There’s no doubt we’ve all had to change our
work habits as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic. Companies have
had to adapt rapidly to smooth the transition to work from
home. But companies will have to do more than adapt if they’re going to make
cyber resilience a long-term priority going forward. As the edge of the network
expands to include thousands of home networks and devices, it’s going to fall
on leadership to establish a culture of cyber resilience, so employees
internalize cyber security best practices instinctively.
What is a cyber resilient culture?
We
asked Principal Product Manager Philipp Karcher what a cyber resilient culture
is and what it takes to establish one at an organization. He said a culture of
cyber resilience recognizes that everyone – not just IT – has role in cyber
security. Karcher defines cyber resilience as the application of the same
principles of IT resiliency so that employees:
Business benefits of security training
When businesses internalize this culture,
they’re better prepared, better able to respond and better positioned to experience
growth, Karcher says. Asking employees to devote time and effort toward
security awareness is an investment in the future of the business.
On the other hand, businesses that don’t actively
work toward a culture of cyber resilience are more vulnerable to cyberattack. Their
employees are more likely to practice poor password hygiene, click on something
they shouldn’t and make other mistakes, like misconfiguring access rights or accidentally
sending someone the wrong file.
Cyber Resilience training delivers results
While IT resilience focuses on hardening data
and applications, your overall cyber resilience as an organization depends
equally on making users resilient. This should include a program of training
and communication on security issues employees need to be aware of and education
on how to properly respond to incidents.
Webroot
also partnered with leading cybersecurity education
content provider,
NINJIO, to deliver engaging three-to-four-minute Hollywood-style micro-learning
videos that
feature updated COVID-19 content and encourage cyber resilient behavior, like identifying
phishing emails and malicious URLs.
In addition to regular employee training, Karcher
says businesses should publish regular communications on security topics in the
form of emails, internal social media, posters and videos. Examples include
coverage of real-world threats they need to defend against in their work and
personal lives, and industry news about other businesses that were adversely
affected by attacks.
Cyber resilience can only become a part of
culture through sustained, long term engagement – not just annual check-box
training.
Three people were charged with last month’s Twitter
hack, which generated over $100,000 in bitcoin by hijacking high-profile
accounts. Of the 130 accounts used to spread the Bitcoin scam, major names
included Elon Musk and Bill Gates, who have been portrayed in similar past scams.
The FBI was apparently able to identify the perpetrators through a known
hacking forum offering Twitter account hacking services for a fee.
Kentucky Unemployment Faces Second Breach in 2020
Kentucky’s
unemployment system suffered its second data breach of the year last week.
The breach came to light after a user reported being able to view another’s
sensitive information while attempting to review their own. Officials are still
uncertain how the breach occurred or the exact contents of the information available
to the person who reported the incident.
Canon Suffers Ransomware Attack
Several services related to Canon,
including its cloud storage systems, fell victim to a ransomware attack that knocked
them offline for nearly a week. In addition to the offline systems, more than 10TB
of customer data were allegedly stolen and a ransom note pertaining to the Maze
Ransomware variant was identified. A large number of Canon’s website domains
were also taken offline, with an internal server error being displayed to site
visitors.
Havenly Interior Design Breach
A data trove containing roughly 1.4 million Havenly
user accounts were posted for sale on a Dark Web marketplace last week. It
included personally identifiable information of customers including names,
physical addresses and emails. The company’s official statement stated no
financial information was lost in the breach. While Havenly has recommended all
customers update their login credentials, the breach occurred well over a month
ago, enough time for affected customers to be subjected to identity theft or attacks
aimed at compromising further accounts.
Massive VPN Server Password Leak
The credentials for over 900 enterprise-level VPN servers
from Pulse
Secure recently appeared on a hacker forum known to be frequented by ransomware
groups. The plain-text information contains enough information to take full
control of the servers that are currently running a firmware with known critical
vulnerabilities identified within the past two months. The vulnerability that
allowed this breach, CVE-2019-11510, was identified and a patch was released
late last year. Many of the attack’s victims had neglected to implement the
patch.
