How Cyber Security Experts Are Staying One Step Ahead

Cybersecurity threads are moving and evolving at a rapid pace and they are a lot more sophisticated than they were a couple of years ago. Cybercriminals even use techniques developed by government intelligence agencies. Everyone who lands on a malicious website can get infected.

“The explosion in mobile device use and mobile networking has exponentially increased the number of security threats [that] individuals face on a daily basis,” said Joe Ferrara, president and CEO of Wombat Security Technologies, a security-training firm based in Pittsburgh.

Your smartphone’s sensitive personal information can be broadcast over public airwaves.

Technology experts recommend to keep learning and explore new approaches to protect your network and to to stay ahead of the game.

In this article, I?ll talk about what cyber security experts are doing to stay one stead ahead.

1. Minimise the Damage of Intruders

Since the start of the internet, cybersecurity was built on the idea that computers could be protected by a digital quarantine. Nowadays, hackers routinely overwhelm such defences, so experts say cybersecurity is beyond due an overhaul.

Their advice is that businesses should concentrate on minimising the damage intruders cause when they get into their networks instead of worrying about preventing intruders from getting into their computer networks.

According to U.S. cybersecurity company FireEye, the median length of time attackers lurk inside their victim’s computers before being detected or revealing themselves, is 229 days. This points out the weakness of conventional tools in identifying sophisticated intruders.

2. Stay Alert

To minimise the harm of security breaches, security experts focus efforts on detecting them as quickly as possible and then responding appropriately. Minimising the damage that hackers do when they force their way into corporate networks includes making changes to the designs of the networks and the only way to minimize the damage is by staying alert.

3. Segment the Networks

Companies are busy building virtual walls, firewalls, around them, but failing to post guards to spot intruders. If you look at the way networks are at the moment – most of them are fundamentally insecure.

Experts don’t say organizations have to stop using perimeter defences such as antivirus software or firewalls that weed out threats. But they say, to counter the sophisticated hacks that can cause huge losses, a strategy that could be likened to laying traps is needed.

Security experts make more efforts to segment their networks. They separate one part of the network from another in a way that if hackers get on to the network they only get access to the data in that segment and not to everything.

4. Divide and Delete

Some experts use the practice of “air gapping” they physically disconnect important computer infrastructure like control systems from corporate networks so hackers can?t get into the rest of the network.

Another very important measure that experts take to prevent data from theft is deleting unnecessary data so there is less for hackers to steal.

5. Encryption

Using encryption to protect data from hackers is also important but when hackers get into a network and they are not detected quickly, there’s a risk that they will be able to steal the keys that are needed to decrypt the data they steal.

Though it is hard to manage that the keys are always available to legitimate users but not to intruders, encryption is still valuable. It makes things harder for hackers, it hampers their process. To open encrypted data, hackers need to use a key. If they get into your network, how will you stop them from getting hold of it?

This is where experts say it is much more sensible to think about how to slow the hackers down so they can catch them. The chance to detect the hacker is much bigger when they have to spend three days searching for your encryption keys because they stole your encrypted data.

6. Educate Employees

You only need one person clicking on a dodgy link to put an entire enterprise at risk. To prevent this, experts say training the staff how to follow cybersecurity procedures is very important.

Cyber security elements should be included in staff contracts. Experts implement training about the basic controls and why you need them for your staff. Also, they advise to regularly hold discussions about the risks of the threats and how its changing over time.

7. Reduce the Risk of Email Phishing

Email phishing is the primary attack vector in 2018. It is already one of the most difficult attack vectors to defend. Experts implement the following steps to reduce the risk of phishing and impersonation vulnerabilities.

• Increase the representation of senders inside the email client by learning true sender indicators and score sender reputation through metadata and visuals associated with every email.
• Integrate automatic smart real-time email scanning into multi anti-virus and sandbox solutions to perform forensics on suspicious emails to either detect or report potential threats.
• Quick reporting via an augmented email experience, thus helping the user make better decisions.

[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=”About author”]Bill here from?PixelPrivacy.com. My blog is all about making the world of online security accessible to everyone. I pride myself in writing guides that I?m certain even my own mom could read! Be sure to head over to my blog if you?re interested in keeping your private information just that: Private!?[/thrive_text_block]

• Save