Blog – Full Width

10 Best Cybersecurity Practices To Protect Your Business

Cybersecurity has emerged as a need of the hour. The rise of cyberattacks and data theft is on rise. Individuals and businesses mostly rely on computer applications, mobile / IoT devices and cloud storage to handle their data which can be sensitive and personal at the same time. The technological advancements have made conduct of business easier and at the same time the vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks have increased, especially with the increase in use of IoT devices.

Every business, small or big should take necessary cybersecurity measures and implement the most advanced solutions to protect their data to protect themselves from theft of intellectual property, sensitive data and corporate information, which results in huge losses for the business. The impact of cyberattacks can be vast including the cost for repairing the damaged systems.

Cybersecurity solutions combines technologies, processes and methods to protect servers, data and networks from cyber-attacks. Todays cyberattacks can no longer be prevented by firewalls or antivirus software alone. Also, to keep in mind cyber-attacks are inevitable. So how can a business be prepared to face the uncertainties of cyberworld and targeted attacks ensuring the safety of data and networks?

To help with, here is a list of top 10 cybersecurity best practices to help protect your business from cyber-attacks and threats.

1. Keep your employees aware of cybersecurity measures

Employee training is the first and foremost step every management should invest in ensuring cybersecurity. They play a vital role in cybersecurity because they can be the biggest security risk as well as the strongest security defence. Thus, educating them on possible threats, malicious activities and reducing the level of employee negligence is vital. Also never forget to protect access to corporate assets and monitor the employees while handling sensitive data.

2. Update your security policies

Security policies are the backbone of enterprise security. Businesses needs to ensure that they use the latest technologies to address cyber threats and attacks. Implement the latest cybersecurity solutions. There is a number of advanced cybersecurity solutions offered to ensure the high-end data and network security.

Learn more about cybersecurity solutions

3. Enable multi-factor authentication for all users

To keep your accounts safer, always use strong passwords. Hackers often get into the internal sources of a business through compromised user accounts having weak passwords. Thus, to ensure the security of every user’s login, enable two-factor authentication along with a strong password. Multi-factor authentication involves having access cards or pins for critical access / privileged access. This will be an effective measure to prevent cyber-attacks.

4. Install anti-virus and anti-malware software

When you are connected to web, it’s nearly impossible to have a complete control and protection against malwares. The use of anti-virus, anti-malware software and firewalls can help to reduce the vulnerabilities. But for the present world’s scenario, having firewalls and anti-virus software alone is not enough to protect from threats. It requires an extra layer of protection from cyber-attacks such as implementation of advanced threat detection and vulnerability assessment solutions.

Learn more about Network threat detection

5. Protect access to critical data & assets

Access to critical and sensitive data should be monitored efficiently and the management should have control over the privileged accesses to protect theft of key data. To ensure such, access from remote devices should be protected and monitor the user activity through comprehensive technical solution. Its always good to have VPN services for your remote workforce. Also limit the number of users having access to sensitive data.

6. Have a robust cybersecurity policy and network protection plan

Having a clear and concise cybersecurity policy is key to ensure that your business is on the right track to defend cyber-attacks. Implementing too many cybersecurity solutions can also delay the detection of threats in real time. Thus, finding the right solution for your business needs is important. An all-in-one comprehensive solution such as SIEM can be an ideal cybersecurity solution wherein you get a complete cybersecurity picture.

Learn more about SIEM

7. Be skeptical while opening emails

There can be a number of spam and suspicious emails that an organisation may receive on a daily basis. The employees should always be conscious while opening an attachment, click on link or provide sensitive information. It may be a hacker impersonating as a company or an individual to get into your internal network. If emails look suspicious it is better to avoid opening them because it can possibly a phishing scam.

8. Avoid using public networks

It is always advised to use private networks rather than connecting to a public network. While connected to a public network, any data shared over the network is vulnerable. Hackers can easily get your data. Private networks on the other hand uses firewalls and internet router to block cyber-attacks.

9. Backup important data

It is important to back up your important data. Data can be lost due to security breach or a targeted cyber-attack. Thus, to ensure that your important data is not permanently gone, always have a backup storage in cloud or local storage devices. An offline backup storage will be a secure option to safeguard your data, always encrypt and backup data regularly.

10. Monitor third party access to your data

Sometimes the third parties such as former employees, consultants or clients may have temporary access to organisation’s network. It is important to keep in mind that, after the particular requirement for which the access was given, it should be restricted.