Don’t expect cybercriminals
to go easy during a hurricane. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just like they’ve used
the coronavirus pandemic to launch COVID-related malware scams, hackers will
capitalize on the names and news coverage of hurricanes to disguise attacks. That’s
why now is a good time to review your cyber security posture and your overall
cyber resilience strategy. We talked with Carbonite VP of Product Management Jamie Zajac about how to
anticipate the types of adverse events that catch a lot of people and
businesses off guard. With the right protection in place, you can maintain
access to data during a hurricane – and all year round. You can start by
knowing what to expect.
Get woke to data loss
When most people think of data
loss, they think major disasters, like headline-generating storms and floods.
Of course, it’s important to anticipate highly impactful outages. But these are
far more rare than other causes of data loss. “It’s everyday scenarios that are
really common. Like leaving a laptop on an airplane, dropping a phone in the
river, or accidentally deleting a folder and having the recycle bin policies
expire,” Zajac says.
Another cause of data loss is
hardware failure. “Hardware has become more reliable,” Zajac says, “but you
never know when a hard drive will fail, a computer will be dropped or a
motherboard will crash.”
Since hardware has a finite
lifespan, failure is inevitable. When you’re considering how to protect devices
that store important data, Zajac recommends looking for a few key features:
Continuous backup (so you’re capturing changes as you
make them)
Online file recovery (so you don’t have to wait to buy
a new computer)
Whether it’s a lack of
awareness, the complexity of systems or the perceived difficulty of deploying protection,
too many people and businesses fail to protect themselves ahead of time. “We
often don’t think to make cyber security and data protection a priority until
it’s too late,” Zajac says. “For consumers and business alike, we see a ton of
inquiries about how to get data off a hard drive that wasn’t backed up. That is
way more time-consuming, expensive, error-prone and ineffective than having a
full cyber resilience and protection plan in place.”
“It’s never worth the risk of
being hacked,” Zajac says. “I’ve seen businesses struggle and even close when
they lose data, or their brands suffer because hackers have stolen their data.
As compliance requirements and privacy requirements evolve, more and more small
businesses face these risks.”
Hurricane checklist
Hurricane season is prime
time for system outages. But it’s also a useful reminder to prepare for the
unexpected. Here are three key steps you can take to form a strategy for
dealing with annually occurring threats, according to Zajac.
Anticipate your
office being unavailable – Like the physical
disruptions we’ve experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic, anticipate IT
infrastructure becoming unavailable. Can you run systems in the cloud? Can you
access a cloud backup quickly? DRaaS is a great solution for businesses susceptible
to hurricanes.
Back up
everything, not just some things – Many
people realize too late that they only chose to back up critical systems, and that
one of those “second-tier” systems is also necessary to run the business. It’s
better to have everything backed up than to be missing something. You can often
save costs by tiering your backups or having different recovery objectives for different systems. But don’t skip backing up some systems.
Test your
backups – Know whether you can
recover systems within the time required.
When it comes to hurricanes
and weather-related risks, specific security-related concerns should also be
considered. “It’s important to train people
on the protocols for when they need to work remotely,” Zajac says. “Generally
speaking, you should be training users on security best practices, whether they
are remote or in the office. But people are more distracted and thus
susceptible to phishing and social engineering when they are remote.”
If people need to work from
cloud workstations, personal devices or laptops, make sure they have a security
suite, such as cloud-based anti-virus and anti-phishing protection. Make sure you have
security software that doesn’t require people to be in the office. For example,
if you are relying on your firewall to block malicious websites, it won’t help employees
who are off the network. Use DNS protection
with roaming device security for these scenarios.
An all-of-the-above approach
Murphy’s Law dictates that
you’ll probably experience the data breach you’re not prepared for. Any form of
data loss can have bad effects. So, if you’re too narrowly focused on just one
threat, consider all the potential adverse events you could experience.
“Hackers are a constant
threat and can have really big impacts in terms of data loss, productivity
loss, compliance requirements, regulatory fines, brand damage and more,” Zajac
says. “A coffee spill is a constant threat,” she warns, “but the damage is
typically isolated. You still don’t want to rely on someone re-creating all of
your work if a coffee spill or other localized damage even occurs, especially
if it is the CEO’s laptop.” Zajac continues, “A hurricane is a rare and often
well-predicted event, but the impact can be catastrophic. You can’t wait for a
hurricane to build a plan.”
