Protecting corporate data is an increasingly important issue for companies, data breaches are the order of the day, and many are realizing what it means to have their data, websites, or corporate servers compromised.
On this Data Privacy Day we would like to provide some insights into how you can try to prevent attacks rather than just detect them after the fact and react. “Prevention is better than cure,” said a famous commercial, also applies to cyber security.
Breach Protection: blocking threats before they become problems
Attacks from unknown threats are a critical risk for enterprises and are the most difficult to prevent, precisely because there is no defined countermeasure.
According to some analysts*, in 2020, 75% of attacks were detected as unique, that is, detected only once and not repeated.
To defend against these kinds of threats, traditional methods based on previous “encounters” are not effective, and this is where activities entrusted to “machine learning” technologies and SOCs, Security Operation Centers, are grafted in.
SOC is a service dedicated to real-time monitoring of computer network security and coded processes by enabling rapid detection of any anomalies to preserve business productivity as much as possible.
To deal with the threats of this and the next generation, we can no longer rely solely on products such as an “intrusion prevention” system and an antivirus, we must be in control of what happens to our assets, wherever they are.
If mobility has made the corporate perimeter liquid, the change to the work approach brought about last year by the pandemic has definitely disrupted traditional ways of thinking and acting, making it necessary to start valuing our data and defending it for what it is worth.
Monitoring access to data and correlating events that taken individually might be insignificant, but with a holistic view can lead back to a threat are the new challenges, in which time increasingly plays a key role.
Identifying and fixing problems as early as possible can preserve companies from losses in both productivity, money (ransom and/or fines) and image.
Already, because data theft is not only costly in economic terms but – today – also in terms of reputation and competitive advantage.
Winning the Battle of Cyber Security
Only organizations that focus on preventing attacks can “win” against cyber attacks. It is necessary–in our view–for organizations to adopt a proactive plan to stay one step ahead of risks, and not just detect and remediate after the fact.
WHAT IS NEEDED FOR EFFECTIVE AND PROACTIVE PROTECTION?
- Prevention services: behavioral anomaly detection and machine learning that can identify and block possible attacks on networks, cloud environments, and endpoints before they happen. And an effective prevention service works 7×7 H24, because attackers as in a battle try to strike when it hurts the most.
- Awareness and training: the famous “accountability” mentioned by both the International Standards and the GDPR. All business components must know the value of a piece of data and the harm it would create for the company to lose it, and then training. Spread a corporate culture of common sense and procedures.
- Plan and test: you cannot create a resilient system in a day or a week, you need to plan with a medium-term view and then most importantly spend time simulating any incidents and restarts, only in this way will you have the pulse of the actual goodness of the system and feedback on the acceptability of residual risks.
*Source Sophos Threat Report 2020
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