Webinar Jan. 18, 2023: Cybersecurity New Year’s Resolution – Go On the Offensive
Every organization handles risk management differently, but cyber risk management has grown in importance. With more data living online, and customers looking for simple platforms or payment solutions, enterprises have built out a sprawling attack surface with many layers of vulnerability.
Cyber Risk Management involves all the actions taken by IT professionals to prioritize cybersecurity within an organization and reduce the vulnerabilities across the business. Part of risk management may be compliance with industry regulatory agencies and spreading awareness of the operational risks across all departments when working online.
Whether or not your organization has a dedicated Security Officer role, a few simple steps can make a big difference in controlling cyber risk and vulnerabilities.
The first step for most security teams will be clearly documenting all the server equipment and where it lives. Whether they have an on-site server room or utilize a service provider with a temperature-controlled room, knowing the physical location of equipment guides risk management and business continuity plans.
Teams should also document any employee devices with access to the network. Since so many teams work remotely, this task is more difficult but even more critical. Some employees prefer their personal laptops to their work devices and may misplace their work phone or laptop in their home. Without an inventory of these physical devices, companies can quickly lose track of the data stored on them.
The next step towards cybersecurity risk management is a complete inventory of your online assets or external attack surface. While you may be confident in the security measures for your directly managed assets, your vendors and their vendors may not be so careful with your information. More third-, fourth-, and nth-party vulnerabilities data breaches are reported each year, and you don’t want your enterprise on that list.
Cyberpion’s External Attack Surface Management solution gives you the full snapshot of your external attack surface out to the nth degree of connection, so you have a complete inventory of your online assets.
This comprehensive inventory of online assets will be extensive, so the next step prioritizes the risks throughout. Cyberpion’s tool also offers that prioritization along with best practices for remediating vulnerabilities.
Routine risk assessments alert the team to any changes in exposure and keep risk management controllable through day-to-day tasks.
The first benefit of risk management may be required regulatory compliance for your company. With a higher level of management and compliance, your enterprise can assure your customers of better security as well as bid on government projects that would not be available without this compliance.
Better risk management also protects your reputation and credibility with your customers. When the organization demonstrates a dedication to security best practices, stocks go up, and customers stay loyal – even after a breach.
Cybercriminals regularly try to mimic your website and leverage your credibility to gain access to customer data. With a full picture of your external attack surface, you’ll know when a malicious actor uses an image or direct clients away from your authentic website to their suspicious one.
Through FISMA, private companies that work with government agencies must meet the same standards, but what about the vendors of those private companies, and then their vendors’ vendors? Compliance at the center of the attack surface does not guarantee the security of the entire sprawling landscape.
Your security team will be looking for abandoned subdomains that malicious actors can take over to build a spoof website and steal credentials. But can your team go line-by-line through the code and script on your website to find the vulnerable element? Probably not.
With the external attack surface scan and vulnerability prioritization in hand, your team can resolve issues other teams created but forgot about.
Improve the security culture across the organization with documented best practices for cybersecurity. Due to the sudden change to remote work in 2020, some departments implemented their own project management and chat tools without the approval of the security team. Those employees need to understand the risk of attaching documents and giving access to servers through these platforms.
Remember that third-party vendors are the growing danger to cybersecurity, and these employees could unintentionally put the infrastructure at risk.
Request a free hyper external attack surface scan today.
