Cyber criminals have no off season, neither should your security. Here’s a lineup of the cybersecurity solutions that team up to be your offense and defense.
1. Perimeter Security
Good security starts with a strong perimeter.
When firewalls were created in the earliest days of network computing, they were essentially the only layer of security between a computer or network and the “outside.” Therefore, the concept of a network “perimeter” and firewalls have essentially been considered one and the same since the days when that simple setup was the norm.
Technology has evolved and the security threats within the internet have, too, so it should be no surprise that securing network perimeters has also had to evolve over time. Setting up and turning on a firewall are no longer sufficient means to protect a network. The days of set-it-and-forget-it no longer exist, as they say. Today, Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) are advanced, powerful pieces of hardware that can do a whole list of things to protect your network—filtering, packet inspection, sandboxing, blocking traffic, and more—but that hardware becomes nothing better than shelfware if it’s not set up and configured to its highest potential.
In today’s threat landscape, there is no doubt that a firewall is still a vital component within an organization’s overall security lineup, but it’s important to ensure that your organization has the right firewall and the right configuration to maximize security protection.
Learn more about Perimeter Security with Ascend.
2. Secure Email
Prevent your email system from becoming a threat-delivery system.
These days, businesses rely on email… and so do a lot of attackers. What are you doing to ensure your organization’s communications are secure? You’re probably not going to do away with email and revert back to paper communications only, that’s for sure.
In a world where email is unavoidable, how do you make sure your organization’s email system is the safest it can be?
Many email platforms come with some degree of built-in security features, but nearly 1/3 of malicious emails bypass most platforms’ default security measures. Adding layered security to your email platform can help keep spam, scams, and phishing emails out of your inboxes using a combination of intelligent filtering and sandboxing.
3. Organization-wide Security Awareness
Conquer human error.
For the sneaky threats that bypass your perimeter or slip through the email filtering, it’s vital that users organization-wide know how to identify security threats, whether in the form of phishing emails, unsafe websites, or vulnerabilities in-person.
Security training programs are incredibly valuable in this area, as studies have shown in recent years that cybersecurity knowledge is not inherent in many internet users. Due to the speed at which technology advances, and the increasing divide between the technologically-savvy and the general public, it has become clear that while most internet users understand some cyber-concepts at the most basic level (i.e. wifi allows you to access the internet, long and complex passwords are harder to guess, etc.), they don’t have an understanding of how the technology works and how that technology can be exploited.
The security of an organization can easily be impacted by human error—like the simple click of a link—so cybersecurity awareness is of utmost importance if you intend to build up the “human” layer of your cyber defense.
4. Vulnerability Management
Proactive cybersecurity, not reactive.
Building your organization’s security can be time-consuming, stressful, and overwhelming. Time, budget, and resources affect an IT or security team’s ability to build or improve cybersecurity, rather than just staying afloat. When faced with such roadblocks and limited resources to dedicate to proactive solutions, how do you know where to start?
With vulnerability scanning, assessments, and reporting, you can review a comprehensive list of current vulnerabilities and their severity—allowing you to prioritize your security improvements by what matters most and take things one step at a time.
5. Endpoint Security
Prevent advanced malware attacks on your endpoints.
Traditional Antivirus may be dead, but protecting your endpoints from malware attacks is not. New and improved malware prevention solutions are effective, even against zero-day attacks and custom malware hashes that old database-reliant AV programs would miss.
Protect your endpoints with a security solution that’s proven to be highly effective at stopping evolving malware attacks, powershell and other script-based tactics, and attacks that run in memory.
6. Detection & Response
Be prepared if prevention fails.
Realistically, 100% prevention is never possible. The cyber landscape is evolving faster than security solutions can keep up, so there will always be a possibility—even if it’s a miniscule one—that a cyberattack may make it through your line of defense. So what should an organization do about it? Do you just forego security altogether and opt for investing in only cyberinsurance instead? No, and there are a lot of reasons why that would be a bad idea.
No, whether you’ve got only preventative security or a combination of security and insurance, you should also equip your organization with a good system to alert you when prevention fails. Think of it like security cameras and an alarm system in your home or office—if the locked door fails to keep a criminal out, the backup security measures will identify the break in and alert you and the proper authorities of the incident. Plus, with recordings and data from the cameras, experts can investigate what happened during the security breach and help you get everything back up and running.
Think of Managed Detection and Response like that – if a cyber attacker breaks in past your perimeter, your email security, or your endpoint security, you might not even know they’ve done it, especially if they are using particularly “quiet” methods of navigating your network. Without an alarm system to track and alert on their actions, you wouldn’t be notified of the breach at all.
With SIEM to collect and correlate logs from across your network, plus Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to identify unusual user behavior and signs of an attack, you can rest assured that in your network, the time to discover an active cyberattack will be reduced from months to minutes.
7. Security Experts
Supplement your team for success.
Can’t do all this alone? Don’t worry, there are managed security service providers (MSSPs) who offer their security operations center (SOC) as a service to organizations like yours. Take all the managing, monitoring, and updating off of your plate and let a team of certified security experts handle these efforts. With the 0% unemployment rate for cybersecurity talent, it can be hard to find and keep your organization’s Information Security department fully-staffed and keep up with the threat landscape at the same time.
Have you recruited your strongest players? Talk to an expert today to learn more about how to build up your best team.