Cybersecurity best practices checklist:

Process

• Cybersecurity policies and plan
• Encrypt and Backup data
• Monitoring/handling third party access
• Drills & Audit

People

• Employee Training
• Awareness on common phishing techniques
• Authorization Control
• Professional Skills

Technology

• Firewalls
• Software Updates
• Anti-virus & anti-malware software
• Advanced cybersecurity Solutions

The Most Common Types Of Cyberattacks

Cyberattacks can be defined as an offensive and deliberate action of breaking into an organisations or individual’s network and devices. It is a breach of information, wherein the attacker undertakes such activities to seek benefits in terms of financial or other. Even with advanced technologies, companies still prey fall for cyberattacks. This may be because of a small carelessness from the employees or the security team. Employees who do not follow guidelines have become the top barrier to IT security. An alert of security patch ignored once can open the door for hackers to launch their attack.

How often do cyberattacks happens?

With the hit of covid 19 pandemic, the rise of cyberattacks have shown a tremendous hike because of remote working, it was the ideal time for hackers to get into company networks due to the vulnerabilities of remote working. FBI reported, 50% more attack attempts per week on corporate networks globally as of 2021. This percentage will again rise with the following years.

Now, let us discuss some of the most common types of cyberattacks.

1. Malware

Malware can be defined as a term which is used to describe malicious software which gets installed in your system without consent. This includes ransomware, spyware, viruses, trojans and worms. The attackers get into the network through vulnerabilities which generally includes clicking on an infected email attachment or links.

Among the malware attacks, ransomware seems to be the #1 types of cyberattack. Ransomware is a type of malware which enables the hackers to encrypt victim’s data. They demand for a ransom to be paid to provide the decryption keys, and threatens to publish or delete the data unless paid. 3 out of 4 organizations fell victim to a ransomware attack. Every hour of downtime due to a ransomware attack costs an average of $250,000.

Immediate actions you can take to protect against ransomware

• Update your software and security patches
• Raise awareness among employees about the risks involves in suspicious emails and attachments
• Backup your data offline.
• Secure and monitor you RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)

2. Phishing

Phishing is one among the increasingly most common cyber threat. Phishing is a method of impersonating a company or an individual and sending fraudulent communications which appears to be genuine. But it contains malicious malware to hack into the victim’s system. The aim is to steal sensitive information from the users such as login and credit card details. Phishing emails can also include an infectious attachment to loads malware onto your computer and links that redirects you into downloading files.

3. MITM Attack

Man-in-the-Middle attack is type of cyberattack, wherein the attacker breaches into a network between two individuals or computers. The attacker can read and edit the data send back and forth, making the sensitive data vulnerable. It is called man-in-the-middle attack because the attacker places himself in the middle of a communication channel to manipulate data.

It is not easy to spot such attacks, as the data which is send from one end is revised or modified in mid-way and reaches to the receiver. It seems legit until something major occurs. The best way to stay vigilant ahead of such is to have a strong encryption on access points and use of VPN.

4. DoS and DDoS Attack

Denial-of-Service and Disrupted Denial-of-Service is another common type of cyberattack. The denial-of-service attack overwhelms a system’s resources making it unbale to respond to service request. DoS attacks are launched from a number of other hosts effected by the malware controlled by the attacker. DoS attacks doesn’t provide any direct benefits to attackers; however, DoS attacks can take a system offline to launch another cyberattack such as session hijacking etc.

5. Spoofing

Spoofing is kind of cyberattack where hackers impersonate themselves as a known or trusted source. The aim of the hacker is to get access into the target’s devices or network, steal sensitive information and for extorting money. It can also be for installing malware in the victim’s system. Cybercriminals trick the victims to provide their personal information and click on malicious links by acting to be a trusted source.

There are different kinds of spoofing, which includes; email spoofing, caller-ID spoofing, website or domain spoofing, IP spoofing, GPS spoofing, ARP spoofing etc.

6. Social Engineering

Social engineering is a type of cyberattack which relies highly on human interaction and involves manipulation of people into breaking security procedures. The hackers exploit human weakness to gain access to their personal and protected information. The four social engineering vectors are vishing, phishing, smishing and impersonation.

Here is an example of social engineering. Most websites have the option “forgot password” and reset them. If the password recovery system is not properly secured, hackers can easily gain access to your account.

7. Supply chain attack

Supply chain attack is another one of the most common types of cyberattacks that organisations encounter. The attackers target the weakest member of a supply chain network to tamper the distribution or manufacturing of a product by either installing hardware-based spying components or malware. Supply chain attacks are not limited to one industry. It can occur to any industry like information technology, industry resellers, government sector etc.

