Discover the 4 cyber security golden rules

25 Oct 2022

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This article used with permission from CyberOps.

In 2022, cyber hacks affecting multiple organisations were reported in the media: high volumes of sensitive Australian business, staff and citizens’ personal information were compromised.

Optus, Singtel, Telstra, Dialog, Uber, VinoMofo, MyDeal, Canva, MediBank, Toyota and Costa Group are all examples of cybercrime victims in 2022. Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, affecting business supply chains and ransom demands continue to skyrocket.

This year’s Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) global Cybersecurity Survey indicates that 43 percent of organisations are experiencing more cyber-attacks, an eight percentage-point increase from last year.

Thycotic reported in the 2021 State of Ransomware Survey and Report that 64% of organisations were victims of ransomware in the last 12 months. According to Enterprise IT World, the first nine months of 2021 saw 40% more cyber-attacks than the same period of 2020. Equally important is that increasingly, these attacks originate from bad actors using publicly available tools, making hackers much more difficult to identify and be stopped.

ISACA’s report lists the top three threat actors to blame for exploited organisations: cyber criminals, hackers, and malicious insiders. Interestingly, the most common attack types reflect historical trends: social engineering, advanced persistent threats (APTs), security misconfigurations, and ransomware.

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The Australian government, since 2018, requires the mandatory disclosure and reporting of data breaches and can impose large penalties. Although it’s clear that no industry is safe, many businesses still don’t believe their information is at risk. In contrast, many hackers believe their own information is at risk, claiming tactics such as phishing/SPAM are still very effective.

Continual Security Improvement Cycle

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The Business Model for Information Security. Source: ISACA.

Appropriately aligned policies, processes, and an update and maintenance program which are subject to regular review/update and evolve with your business are considered essential to maintain a security resilient IT environment.

Cyber skills gap

Cyber-attacks are growing, but the talent pool of defenders is not keeping pace. This continues to be an ongoing struggle. Across the globe, multinational enterprises and small businesses encountered adversities with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Staffing in cybersecurity was no exception. Staff retention and attracting new talent can be achieved by being an employer of choice:

Look after your staff
Be mindful of burnout
Know your workforce’s skills gaps and keep skills up to date

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https://mysecuritymarketplace.com/mp-files/2022-cybersecurity-skills-gap.pdf/

How hackers find you

Social media and profiling
Twitter and Instagram and other image location tracking
Active internet attack
Hacker search engines
Data Breach information sold on the Darknet, Deep Web or TOR
Data leaks form systems, staff, or vendors

Global threats

As the global cyber threats change over time, security intelligence, training, and protections also need to evolve. To ensure ongoing business resilience against modern day attacks you must continually invest in understanding your threats and the available protections against them.

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www.hackmageddon.com

The four golden rules of cyber security

1. Get the basics right

Over 75 percent of attacks exploit the lack of basic controls such as the Essential 8.

2. Look after your crown jewels

Prioritise where you spend your money to defend yourself. Build a fortress around your most critical assets or services.

3. Do your homework on your enemies

Invest in understanding who might attack you, why and how, so that you can anticipate the most likely scenarios and defend those assets that are most likely to get attacked.

4. Treat cyber risk as an opportunity to look closely at your business

Security and resilience can affect nearly every part of an organisation. Strategies to protect IT security and business resiliency should align with an organisation’s broader goals — from protecting intellectual property, to maximising productivity, to finding new ways to delight customers.

How to improve your cyber security

Incorporate cyber risks into existing risk management and governance processes
Implement industry standards and best practices, don’t rely on compliance
Evaluate and manage your organisation’s specific cyber risks
Provide governance oversight and review against business needs
Develop and test incident response plans and procedures
Establish a security culture and activity program
Coordinate cyber incident response planning across the enterprise and suppliers
Maintain situational awareness of cyber threats

If you do nothing else

Patch or upgrade all operating systems, applications, and Infrastructure, including mobile and other devices
Ensure an integrated security endpoint protection solution is used on all systems and mobile devices; a virus/malware protection alone is not good enough
Security-harden workstations and servers to vendor and industry baselines
Know where your sensitive data is stored/transmitted, and ensure it is encrypted
Implement two factor authentication on all systems and network with access to sensitive data; also consider system-to-system service account security restrictions
Ensure your suppliers and vendors maintain their security to your standards as a minimum
Don’t reuse passwords, don’t share your passwords or sensitive information
Ensure your wireless is using WPAv2 or better encryption security
Periodically engage a security professional to conduct a security review

About CyberOps

Derek Grocke
Derek is a director, key participant and instigator of change in many organisational management and ICT processes including security systems architecture, the IT component of numerous due-diligence processes, financial IT external/internal audit, security resilience management, management of IT operations and infrastructure groups, establishment of many architectural and security processes/policies and established IT enterprise risk/issues methodologies aligned with practial business governance. He is a Cybersecurity, RF, Flight Systems and standards specialist.

Derek and the CyberOps team work closely with organisations throughout Australia and the world to advance their security posture by leveraging extensive cross-industry, defence, education, and government experience.

The team’s unique ability to understand today’s business and technical challenges, allows an effective and tailored best of breed security, governance, and compliance approach to support and maintain key business objectives.

CyberOps can help you with the following services: