The Best Form of Defence is Attack

As a football fan and an ex-footballer, defending from the front and taking the offensive on other teams has always been my preferred defending method. If you’re not a fan of the sport you may have never heard of the ‘Gegenpressing’ tactic before. Allow me to explain.

This is an offensive tactic that involves going after a player immediately after they have retrieved the ball. The idea is that this player will be vulnerable, won’t have thought about where they are on the field or how their team are dispersed. From there, the opposing team can try to win the ball back straight away, instead of falling back first.

This is almost in direct opposition to the tactic of ‘parking the bus’. This is an entirely defensive move to stop the other team from scoring. If you’re interested, you can read that here.

The way we play in football and in other team sports could be comparable to the way we attack and defend our technology from being infected with viruses or malware. You need a strategy and there can only be one winner. Whether you possess an offensive or an adversarial mindset could make all the difference in your cybersecurity.

So say you want to park the bus. You purchase a shiny new anti-virus software that promises to protect you and your PC from all the harm in the world. It steers you away from certain websites and alerts you to any suspicious activity.

Great. Or is it?

Cyberattacks are no longer being sent out by hooded men shrouded in shadow typing copious amounts of green code onto a screen. It’s not in clicking on a suspicious link anymore, either. You can even be hacked through no fault of your own, you were just the unlucky winner of a random selection.

Attacks can now come in the form of phishing, blackmail, DDOS (Denial-Of-Service attack) and many others. They not only target your personal computer, they can target your websites, databases and your devices too. Kids have been in the news recently for hacking people’s wireless printers and fax machines asking them to subscribe to their favourite YouTube star. Kids! It just goes to show how easy it is to gain access to other people’s digital lives.  

Only employing one method of defence is going to leave you vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks. If you’re only able to defend yourself and an attacker gets past that - it’s already game over. Perhaps your antivirus does hold up. But for how long? Just like in a game of football, if you stick with the same tactics for too long, there’s going to eventually be a counter strategy to it. With no offensive, you have no way to fight back either. You’re left to go down with the sinking ship.

A study by Beaming UK determined that UK businesses are subjected to 52,596 attacks on average in a 3 month period. That is 578 attempts happening every two and a half minutes. If that isn’t motivation enough - I’m not sure what is.

The most effective tactic for you take in securing the safety of your digital data is an offensive one. Remember the Gegenpressing tactic that I mentioned earlier? Don’t give your attackers a chance to find their feet. If you can wear them down and take advantage of them whilst they’re vulnerable - you stand the best chance at fighting them off. Take back control of your technology straightaway just as you’d try to get the ball in possession as quickly as possible.

It is no longer enough to just install an antivirus software and hope for the best. They can’t protect you from everything. In just the same way that cyberattacks are evolving, you need your methods of attack to be adaptable and able to respond to these changes.

Did you know research undertaken by Microsoft found that 24% of the world’s computers were not even protected by a bog-standard antivirus software? Windows Defender can only do so much. That’s like leaving the plastic cover on your new phone and expecting that to save it in a fall.

Give yourself the upper hand and catch potential attackers off guard by making it difficult for them to gain access in the first place. You wouldn’t just leave your front door wide open - so why do the same with your computer?

In order to best protect you, LMNTRIX utilises a continuous monitoring, hunting and response tactic. The methods we use are adaptable to threats you could currently be facing but also puts an offence in place in preparation for future attacks. You want to be the player that can see the danger before the referee gives a red card.

It’s important to remember that there is no such thing as a 100% prevention rate either. So park the bus if you wish, but with enough people pushing it’s going to give way. It pays to have a counter-attack in place for when this inevitably happens. That way, you can let us keep them on their toes and you can keep your eye on the ball.

Ian Murphy | LMNTRIX | [email protected] | 0808 164 9442