8. SQL Injections

SQL – Structured Query Language injection is one among the most common cyberattacks, where the hackers take advantage of websites which depends on databases to serve users. The attacker inserts a malicious code to the servers using SQL, and make the server reveal sensitive information. The SQL injection can be carried out by an attacker by simply inserting a malicious code in the search box of a vulnerable website. To protect your websites from SQL injection attacks, it is important to have least-privilege model and make sure that the code implemented against the database must be strong enough to prevent SQL injection attacks.

9. Zero-day Exploit

A zero-day (0-day) exploit is a kind of cyberattack where the attacker finds a vulnerability in a software and is not yet mitigated by interested parties. The hacker takes advantage of this situation to launch cyberattacks, and these types of attacks are most likely to succeed as there is no active defence. It is difficult to detect zero-day exploits since there is no patches or antivirus signatures to detect them.

But there are few ways to detect unknown software vulnerabilities of past, which includes;

• Vulnerability Scanning
• Patch Management
• Input Validation

10. Insider Threats

Organisations implement advanced cybersecurity solutions to prevent cyberattacks. But sometimes the most dangerous attacks occur from within the organisation. The insider attacker will be aware of the cybersecurity measures undertaken, thus take necessary steps to stay unnoticed and fly under the radar until they launch the attack. They can easily penetrate through the enterprise network, have access to a number of systems and even have privilege access for sensitive data.

One of the best ways to prevent and detect insider threats is to limit the employee’s access to sensitive data and always monitor employee activity. With artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies implemented in modern day comprehensive cybersecurity solutions, any change in the user or employee behaviour can be detected.

What Is Unified Threat Management (UTM)?

Unified Threat Manager Definition

Unified threat management (UTM) refers to when multiple security features or services are combined into a single device within your network. Using UTM, your network’s users are protected with several different features, including antivirus, content filtering, email and web filtering, anti-spam, and more.

UTM enables an organization to consolidate their IT security services into one device, potentially simplifying the protection of the network. As a result, your business can monitor all threats and security-related activity through a single pane of glass. In this way, you attain complete, simplified visibility into all elements of your security or wireless architecture.

Desired Features of a Unified Threat Manager

There are certain features that an ideal UTM solution must possess.

Antivirus
A UTM comes with antivirus software that can monitor your network, then detect and stop viruses from damaging your system or its connected devices. This is done by leveraging the information in signature databases, which are storehouses containing the profiles of viruses, to check if any are active within your system or are trying to gain access.

Some of the threats the antivirus software within a UTM can stop include infected files, Trojans, worms, spyware, and other malware.

Anti-malware
Unified threat management protects your network against malware by detecting it and then responding. A UTM can be preconfigured to detect known malware, filtering it out of your data streams and blocking it from penetrating your system. UTM can also be configured to detect novel malware threats using heuristic analysis, which involves rules that analyze the behavior and characteristics of files. For example, if a program is designed to prevent the proper function of a computer’s camera, a heuristic approach can flag that program as malware.

UTM can also use sandboxing as an anti-malware measure. With sandboxing, a cell inside the computer is confined to a sandbox that captures the suspicious file. Even though the malware is allowed to run, the sandbox prevents it from interacting with other programs in the computer.

Firewall
A firewall has the ability to scan incoming and outgoing traffic for viruses, malware, phishing attacks, spam, attempts to intrude on the network, and other cybersecurity threats. Because UTM firewalls examine both the data coming in and out of your network, they can also prevent devices within your network from being used to spread malware to other networks that connect to it.

Intrusion Prevention
A UTM system can provide an organization with intrusion prevention capability, which detects then prevents attacks. This functionality is often referred to as an intrusion detection system (IDS) or intrusion prevention system (IPS). To identify threats, an IPS analyzes packets of data, looking for patterns known to exist in threats. When one of these patterns is recognized, the IPS stops the attack.

In some cases, an IDS will merely detect the dangerous data packet, and an IT team can then choose how they want to address the threat. The steps taken to stop the attack can be automated or performed manually. The UTM will also log the malicious event. These logs can then be analyzed and used to prevent other attacks in the future.

Virtual Private Networking (VPN)
The virtual private network (VPN) features that come with a UTM appliance function similarly to regular VPN infrastructure. A VPN creates a private network that tunnels through a public network, giving users the ability to send and receive data through the public network without others seeing their data. All transmissions are encrypted, so even if someone were to intercept the data, it would be useless to them.