The good news is that a competent
IT consultant can help you build a strategy, and a good vendor can protect you
against many of these adverse events in one fell swoop.
Setting expectations
There’s no backup without
recovery. But how do you know if your recovery process is sufficient? It should
align with the objectives you establish before disaster strikes.
“On an endpoint, you can
typically get very fast file backup and recovery so that you only lose minutes
of data and all files are available online in a web interface for fast access,”
Zajac says. “For servers, you need to tier systems into mission-critical
applications and use a very low RPO solution, such as DRaaS. Non-mission
critical infrastructure can withstand a few hours or days to get running again.”
Zajac suggests doing an impact analysis. If a given system is offline, how much
will it cost your business?
Cloud considerations
It’s not just devices that
are worth protecting. Today, both personal and business users leverage the public
cloud, like Microsoft 365 and Azure, for much of their storage and computing
needs. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking cloud data is protected by the
vendor. But this is not the case.
“Microsoft cannot tell the
difference between accidental data loss and legitimate file deletions because
the content is no longer relevant. It’s up to users and company admins to make
this determination,” Zajac says. “Microsoft 365 credential attacks are on the
rise. It’s only a matter of time before someone creates or spreads ransomware to
Microsoft 365 native data. That won’t be a good day for anyone who doesn’t have
a backup in place.”
Next steps
Never let a good catastrophe,
or the threat of one, go to waste. Use this hurricane season to make sure you
have a robust cyber security and resilience plan. And not just for hurricanes,
but for all the ways you can lose access to data.
Nearly a week after the company announced they had suffered
a system outage, Garmin
has finally admitted to falling victim to a ransomware attack, likely from the increasingly
popular WastedLocker variant. As is the norm for WastedLocker, the attack was
very specific in its targeting of the company (even mentioning Garmin by name
in the ransom note) and took many of their services offline. Though Garmin has
confirmed that no customer data was affected, they are still unsure when their
services will return to full functionality.
Israeli Marketing Firm Suffers Data Breach
More than 14 million user accounts held by the Israeli
marketing firm Promo
were compromised in a recent breach. Subsequently, at least 1.4 million
decrypted user passwords were found for sale on a Dark Web forum, along with 22
million records containing highly sensitive information. The company has since
contacted affected customers and is pushing a forced password reset.
Netwalker Ransomware Targets U.S. Government Organizations
The FBI has released a security statement concerning Netwalker
ransomware attacks, which have targeted both U.S. and foreign government
agencies in recent months. Netwalker is known for exploiting remote desktop
utilities to compromise major enterprise networks. It also offers ransomware-as-a-service
to other cybercriminals. The best methods for blocking these types of attacks
is setting up two-factor authentication (2FA) and creating offline data backups
to protect in case of a successful breach.
Lazarus Hacking Group Branches Out to Ransomware
The North Korean state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus
has added ransomware to their latest attacks. Unfortunately for the group, the
ransomware variant they’ve chosen is inefficient at encrypting data, sometimes
taking up to 10 hours to fully encrypt a single system. These attacks are
similar to those targeting Sony Pictures in 2014 and those that affected the
2018 Winter Olympic games, both of which are suspected to have been conducted
by state-backed actors.
Nefilim Ransomware Begins Publishing Dussman Groups Data
At least 14GB of data belonging to a subsidiary of Dussmann
Group, a major German MSP, is being leaked by the operators of the Nefilim
ransomware variant. The operators have confirmed they were able to obtain
roughly 200GB of data from the subsidiary after discovering a still-unknown method
for compromising the network. Customers affected by the leak have already been
notified.
To try to fight the isolation and uncertainty brought on by
the COVID-19 outbreak, a few weeks ago we began what we’re referring to as
“Office Hours” on the
Webroot Community. It’s meant to be a forum where users can come together
and pose their COVID/cybersecurity-related questions to some of our experts,
and we try to help however we can.
The quality of questions and value of the dialogue were high
right off the bat. It’s proven to be an excellent reminder of the usefulness of
the Community in general. Some of the questions were even topical and popular
enough to warrant a deep dive.
“How can MSPs help their clients bounce back from these
challenging times?” is a good example.
As the question suggests, it’s not all bad being an MSP
right now. With many employees migrating to remote work, IT services are in
high demand. That could explain why, according
to a study by the RMM platform Datto, though about 40% of MSPs anticipate
cutting revenue projections for the year, 84% still say it’s a good time to be
an MSP.
There’s both opportunity and necessity in developing a plan
to help small business clients stay afloat in a flagging economy. On the
opportunity side, exceptional customer service can be a great way MSPs to stand
out in an industry with typically tight margins. On the other hand, if an MSP’s
clients’ tank, they will longer be around to need the MSPs services. So, the
ability to be an IT advisor for clients’ through tough times is intimately tied
to the success of the MSP themselves.
What follows are a few pieces of advice for doing that, but’s
important to remember that there’s no stock solution for bouncing back as a
business. Every client is unique and so are the pressures applied by the
coronavirus and subsequent economic slowdown. But here are some generic tips
for being your client’s go-to adviser for weathering the storm.
Set-up a virtual ‘discovery’ meeting to discuss
with them what their situation really is? This should be a (perhaps painfully)
honest conversation about the state of the business and what obstacles stand on
the way of then getting back to “business as usual.”
Devise an agenda based on the services you
provide today and the associated costs. Based on the client’s challenges (or strengths)
what is affordable what can maybe be minimized? Has the business direction
changed at all? Many SMBs may be looking to pivot considering COVID-19.
Aim to be flexible (while remaining profitable)
and willing to accommodate the period between their business restarting and
establishing a new normal. Ask yourself if taking a slight hit in monthly
income or margins is an acceptable sacrifice to make in order to help keep a
potentially long-term client afloat?
Next, work with a client to draw up a joint
“Recovery Plan” with a timeline for scaling back up the workload and
how you can specifically assist with their recovery. This may involve stressing
the costliness of a data breach, downtime, and other ways your services help
the clients bottom line suffering.
Finally, schedule regular client account reviews
(hopefully, you already have some version of these in place) to monitor
technology-related pain points and assist with addressing them as reasonably as
possible.
Economic recovery for small businesses will undoubtedly
entail some tough decisions. But doing everything you can as an MSP to assist
with that recovery by being proactive and establishing a common recovery plan
will lead to a much stronger business relationship in the future. Not to
mention establishing you as a trusted, reasonable business advisor for the life
of the relationship. So, take advantage of the opportunity of helping your
clients’ bounce back from this pandemic.
ATM manufacturer Diebold
Nixdorf has identified a malicious campaign that uses proprietary software to
“jackpot” the machines. The attack requires malicious actors to breach the ATM
manually and then use the software to force the machine to dispense cash at a
rapid rate, known within the industry as jackpotting. While these attacks don’t
seem to affect customer data or finances, the company is unsure how the
attackers obtained the proprietary software used in the scam.
Ransomware Locks Down Telecom Argentina
Telecom
Argentina is being extorted for over $7.5 million following a ransomware
attack last week. The hacker group REvil is believed to be behind the attack,
which may mean the stolen data is set to be posted on the group’s auction site.
Officials are still unsure of how the intrusion occurred, but it’s likely to
have stemmed from a compromised remote access point.
Maryland Health Services Breach Affects Thousands
More than 40,000 individuals may have had personal
information leaked after a ransomware attack on Lorien
Health Services in Maryland. The breach was discovered in June, but after
the healthcare provider refused to pay the ransom the hackers began publishing
the stolen data, which includes Social Security Numbers and other highly
sensitive information. Lorien was quick to notify affected clients and had
begun offering credit monitoring services to those affected within two days of
the attack being confirmed.
University of York Data Breach
The University
of York in the UK has learned of a data breach that occurred in May and
could affect a considerable number of students and staff. The breach itself was
enabled by a third-party service provider and contained personally identifiable
information on an unknown number of victims. While there is little the university
can do to contain this type of attack, it comes as another reminder of the
importance of supply chain data security and the knock-on effect of such
attacks.
