Digital Hygiene

 

“This past weekend marked International Data Protection Day – a reason to reflect on the harsh reality: cyberattacks have become commonplace for businesses. Data leaks, blackmail, and operational disruptions are not just incidents, but direct threats to a company's financial position, reputation, and very existence. Information security problems have finally moved from the technical plane to the level of strategic management.

And although many organizations have already built information security systems – implemented firewalls, ensured endpoint protection, and so on – attacks do not stop. Formally, everything works. However, in trying to protect themselves from everything at once, companies lose sight of specific vulnerabilities that attackers successfully exploit.

Effective protection requires not checklists, but an understanding of where there are insecure places in the infrastructure. An attack can begin not only through a rare or previously unknown vulnerability, but also due to a simple oversight: the presence of outdated software versions, excessive rights, or password reuse.

The search for vulnerabilities begins with understanding which elements of the infrastructure can open the way for an attack: an outdated service with broad access rights, an account with excessive privileges, or a forgotten architectural solution. And you need to look through the eyes of the attacker. This is the essence of a proactive approach: instead of passively collecting metrics, actively modeling an attack that shows how far one can advance by compromising just one point. Different methods are used to find vulnerable points. Each of them has its own tasks, advantages, and disadvantages.

One such method is an automated way to quickly find known problems: vulnerabilities that are already in databases, outdated software versions, open ports. This method is suitable for regular technical monitoring, but it does not explain how these vulnerabilities can be exploited in a real attack, and it does not take into account the presence of information security tools.

In addition, experts try to follow the entire path of a hacker up to the capture of important systems. Red teaming, that is, the simulation of hacker attacks, is the modeling of a complex and lengthy attack with real goals: for example, gaining access to accounting through a compromised account. This method allows you to assess the level of protection, as well as the speed of response to an attack and the ability of the information security service to minimize its consequences.

Another increasingly popular method of assessing security is automated penetration testing. It combines the advantages of the first two approaches: it works automatically, is launched regularly, is easy to use, does not require the involvement of experts, and provides a realistic picture of hacking methods. After conducting a realistic attack, a list of current vulnerabilities is formed and recommendations for their correction are given.

And the basis of the security policy should be the principle of least privilege - it is necessary to avoid granting excessive permissions, privileges, and so on.

All these approaches do not compete, but complement each other, ideally forming a cycle: from regular automated checks to periodic manual penetration testing and cyber testing. However, for full-fledged protection, the implementation of a balanced set of measures is critically important, including, for example, the search for already existing threats.

Hackers can hide inside the network for weeks. Therefore, regular auditing of logs, anomalies, and suspicious activity is necessary.

If an attack does occur, the team must have a clear procedure: who does what and how, where the backups are located, and who to notify.

Cybersecurity is not an "out-of-the-box" solution, but a living process at all levels of the company: from architecture and management to corporate culture. A truly proactive approach is not preventive measures on paper, but regular practice: testing, checking, modeling, correcting. Everyone has weak points. The only question is who will discover them first – you or the attacker.”