Risks & Tips For Security

When reviewing the cybersecurity risks explored at this year’s BlackHat conference you’ll note the following items: geopolitical risks, digital transformation, and cybercriminal’s offensive capabilities.  Some of the cybersecurity advice given to address these items involve conduct simulation scenarios, impact assessments, and tabletop exercises at the executive level.

Keep in mind that you want to plan beyond the next two quarters with these risks and cybersecurity steps because the collision between geopolitical risks and technology risks is not going to stop any time soon.  Furthermore, the digital space is going to keep making progress with technology, which means that planning for three or four years doesn’t mean you can just sit on your cybersecurity posture either.

Another important item highlighted at BlackHat 2022 was cloud security.

Due to the pandemic speeding up the cloud and digital transformation, there is still a lot of catching up to secure them.  Entities of all industries, private and public companies, every business essentially is faced in having to increase the use of the cloud for the ability to be flexible, elastic, productive, and efficient with remote or hybrid work environments.  The infrastructure of doing business and day-to-day operations now extends so far out that it is a challenge to secure the environment, to have eyes to see where the vulnerabilities lie.

When you look at the way the platforms are expanding, the inclusion of software-as-a-service (SaaS) for example, these are all ways for the cybercriminals to get in.  Companies need to understand how the cloud works across the hyperscale vendors and the interactions at hand when conducting business.

The reason you want to have eyes on the business architecture in the cloud is because the dependencies and trusted connections within the relationships between the software services and technology providers are well known to the community of hackers that want to get ahold of your data.  This means that supply chain and managed service providers are all possible ways in that need looking into with cyber resilience and security in mind.

When you add the items that are connected within the environment, it becomes more than only the cloud, it is all cloud apps, software, devices, everything that you use to get in and out of business mode.  The data that is created by these connections is growing exponentially, which means losing track of the data can get easy.  If data security measures are not actively taken with every business app, software, cloud environment, all things that are connected; it’s only going to give cybercriminals more ways to get in and businesses less ways to trace back what happened or to close down back-doors.

Proactive is what cyber resiliency and security is all about, so getting ahead should be part of your overall cybersecurity strategy and posture, always.  If we want to ensure the public and private sector stay secure and running, all types of businesses, large and small, want to get going with these new areas of risk.

Start simple, review what you have already set up so far.  Then move into the new areas you have implemented in the recent years, especially during the pandemic.  Create an overview of everything you use in the office and for remote work and trace all connected things.  Then go from here.

If you need support with cybersecurity, let us know. Here is a link to schedule your free consultation: https://calendly.com/ncxgroup

Photo courtesy of Ollyy