Meow Attacks Target Vulnerable Databases
Dozens of unsecured databases from Elasticsearch
and MongoDB were wiped in a new malicious campaign that seems to attack
indiscriminately. Discovered within the last week, the Meow
attacks as they’re known appear to use an automated script to overwrite any
data in vulnerable databases and destroy any remaining data. This string of
attacks may encourage stronger security policies among previously lax database
administrators, but the lesson is costly for affected businesses.
At their most basic, phishing attacks are attempts to steal
confidential information by pretending to be an authorized person or
organization. Standard phishing is not targeted. It relies on achieving a few
successes out of hundreds or thousands of attempts. But because it’s so cheap
to pull off, both in terms of effort invested and cost to conduct, even one
person taking the bait make a campaign worth a malicious actor’s time.
But phishing has evolved. “Standard” phishing as we commonly think of it is now only a subsection of tactics carried out to achieve the same end: to swipe confidential information from an unsuspecting target in order to extract something of value.
To better be on guard across the diverse group of tactics
that fall under the umbrella of phishing, users should be familiar with the
ways these attacks are conducted.
If standard phishing is akin to trawling the High Seas to
catch users indiscriminately, spear phishers are out for the trophy catch. Where
most phishing attacks cast a wide net, hoping to entice as many users as
possible to take the bait, spear phishing involves heavy research of
pre-defined, high-dollar target—like a CEO, founder, or public persona—often
relying on publicly available information for a more convincing ruse. When the
target is sizeable enough, the CEO of a large, publicly traded company say, spear
phishing is sometimes called ‘whaling.’
Smishing
SMS-enabled phishing uses text messaging to delivering
malicious links, often in the form of short codes to obscure the ultimate
destination of a link, to ensnare smartphone users in their scams. The term is
a portmanteau of SMS and phishing, and it’s an attractive method for
cybercriminals because oh the high engagement rates for texts. According to some
sources, SMS open rates are around 98% compared to 20% for email. Messages
are often are often disguised as sweepstakes winnings, flash sales, coupon
codes, and requests for charitable or political contributions.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
One of the most
expensive threats facing businesses today, business email compromise involves a
phony email, usually claiming to be someone from within or associated with a
target’s company, requesting a payment or purchase be made (often of gift
cards). A “confidence game” according to the FBI, BEC attempts are
often accompanied by a sense of high urgency to discourage critical thinking. Of
the $3.5 billion the FBI estimates businesses lost to cybercrime in 2019, nearly half ($1.7 billion)
was blamed on business email compromise.
Search Engine Phishing
In this type of attack, cyber criminals wait for you to come
to them. Search engine phishing injects fraudulent sites, often in the form of
paid ads, into results for popular search terms. These ads often promise
amazing deals, career advancement opportunities, or low interest rates for
loans. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Often, the
only difference between the scam result and the one you’re looking for is a
.com that should be a .org or a .org that should be a .gov. Be on the lookout
for strange endings to URLs. It may be just a country-specific domain, but they
can also be hiding something more sinister.
Protecting Yourself from Phishing Attacks
Protecting yourself from phishing attacks starts with knowing what’s out there. But while staying vigilant will keep most attackers at bay, no one can be 100% secure on their own. That’s why it’s important to use an antivirus that relies on up to date threat intelligence that can block these threats in real time as they are clicked. Also, it is imperative for businesses to train their users on the types of phishing attacks employees could fall for.
As part of an official Chinese tax initiative, researchers
have found multiple backdoors into mandatory tax software installed on all
Chinese business systems. The new malware is called GoldenHelper,
in a nod to the command-and-control domain tax-helper.ltd, and has been in
active development and use since 2018. The latest campaign, dubbed GoldenSpy, is
adept at avoiding detection and began within months of the old
command-and-control servers going offline.
Texas Collections Company Suffers Data Breach
The Texas billing and collection company Benefits
Recovery Specialists Inc. has announced that a breach containing data on
over 250,000 customers occurred in April. The breach leaked personally
identifiable information including Social Security Numbers, birthdates and
physical addresses, that could all be used to launch additional attacks. Affected
clients began receiving notifications about the breach in June, though the
company has still not shared what malware was installed by the perpetrators.
