, an outdated cybersecurity practice can put your organization at risk and leave your door open for threats.

To avoid that, train your employees on cybersecurity-related information. For example, you can have them trained on spotting malicious links and appropriately disposing of technology and devices when they’re no longer being used.

4. Spend Time Understanding The Threat Landscape

One of the tips to ensure proper cybersecurity planning is to spend your precious time understanding the threat landscape. It’ll help you understand your company’s operating environment, customers, and how business disruptions can ruin your business.

It’s also an excellent idea to assess your primary competitors. Determine what common threats they face and whether or not they experienced data breaches. The threats your competitors face are almost the same threats that may affect your business.

Another crucial aspect of understanding the threat landscape is learning how cybercriminals attack. Do they work individually, or are they organized crime groups? Knowing their motives and the types of resources they have can give you a competitive advantage in securing your company from potential cyber threats.

5. Focus On Developing Security Policies

As a business owner, include establishing a security policy in your cybersecurity strategy and planning. It’s a core component of your overall cybersecurity strategy, consisting of procedures and practices that your employees should follow. Typically, a security policy ensures the integrity and confidentiality of your company’s data and resources.

Security policies describe what the company expects, how to achieve such expectations and the consequences of policy violations. If possible, break down your security policy into smaller parts to make it easier for employees to understand.

Some of the security policies you can consider are:

• Remote Access Policy

It includes how your employees can remotely access company resources, who can access the corporate systems, and which data or systems can be used.

• Workstation Policy 

It involves how workers must secure their workstations. For instance, they should lock down the workstation whenever not in use, install anti-virus, apply security updates, and use strong passwords.

• Acceptable Use Policy

This policy includes how employees must be aware of the company’s requirements regarding the online transfer of confidential data, proper use of social networks and emails, and allowed internet browsing.

• Clean Desk Policy

It should include how your employees must treat their working area. For example, they should store their sensitive documents appropriately and keep notes with confidential information hidden in plain sight.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity planning may be a waste of time for some businesses. But if you wish to protect your sensitive data against cyber criminals, you must plan your cybersecurity well. It will allow you to re-evaluate your strategies and take time to enhance your current security measures. Moreover, with the above techniques and tips, you can take your security to a new level with an edge over less-prepared competitors.

Cyber crime poses a growing threat to everyone in your family – even your children are vulnerable to having their identities stolen or to being spied on through your family’s smart home devices. The very security of your home is at risk. Hackers can break into your network and devices in order to steal your personal data, learn your routines to prepare for a robbery, watch your online traffic to steal your financial data, and more.

You need to take steps to keep your home and family safe. Home security software is vital, but it’s not the only answer. You and your family need to be savvy about the threats you’re facing, and knowledgeable about how you can protect yourselves. Be careful with your data, keep your guard up on public wifi, and use a VPN to encrypt your traffic so you can’t be watched.

Secure Your Home Network

Your home wifi network is one of the biggest areas of vulnerability for most families. People do all kinds of things that make their home networks more vulnerable. For example, they never adjust the default login credentials and settings on their home routers, making it easier for hackers to get in. They often have a lot of internet of things (IoT) devices that don’t have great security protocols. They may simply set a new password for their wireless network and think they’ve done all they need to do to secure that network.

That simply isn’t the case. You need to do more. Start by securing your router or gateway. Find its IP address, then login using the default username and password for the device. It’s probably printed on a sticker on the bottom of the device, but if it isn’t, you can easily find it with a google search. Change your router’s login credentials and make sure it’s set to use WPA3 encryption protocol. If it doesn’t have WPA3 as an option, get a new router.

You also want to make sure you and your family members are using comprehensive internet security software. Security software can protect your family from ransomware, malware, and viruses. They can protect your family’s privacy, offer an additional layer of security for online transactions, protect your kids from online threats, and help the whole family avoid scams and fraud.

Teach Your Family about Cyber Security

You can’t count on the other members of your household to just know the basics of cyber security. Even your kids, who are growing up as digital natives, probably don’t know that much about the basics of cyber security. Take the time to teach your kids how to use strong passwords, avoid phishing scams, and beware of predators online. You should also teach them about keeping private information private on social media, including not divulging the family’s routine or plans to go out of town to strangers or social media followers.

Be Careful with Your Data

Everyone in your family needs to be careful with their personal data, including Social Security numbers, birthdays, potential answers to security questions, credit card numbers, and bank account numbers. Kids should consult with parents or other elders before buying anything online, not just so you can monitor their purchases, but also so you can make sure that when they do order online, they’re shopping from a reputable website.

To make sure your data and that of your kids hasn’t been stolen, pull everyone’s credit reports regularly. You’re entitled to one free credit report from each of the three major reporting bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, and you can spread them out over the course of the year so you can continuously monitor your credit report. Many banks and credit card companies also offer credit monitoring services to their customers.

Use a VPN

If you’re really worried about hackers potentially watching your family’s online activities, you should use a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN encrypts your traffic so it’s harder for hackers to watch your traffic and harvest valuable info from it. If you or your family do shopping, texting, emailing, or social media over public wifi connections, a VPN is a must so you can protect that traffic from prying eyes – when you get back to your secure home connection, then you take a break from the VPN, if you want to.

Your family could be more vulnerable to cyber crime than you realize. Take steps now to protect your whole family, adults and children, from cyber crime and its consequences – so you can all sleep a little easier at night.

How Employees Can Become Unwitting Aides to Cybercriminals? – Cybersecurity software has advanced significantly over the years that they have become highly effective in detecting and blocking threats or attacks. However, one weakness in almost all organizations that have remained easy to exploit: humans.

Employees or the people in organizations, in general, are still the weakest link in cybersecurity. The advancements in software and even appliance-based cyber defenses still struggle to keep humans from becoming an issue in cybersecurity systems. Many find it difficult to strike a balance between security protocols or restrictions and efficient business operations.

