The world continues to live on, moves forward and develops. And everything that is in this world develops, otherwise it may become the property of the past. Therefore, the threats to cybersecurity do not stand still either. The cost of the consequences of attacks for companies grows, and many times. The complexity of attacks is also growing, so attacks remain effective, but not all companies have time to update their security policies and technical solutions and find themselves in a terrible situation. And losses often have not only financial expression, but also legal consequences.
And as practice shows, preventive measures often play a huge role. After all, as we all remember, one of the most vulnerable points in a company is its employees. Even with all the tricks and restrictions, those mistakes made by employees – through negligence, incompetence or simply out of laziness – allow you to attack the network from the inside or even present yourself during an attack by an employee of the company. It is often easier to conduct prevention than to spend on expensive treatment.
For prevention to work, you must understand and do the following things. First, you must effectively detect problems so that you can respond in a timely manner. When you know that there is protection behind your back, you can afford to pay more attention to analytics and methodology.
Second, you must make hypotheses. Hypotheses about where and how attacks can happen. This may require an additional audit. You assume, based on the way the firm interacts between departments, the interaction with clients, what technical means and regulations are used. The organizational side of the issue should also be considered – if it is possible to carry out an attack or theft by observing official regulations, it is a reason to think.
Third – investigate. Carry out activities to test your hypothesis. Of course, the responsible persons should be informed about it in advance so that no uncomfortable situations would occur. But you need to test your conclusions in practice – this is the only way to make sure that your hypotheses are correct. Or vice versa – extremely far-fetched.
Fourthly, use the information for training. Think of what you can change and how you can enhance your protection. And what you need to use it for. If you already know how to do it, that’s fine. If you can’t completely eliminate a threat and don’t know how to fight it, you need to learn. As the famous Japanese proverb says – “If you need a sword only once in your life, you should always carry it with you”.
It is also important to understand that attacks by employees are often very difficult to track by technical means. The exceptions are employee monitoring software, such as Monitask that allow tracking anomalies in user behavior. When a user uses his privileged rights to access data that he does not need to work, or when he downloads data for further transmission, or when he transmits information “orally” – for example, by writing on social networks.
The ability to combine in its approach to information security as a technical component, as well as organizational. Understanding that it is important not only to work “on the fact”, but also to apply preventive measures. Constant assessment and analysis of the effectiveness of protection. These are the three pillars on which the successful information security of any organization.