Web Filtering
A UTM’s web filtering feature can prevent users from seeing specific websites or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). This is done by stopping users’ browsers from loading the pages from those sites onto their device. You can configure web filters to target certain sites according to what your organization aims to accomplish.

For example, if you want to prevent employees from being distracted by certain social media sites, you can stop those sites from loading on their devices while they are connected to your network.

Data Loss Prevention
The data loss prevention you get with a UTM appliance enables you to detect data breaches and exfiltration attempts and then prevent them. To do this, the data loss prevention system monitors sensitive data, and when it identifies an attempt by a malicious actor to steal it, blocks the attempt, thereby protecting the data.

Benefits of Using a Unified Threat Management Solution

Flexibility and Adaptability
With a UTM network, you can use a set of flexible solutions to handle the complicated assortment of networking setups available in modern business infrastructure. You can cherry-pick what you need from a selection of security management tools, choosing what is best for your specific network. You can also opt to obtain one licensing model that comes with all the technologies you want, saving you time shopping for individual solutions.

Because a UTM is flexible, you have the freedom to deploy more than one security technology as you see fit. Also, a UTM comes with automatic updates, which keep your system ready to combat the latest threats on the landscape.

Centralized Integration and Management
In a normal setup without UTM, you may have to juggle several security components at once, including a firewall, application control, a VPN, and others. This can take time and resources away from your team. However, with a UTM, you can consolidate everything and control it all with a single management console. This makes it easier to monitor the system, as well as address particular components within the UTM that may need to be updated or checked.

The centralized nature of a UTM also allows you to monitor several threats simultaneously as they impact multiple components of your network. In a network without this centralized structure, when a multi-module attack is occurring, it can be very difficult to prevent it.

Cost-effectiveness
Because of its centralized setup, a UTM reduces the number of devices your organization needs to protect your network. This may result in significant cost savings. In addition, because fewer staff are required to monitor the system, you can save on manpower costs as well.

Increased Awareness of Network Security Threats
The combination of a UTM’s centralization and faster operation results in an increased awareness of network security threats, enabling you to implement advanced threat protection (ATP). This equips your IT team to better manage advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other modern dangers on the landscape.

The enhanced capability to address these kinds of threats comes from a UTM’s ability to operate several threat response mechanisms in unison, which combine forces against the threats that attempt to infiltrate your network.

Faster Security Solution for Businesses
With a UTM, you can streamline the way data is processed and use fewer resources at the same time. The UTM does not require as much resources as several components operating independent of each other. The higher efficiency you get from a UTM may allow you to free up resources to better manage other essential network-dependent processes.

Next-generation Firewalls vs. UTM (Unified Threat Management)

Although, on the surface, it may seem that the differences between next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and UTM are merely semantic, depending on which NGFW you use, there may be some distinctions. To be clear, both solutions protect your network. With a UTM, however, there exists the possibility that you get services you do not need. Integrating these with your current network could involve extra work. It could also result in difficult decisions and a challenging setup process as you try to either combine the UTM’s features with what you already have or pit one against the other to ascertain which solution is better.

With NGFWs, on the other hand, such as the Fortinet FortiGate, you can choose to turn on the features you need, making it a complete UTM solution. Conversely, you can choose to only use it as a firewall or activate some protections but not others. If, for example, you have FortiGate and choose to use it to its full capacity, it will also work as a UTM system.

Another difference is that an NGFW is an effective solution for larger enterprises, whereas a typical UTM may get overwhelmed by the demands of an enterprise.

How Fortinet Can Help

Fortinet offers several solutions that give an organization the kind of protection they need from a UTM. FortiGate is an NGFW that comes with all the capabilities of a UTM. FortiGate has anti-malware capabilities, enabling it to scan network traffic—both incoming and outgoing—for suspicious files. In addition, the Fortinet UTM has an IPS that secures your network against attackers trying to gain a foothold within. If a malicious element attempts to exploit a vulnerability in your security, the FortiGate IPS can detect the invasive activity and stop it in its tracks.

FortiGate also comes equipped with data leak prevention software, which enables it to detect potential breaches and attempts at exfiltration. FortiGate monitors your network activity, then when a data leak is detected, it blocks it, protecting sensitive data. These protective measures can safeguard the data on endpoints, within network traffic, and within storage devices.

In addition to FortiGate, Fortinet has an expansive suite of products that you can use to provide comprehensive protection to all facets of your network.