Described below are three of the common but still largely solution-less ways used by cybercriminals to turn employees in an organization into unwitting assistants in a cyber attack. Also presented are the recommended solutions for each of the weaknesses.

Downloading and installing malicious software

How bad is the employee-driven problem with malicious software or malware? In the healthcare sector alone some years ago, one study found that employees download new malware every four seconds. Imagine how the numbers have risen over the years.

Malware or malicious software can be unwittingly downloaded and installed by employees after they click on ads and respond to the deceptive train of pop-ups, modal windows, and dialog boxes that follow. They may also be getting the malware by carelessly viewing and downloading email attachments or by receiving files through messaging systems.

Most people who are not sufficiently acquainted with the way things go on the internet can easily fall for deceptive schemes that make them download and install malicious software. Many of such software are designed to delay their activity to avoid immediate detection. They slowly unfold their functions until they are finally ready to execute their intended purpose in full and spread the infection to other devices.

In 2013, Target figured in a data breach that exposed around 40 million customer payment details. Hackers achieved this through a phishing attack that targeted a Target partnering company to steal customer data and later on installed malware on Target’s system to obtain the debit and credit card information. This attack cost the company $18.5 million to settle a class suit.

Solution: The installation of unwanted and damaging software or malware can be easily prevented by blocking the ability of work devices to install new applications with the approval of the IT team. However, with the growing popularity of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, this solution may no longer be as viable.

A better way to deal with this problem is by educating employees and instilling the habit of being extremely cautious when dealing with email attachments, executable files, and other unfamiliar or dubious files. Also, it greatly helps to undertake continuous automated penetration testing. This security measure simulates threats or attacks to spot the loopholes that need to be plugged. It can determine weak security controls or the absence of measures that could have blocked unwanted app installations.

These security tests may integrate the MITRE ATT&CK framework to take advantage of the latest cyber threat intelligence from around the world. The updated information about the most recent attacks or adversary actions helps in quickly identifying the novel and creative ways hackers are exploiting security weaknesses.

MITRE ATT&CK notably includes useful insights on social engineering techniques to help organizations implement measures to prevent these attacks from defeating security controls while guiding organizations on crafting policies that significantly reduce the success of social engineering tactics.

Being unwitting accomplices to the crime

Companies go the extra mile to keep their bank account details and other important information protected. They secure the login credentials to their bank accounts, online wallets, and financial records to prevent theft or the misuse of information that leads to losses and other adverse outcomes.

Is it possible for cybercriminals to steal an organization’s money without obtaining the bank or online wallet login credentials? Unfortunately, the answer is a definite yes, and this has been demonstrated by several instances in the past. High-profile social engineering-based attacks have rendered security controls of well-known organizations and personalities ineffective.

One example is a phishing scam that targeted Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran. Her bookkeeper fell for the scheme of a cybercriminal who impersonated Corcoran’s assistant to request a renewal payment for real estate investments. The bookkeeper sent $388,000 to a “false bank account in Asia” in response to an email that used an email address similar to the one Corcoran’s assistant uses. In addition, real estate database template contains features like a relationship tracker and a birthday database wrapped up into a comprehensive real estate customer management software

“When she (the bookkeeper) showed me the emails that went back and forth with the false address, I realized immediately it’s something I would have fallen for if I had seen the emails,” Corcoran said, noting that she could not blame her employee for not realizing the sophisticated scheme.

Another case involves the auto parts seller Toyota Boshoku Corporation, which was hit by a business email compromise (BEC) attack in 2019. The company lost around $37 million after one executive was convinced to replace the recipient’s details for a payment the company regularly makes.

Even the internet giants Google and Facebook did not escape the sting of social engineering. The companies collectively lost $100 million in a business email compromise scheme. Google and Facebook unwittingly sent funds to scammers’ accounts thinking that the invoices they received were legitimate.

In these situations, cybersecurity systems are effectively bypassed. Hackers did not need to get into the organizations’ systems, as the employees or executives themselves cluelessly executed the core objectives of the attack.

This could have easily been avoided if they were using automation in their invoice processing. By doing so, they would make their accounts payable process fraud free.

Solution: The best way to address these situations is to educate employees more on how to identify possible instances of social engineering. They need to become thoroughly acquainted with the signs of possible phishing or other social engineering attacks. Additionally, protocols for accessing finances and company assets should be regularly reviewed and tested for possible security issues.

Weakening of security controls

If cybercriminals fail to trick people into doing their bidding or install malicious software, they also have the option to convince employees in an organization to reduce or temporarily disable security controls.

For example, the attacker may send simulated emails or promo materials to certain employees who have permission to configure security controls. These materials may include a component—an image or video—that is not viewable unless the recipient turns off real-time malware detection and prevention or other crucial cybersecurity functions.

Employees may decide to ditch the use of web application firewalls (WAFs) because they think it slows down their internet connection. Some may refuse to conduct compulsory file scanning whenever a new file is introduced to the system. Others may continue using unsafe apps or those that come from dubious sources.

Solution: Continuous automated penetration testing is an excellent solution for the problem of employees who are tricked into tampering with the settings of the security controls. The test will automatically find vulnerabilities and raise the necessary alerts or notifications, so they can be addressed as soon as possible.

The unintentional weakening of security controls is considered an insider threat born out of negligence. It is difficult to detect because of the presumed legitimacy or regularity of activities. As such, it has to be dealt with intelligently by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, automation, and other cybersecurity tech improvements.

In conclusion

To prevent employees from becoming clueless or unwitting helpers to cybercriminals, it is crucial that they are given enough time to learn and understand the problem. They need to stop being unwitting by knowing more about the threats everyone is expected to face eventually