Microsoft Fixes 17-Year-Old DNS Flaw
After nearly 17 years of being active and exploitable, Microsoft
has finally identified and resolved a major vulnerability involving a worm-like
transmission that requires no human interaction. With the help of a third-party
security firm Microsoft was able to patch the vulnerability before it caused
significant damage, though the time was certainly there for malicious actors to
use the flaw to execute any number of malicious executables onto an endless
string of compromised machines.
UK Ticket Provider Leaves 4.8 Million Logins Unsecured
A collection of roughly 4.8 million login credentials have
been found in a leaked database belonging to a major UK
ticker provider serving customers around the world. Among the credentials
were domains belonging to several government agencies along with millions of consumer
webmail users. The site has also been targeted in the past by attackers looking
to deface the website and has been called vulnerable to SQL injection should
attackers pursue that method.
Wattpad Database Compromises Millions of Users
Officials have been working over the past week to remediate
a data breach that could affect over 200 million users of Wattpad.
The compromised database was listed for $100,000 on a Dark Web sale site, but
was later re-listed with no price. Its owners claim to hold records for over
271 million users. Wattpad has stated that, though personally identifiable information
was revealed in the breach, no financial information was accessible since
Wattpad doesn’t store it directly on its servers.
Summer is upon us. For some, summer is all about physical fitness.
While exercise is essential to our overall well-being, we shouldn’t forget
about our digital fitness, either. Just as our bodies serve our needs and help
us go about our daily lives, so too do our computers and digital systems. And
they deserve the time and effort it takes to make them as healthy as they can
be. With that in mind, we talked with Webroot Security Analyst, Tyler Moffitt
about digital fitness – and cyber resilience – for individuals and businesses.
Be sure to add the following tips to your summertime fitness goals.
How is cyber resilience analogous to physical fitness?
Cyber resilience is all about having a robust security
posture and making sure you take care of your digital presence with your
internet-connected devices and accounts. These are all parallels with physical
fitness in that it’s a life choice and not something you can just do only once
in a while.
What are the things we can do to maintain healthy digital
lifestyles?
Take care of devices and accounts, be it work or personal. Use
two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) whenever possible and never
re-use passwords across multiple accounts. Using password phrases is one of the
best ways to create long and unique passwords. Length is strength. Backing up
and encrypting confidential data and using virtual private networks (VPNs) are
great best practices as well.
What are the consequences of neglecting to maintain a
healthy digital lifestyle for both individuals and businesses?
The risk of being infected with malware or having accounts
breached skyrockets. This can then cascade to a whole organization, resulting
in its data being held for ransom. Someone may even be held responsible and
could perhaps even lose their job. There’s also a risk of criminals committing
identity theft against you, which can be very costly.
Exercise is only helpful if it’s done on an ongoing
basis. What ongoing practices should people be mindful of to protect themselves
digitally?
A few things come to mind:
Use reputable layered security
Embrace user education
Lock down remote connections
Disable what you don’t use
Do inventory and patch management
Have multiple backups
Educate yourself and, if applicable, your
workforce
We’re supposed to undergo regular doctor checkups to ensure
we’re maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Are there “checkups” people can perform
to gauge the status of their digital health?
Education! Specifically, security
awareness training. We recommend phishing simulations to test yourself and
ensure you can tell the difference between a standard, benign email and a phishing
scam. Also, educational courses help you understand the current threat
landscape and how criminals try to trick you. Cyberthieves are always adapting
their approaches as people become more educated, so it’s important stay
informed about the
latest tactics.
There’s only so much we can do on our own before we have to seek medical intervention from a doctor. What are the scenarios where people may want to reach out to an IT expert to address a digital health issue?
Whenever you’re unsure of something, ask – just like you would
with a doctor. If you’re unsure of something going on with your body, you would
ask the doctor for more info. The same holds true for your digital life. If you
receive an email that you think might be phishing but are unsure, don’t just
click and hope for the best. Immediately ask an IT professional who can advise
you. And do the same when handling or storing sensitive information. Make sure the
methods you use to transmit and store data are encrypted. For handling business
data, find out what your organization’s data retention policy is and make sure
you’re complying with it.
