Weekly Cybersecurity Roundup#1

To add value to #infosec, #dataprivacy, #cybersecurity and #legal communities, I am planning a regular write Weekly Round-up articles to share my views on market trends, my experiences and best practices.

Article #1: Common cyber incident themes and some proven strategies to counter them

Common themes across many recent cyber incidents:

• As more employees working remotely, Insider Threat is back on the radar, with many data leakage incidents occurring because of internal lapses
• Increasingly, attackers have perfected the art of phishing by crafting emails that have sender and company names and very relevant subject lines, making it near impossible to determine a fraudulent email from a legitimate one. These emails are used to trick recipients into downloading attachments, which in turn leads to stealth execution of malware
• Prime targets are databases and critical applications that have user PII, PHI and other credentials, which can be sold on the dark/deep web
• Vulnerabilities are still exploited because of patch management practices (Remember: even 99% patching is not OK!)
• There has been a rise of GoLang (Go) based malware which allows better cross-platform compilation, rich ecosystem and its larger file sizes make it difficult to detect by some antivirus, helping hackers
• 1 out of 3 companies that end up paying ransomware may not get their data back
• Finally, cyber-criminals are following the money trail. Example: The pandemic has made us all gamers, and miscreants are consistently targeted mobile games incorporating in-app purchases. Some of the more sophisticated attackers now have tools and skills to map purchases to people and track their buying patterns, to launch a targeted attack later

Some high impacting strategies to strengthen your cyber security program; I will elaborate more on these in subsequent posts:

• Use standard Cyber/Risk frameworks and tailor it to your needs
• Dedicate expert resources (or) work with good third parties to build, manage/monitor and audit your cyber program
• Start with your critical asset identification, classification and current state assessment
• Build robust back up, encryption and BCP/DR strategy
• Develop robust vulnerability, patch and incident management program
• Regularly train, certify your security teams and conduct awareness sessions for employees

#cybercrime

#ransomware

#privacy

Disclaimer: All views expressed on this article are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of any entity I have been, am or will be affiliated.