Today's cybersecurity landscape is growing ever more complex as bad actors continue to increase their numbers and effectiveness at an exponential rate. Malicious cyberactivities cost $300 billion to $1 trillion annually. Large companies have been compelled to take extra precautions or face the consequences of foregoing to do so, and several have made international headlines in the aftermath of wide-scale breaches, but all companies regardless of size or area of expertise should treat cybersecurity as the difference between success and failure in the business world.
The two pillars of cybersecurity prevention that strategic-minded companies should adopt are proactive remediation and incident response. As the term implies, proactive remediation relies on a proactive mindset and is often successful in preventing a breach before it takes place because steps were taken to protect an environment before an attack.
While this may seem sufficient, it is imperative to remember that proactive remediation and incident response go hand-in-hand. Yes, proactive remediation may well thwart potential danger, and highly functional proactive remediation measures drastically increase this likelihood, but strong proactive remediation alone is not enough.
A successful operation requires both proactive remediation to snuff out danger before it takes place and a commitment to incident response when cyber attackers pry their way in. When the two prevention measures are both given adequate resources to perform at their highest levels, cyberattacks are less likely to occur and, when they do, they will do far less damage.
Following are five key steps to ensure proactive remediation and incident response complement one another as a two-level protection system against cyber attacks.
1. Understanding the Environment
Cyber attackers will often target privileged accounts that are handed out in excess. While these accounts grant extensive control over sensitive data and IT systems, they are often overlooked or monitored by those without training. As a result, they offer attackers a path of least resistance. Understanding why attackers choose certain attack points is vital to hindering their best efforts to breach.
2. Take Action
Understanding the mindset of cyber attackers is key, but this knowledge does little if you do not act on it. Following the example of privileged accounts, it would be wise to reduce the surface area of a potential attack by reducing the number of privileged accounts. If a privileged account doesn't appear to be necessary, eliminate them and make it a point to skillfully monitor the remaining accounts due to their heightened security risk.
Similar action can be applied to other areas: ensure that sensitive assets and accounts are isolated. Take the time to implement strong authentication.
Taking action to prevent something bad from happening is dependent on understanding your environment. This reduces the risk of breaches and puts oneself in a strong position should a breach occur despite responsible proactive measures.
3. Have an IR Plan in Place
Proactive remediation measures put a company in a stronger position, but that alone does not equate to an ideal cybersecurity prevention system. An incident response (IR) plan needs to be in place before something bad happens because persistent and adaptable cyber attackers may not be stopped by the first level of prevention. The good news is, even if proactive remediation is bypassed, having an effective incident response plan will greatly reduce damage both in terms of time and money.
An effective IR plan begins with preparation: users must be educated on the importance of updating security measures and trained to respond to network security incidents in an efficient manner. When a potential incident is flagged, cybersecurity professionals will then determine whether a particular event qualifies as a security incident. This is followed by containment, eradication, recovery and reflection to improve and learn lessons for the future. IR plans value education on security matters before, during and after a breach - producing a culture that grows to be more aware of security threats and better equipped to prevent and manage them.
4. Prioritize Based on Actual Risk
Prioritizing the most threatening incidents result in speed, accuracy and thoroughness meshing together to produce top-drawer cybersecurity prevention. Time and money will not be devoted to as many false alarms. When a legitimate threat is detected, mobilization can occur in a cohesive manner because everyone will know how to act in a given situation.
5. A Proactive Mindset from Start to Finish
Building upon the first four points, a proactive mindset allows for cybersecurity prevention to perform at its highest efficiencies. Proactive remediation should be adopted with the understanding that an incident response plan is also necessary to backstop the first level. Teams are working together, data is enriched with reliable threat detection and available, indexed, and searchable, and unknown data is automatically investigated and blocked at the gateway.
As a result of effective planning, the level of interconnectivity can continue to blossom, analysts can be fed relevant alerts and no longer waste time on faulty attacks. Capable hands can fully assess, analyze and mitigate compromises in a timely fashion because they are not guessing the root cause of problems.
Proactive measures save time and money and yield educated responses to security threats. Organizations can save money and better protect their data with planning, training and integration--requiring forethought and action but the payout in the long-run is worth it.
This article originally appeared on the Cybric blog at:
https://blog.cybric.io/proactive-remediation-plus-incident-response/
