Monthly Archives: July 2018

Managed Services For Cybersecurity

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What’s the best defense against cyber attacks? As the summer continues, the abundance of employees traveling for work can cause vulnerabilities that can be exploited by criminals. Even a single misclick can cause a far-reaching disaster that can cost a company thousands of dollars.

What many enterprises don’t know about cyberattacks is that the effects are frequently not seen right away. When responding to a breach or incursion, it is important to catch it during what’s called “dwell time”. Dwell time is the period after which a cybercriminal has gained limited access to a system as they try to figure out additional vulnerabilities and the best soft target for a coordinated attack.

If a cybercriminal is successful at gaining elevated privilege on a system, they may wait days, weeks, or even months before launching a large scale attack. During this time, they may take the opportunity to drizzle in a payload, which could be a system exploit, a virus, or some other piece of malicious software.

When it comes to responding during this dwell time, it’s important to act as soon as possible. Even wasting minutes can be disastrous. For that matter, many people that work in IT may have some basic cybersecurity tools, but not the expertise necessary to react in a proper manner. This is why the best course of action to handle cyber threats is to hire a qualified managed services company.

Using an external managed services company is much more scalable and cost-efficient than hiring a full time cybersecurity expert. These firms can provide services that match an enterprise’s needs and monitor their infrastructure for potential problems.

That said, enterprises need firms that are able to do one task very well. While a Swiss army knife can be useful in a pinch, it pales compared to an actual knife when it comes to tasks like cooking. Ergo, specialization is important. Enterprises shouldn’t just be looking for a company that hardens security, as this is frequently ineffective. Instead, they should find a firm that knows the security space of their industry and can identify anomalies at a glance. They should also be poised to scale in the event of organizational changes.

When hiring an external firm, a company should be aware of the services that they are gaining. While all companies strive to provide an impeccable image to potential clients, thoroughly vetting possible cybersecurity firms is important. Know the services you will need and ensure they have professionals able to both implement and update them over time. They should also come equipped with the most up to date tools that can monitor activity and deploy solutions on a moment’s notice. This is why dwell time can be problematic for unprepared organizations—if it continues long enough, getting a sense of the timeline and the origin of the incursion becomes difficult, if not impossible.

An external firm is the best way for a company to monitor and shut down incursions. In these cases, it pays to do research and find a firm that provides a managed services package specific to your industry and your organization’s needs. Breaches can happen, but with the right people and the right tools, they don’t have to be large scale disasters.

Teaching Employees Cybersecurity

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As the weather gets warmer and employees start looking forward to their vacations, enterprises should be wary. While the summer is seen as a time to be outside and active, many cybercriminals are waiting to take advantage of an unwary organization and steal sensitive information.

This is in part because employees on the move are more likely to access unsecured wifi networks. Public wifi may be convenient, but it can risk the compromise of sensitive data. For organizations, it may be difficult to respond. Not only is it nigh-impossible to track wifi usage outside of the office, but having fewer staff during the summer months can reduce response time in the event of a breach.

Some companies may invest in full time staff meant to screen against a breach. However, this is often not effective, especially if the staff are not specialized in cybersecurity. Combined with the cost of labor, maintaining a defense in this way is not cost-effective.

The solution lies in stopping the problem at its source—the people that can cause a breach. Many employees may not even be aware of the problematic conduct that can lead to a cyberattack, and awareness goes a long way. Paying to train employees against a cyberattack may be a more effective use of revenue than paying full time IT staff to hedge against breaches.

Of course, teaching employees the principles of cybersecurity is something worth spending time on and executing correctly. In many cases, enterprises may have security training in place due to compliance laws. This is often done as a way of checking boxes rather than providing any meaningful education.

For instance, some types of training may be entirely online, with employees required to read a short pamphlet and complete a test verifying that they understand its contents. This approach, though simple for management, does not foster good retention and may not adequately cover the types of threats an organization might experience. It’s all too easy to grow complacent with training, even as its limitations open up new attack surfaces for cybercriminals.

Generally, the best way to train involves small groups of five to ten employees. Training should involve roleplaying several common scenarios and teach employees how to spot red flags and respond to potential problems. Threat assessment should be the priority for training, as many may not know what a potential cyberattack looks like.

Threats can take many forms, both digitally and physically. Phishing schemes are the most common, with an innocuous-looking emails downloading a payload that can sit on an employee’s computer for some time, compromising the machine and even spreading to others. Other red flags can happen in a workspace, such as an individual masquerading as an IT professional and planting problem files on a computer under the guise of performing work.

Whatever the nature of an attack, employees should feel empowered to not only detect these red flags, but report on them as well. It does an organization no good to criticize an employee that raises a false alarm, as this can discourage them from speaking up in the event of an actual problem.

When it comes to dealing with cyberattacks, preventing them is vastly better than containing them once they’ve started. Because of this, it’s worth examining an employee training program geared toward an enterprise’s needs. New attack surfaces mean new issues, and training that starts before cybersecurity becomes a problem can pay dividends—even if an organization doesn’t know it.