Carry it forward
Summer motivates us to get fit more than other times of the
year. But just like physical fitness is best when it’s practiced year-round, so
is digital fitness. Cyberthieves don’t take breaks at any time of year. And
neither should you when it comes to practicing good cyber resilience behaviors.
Prior to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Webroot’s
annual Threat Report highlighted a 640% increase
in active phishing sites on the web. However difficult it may be to believe
(or easy, depending on your outlook), things have gotten even worse since.
Threat analysts at Webroot have been tracking the rise in registered domain names with names including “covid,” corona,” and “coronavirus” since the outbreak began, noting that 2 percent of the more than 20 thousand newly registered domains containing those terms are malicious in nature. Files marked malicious that included the word “Zoom” grew more than 2,000 percent.
All these threats have arisen concurrently with an economic
downturn that’s brought about fear, uncertainty, and the need to cut costs.
Depending on the
shape the recovery takes, we could be living with these unfortunate realities
for some time. That means cybersecurity spending will inevitably be considered
for the chopping block within many organizations. This is a bad idea for the
reasons listed above and a great many more.
What’s needed, instead, is a greater investment in
cybersecurity. As the World Economic Forum stated in an article entitled “Why
cybersecurity matters more than ever during the coronavirus pandemic,”
cybercrime flourishes during times of fear and uncertainty. We’re also spending
more time online and relying on digital productivity tools as much as ever.
“Pressure will mount on business leaders to take action
to cut costs and security spend may be highlighted for reduction,” say’s
Webroot Sr. Director of Product Nick Emanuel. “However, the economics here
are clear—cybercriminals are not cutting their budgets and are waiting to
exploit weaknesses.”
And if organizations decide to preserve their remote
workforces in order to promote employee safety and cut facility costs, as many tech
companies are
already doing, the cybersecurity landscape could be altered permanently.
“With the unprecedented shift from office to work from
anywhere, it’s crucial that businesses review their remote working policies for
data protection, as well as security, and be prepared for the variety of
different work environments,” said Emanuel.
Cybersecurity in a Strange New World
So, what can you do to enhance cybersecurity for your
business or clients? Rather than dropping products or sacrificing protection, develop
a laser focus on these four principles:
Automation—Companies must consider how AI
and machine learning can assist with cybersecurity tasks. Adoption of these
technologies is already
high, but understanding remains low. When used effectively, they can reduce
the need for high-paying, talent-scarce positions, freeing up the talent you do
have to think strategically about larger business issues. Automated backup for
businesses also reduces workload and guards against data loss, which can be
costly in terms of loss productivity and potential fines.
Education—Phishing is still the largest
single source of data breaches, according to the
latest Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report. Again, this is a quick way
for malicious actors to install ransomware or to gain access to sensitive
information, leading to downtime and fines. Luckily, users can be taught with
some reliability to spot phishing attacks. Webroot’s research has found that,
with ongoing training with a phishing simulator, click rates for phishing
attacks can be reduced by more than 85%.
Insurance—Data breaches are existential threats for many small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). According to IBM, data breaches for organization between 500 and 1,000 cost an average of $2.65 million. Normally, organizations would hedge against such astronomical threats. Cybersecurity shouldn’t be any different. The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends cybersecurity insurance both as a means of promoting additional protection in exchange for more coverage and encouraging best practices for better premium rates.
Investment—Finally, businesses should
invest wisely in their cyber resilience. This can be thought of as a holistic
approach to cyber wellness that allows an organization to remain on its feet,
even in the face of serious threats. Data security and data protection are
essential components of cyber resilience. Data security entails endpoint security,
sure, but also DNS filtering and security training for protection at the
network and user levels. Data protection entails automated, encrypted backup
and recovery for endpoints and servers to defend against ransomware, hardware
failure, and device loss or theft. Together, these elements of cyber resilience
reduce the likelihood of any one cyber setback being catastrophic for your
business or clients.
MSPs and SMBs, rather than cutting costs by sacrificing
their cybersecurity, should look to enhance it. While some of these steps may
seem aimed at companies in a growth phase, they can actually improve the bottom
line over the long run. After all, the costs of preparation pale in comparison
to the cost of a breach.
