Improving IT security: Five-step plan to plug loopholes

Enterprise IT security breaches can lead to catastrophic consequences, and giants like Google can be targeted. IBM data shows that the United States monitored 1.5 million cyber attacks last year, with an average of 16,856 attacks per organization each year, and many of them resulted in quantifiable data breaches. The average downtime cost per minute for a medium-sized attack is $38,065. In the face of increasingly complex cyber threats, IT security must be prioritized. However, many IT professionals don't understand the vulnerability that could allow hackers to access their systems and sank the organization. While it is usually easy to fix these vulnerabilities, the difficulty lies in discovering them.

The following are five steps to help you discover IT security vulnerabilities:

1. Implement external penetration test:

Hiring a white hat hacker for penetration testing can easily identify critical external security vulnerabilities than using security vulnerability scanning tools. Starting with your company name, these authorized hackers will use the latest attacks to collect as much information about your employees and infrastructure as possible. They will search for vulnerabilities in your website, applications, systems, and configurations and exploit them like malicious people. If the white hat hacker can't find any technical vulnerabilities, they will use social engineering techniques such as phishing to try to collect data from your users. Combining social engineering with penetration testing is essential to know whether your users are involved in dangerous behaviors. You should conduct penetration testing regularly, especially in regulated industries. This will keep your system safe and put you a few steps ahead of hackers.

2. Identify internal risks:

As the Snowden incident proves, your employees may be your greatest safety risk. Internal penetration tests can tell you exactly how much information an unhappy employee can steal and assess the risk of loss if the employee decides to engage in malicious behavior. During internal penetration testing, authorized hackers will work within your organization to exploit your internal vulnerabilities. They will look for weaknesses in IT systems, databases, networks, applications, access controls, and firewalls. This will reveal flaws in your infrastructure and help you identify data that is at risk. Internal penetration tests should be performed every time an external penetration test is conducted.

3. Perform risk assessment:

You should conduct a risk assessment based on the results of external and internal penetration tests. Analyze your risks and determine which risks pose the greatest threat to your organization. You may need to introduce your risks to your executives in your organization and convince them to invest in safety. Make suggestions on what needs to be fixed and how much to invest to reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities. New risk assessments are conducted annually to understand the latest technologies and threats. Risk assessment is also mandatory if you accept payment card transactions and must comply with PCI-DSS regulations.

4. Develop a data breach and security incident response plan:

Economist Intelligence Unit found that while 77% of companies have encountered security breaches in the past two years, 38% of them still have no incident response plans. Globally, only 17% of organizations are ready for security incidents. Incident response planning is critical to quickly recovering data and services after a vulnerability occurs. Your plan should specify:

• Members of the response team and the actions they should take in the event of a vulnerability or attack.
• Who should be invited to investigate the vulnerability and restore everything to normal operation.
• How will you communicate with employees, customers, and stakeholders after the vulnerability occurs.
• How you will implement lessons learned to avoid similar vulnerabilities in the future.

Practical testing of your incident response plan with your IT team and employees during your annual penetration testing period. Your IT team should be able to detect and respond to internal attacks. Actually test your plan and train your team to react and think proactively.

5. Test backup and recovery preparation:

Many companies failed to test their backups. Your backups may not be as reliable as you think, and if your data is lost or corrupted, you will become vulnerable. It is crucial to test your backups to ensure you can quickly recover your data after a vulnerability or other security incidents. You can also consider backing up your data in multiple data centers. You may need a local data center to quickly access your infrastructure, as well as another data center in another city or country. If a data center goes down, you can still use your data. Test how your team can react in a trial case. Let them compete with each other for the fastest time to put server backups into use.

Conclusion:

Perform each of these five steps to identify your IT security vulnerabilities and understand what you must do to protect yourself from threats. When was the last time you had a security check? What are your tips for staying safe?

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