Source: Cognitive World on Forbes

Cyberattacks are becoming more common in the digital ecosystems we utilize for both personal and professional reasons. In the past year alone, hundreds of millions of private records from banks, ISPs, and retail establishments have been made available to the public.

The Covid pandemic's impact on work habits may be partly to blame for this rise in violations. The previous few years have seen a sharp shift in work to remote and hybrid workplaces. The evidence indicates that hackers took advantage of the gaps and vulnerabilities in the company's security after accepting this adjustment. The last two years have surpassed all prior records in terms of data lost due to breaches and the sheer volume of cyberattacks on people, corporations, and governments.

Businesses and governments are starting to grasp the seriousness and complexity of these cyber threats. Some of the biggest concerns are ransomware attacks, data breaches, DDoS attacks, misconfiguration, and major IT failures.

The recent wave of major industrial and government cyberattacks serves as an example of the growing threat. The usage of cutting-edge technologies like 5G, AI, and machine learning, as well as growing tactical cooperation among hacker organizations, poses new risks due to their increasingly sophisticated threats.

The reactive mindset has changed as a result of a series of wake-up calls, including significant intrusions by highly skilled threat actors against multiple high-profile targets (including Solar Winds, Colonial Pipeline, OPM, Anthem, Yahoo, and many more). These revelations have exposed a flawed approach to data defense and operating with passive preparedness.

For businesses, there are four basic ways to manage cyber risk in a growing digital threat environment. They include being 1) proactive in security, 2) continuously testing software code and applications, 3) having a risk management and resilience plan, and 4) preparing for the new landscape of emerging technologies.

The Need for Businesses to be Proactive in Security

Being proactive in the ever-evolving digital landscape means doing more than just hiring people and buying new equipment. Creating a cybersecurity framework is also essential since specific circumstances could necessitate the use of biometrics, analytics, encryption, authentication, tactical measures, and ongoing diagnostics and mitigation. Proactive cybersecurity helps to ensure business continuity, to put it briefly.

To maintain continuous business operations, risk assessment and incident handling are the main components of effective methods for minimizing the consequences of cyberattacks. It's critical to keep up with changes in the dangerous landscape and to be ready for anything that might happen. A risk management strategy needs to give top priority to situational awareness assessment, information sharing, and resilience planning.

A proactive cybersecurity commitment requires the completion of a cyber vulnerability risk assessment. This action item is one of the most crucial first steps in cybersecurity best practices. A risk assessment can help you improve overall operational cybersecurity and quickly deploy solutions to protect critical assets from malicious cyber attackers by quickly identifying and prioritizing cyber vulnerabilities.

A comprehensive risk management plan should include cyber-hygiene best practices, instruction, and training; use policies and permissions; network access configuration; code and application testing; device management; application limits; and regular network audits.

A security strategy's specifics can vary based on the circumstances, but the threads that hold it all together are situational awareness and meticulous communication skills for critical communications in an emergency. The United States government and businesses adhere to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) slogan, which is "Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover."

The Importance of Testing Software Code and Applications

Software code testing is a crucial part of information technology product validation. If the testing process is not followed, the final product may include flaws that put a business or organization in danger. One way to ensure the ultimate quality of the goods in software development is to locate and fix errors and misconfigurations. The early detection and correction of flaws and misconfigurations in the software development lifecycle enable planning and cost savings.

Application security testing, which searches for potentially exploitable malware, misconfigurations, or code vulnerabilities in programs and apps, needs to be the first step in that assessment process. Preventiveness and preparedness start with identifying the knowns and unknowns in the code that underpins the different operating networks and applications that will define our digital future.

New code, especially third-party software, needs to be thoroughly identified, assessed, and validated before it is put on the network. The members of your cyber security team should monitor third-party advisory websites such as US-CERT and BugTraq for newly found vulnerabilities.

Even if there is a danger associated with fresh code, many apps and programs may already be operating on antiquated hardware that has security flaws and open doors. Thus, in addition to any new code, legacy code also needs to be checked for patches as part of a vulnerability assessment.

Every program is built on software code, and standards are required to maximize performance and spot flaws. Penetration testing and visibility scanning, which entail confirming and validating the susceptible source code, can accomplish this. The primary objective of the testing and validation techniques is to identify issues before they can contaminate devices and networks.

Software testing, evaluation, and validation are made considerably more difficult by the need to foresee the unknown threats that are typical of cybersecurity breaches, even though the known may be physical. One of these unknowns is locating concealed malware that is outside the reach of sandboxes, signature-based systems, and other behavioral detection methods.

The grim reality is that cyber-breaches are a dynamic threat since criminal hackers are always refining their tactics and skill sets. Cybercriminals these days employ increasingly complex evasion techniques, some of which can even disable malware detection tools. To get past machine learning code and evade anti-malware detection, these thieves usually employ stolen certificates that are sold on the dark web or underground market. Code injection and memory space alteration are used as an exploit kit is injected into the target system. Generative AI is significantly enhancing criminal hacker capabilities in those areas. The government and business sectors must work harder to address and contain cyber threat issues.

Beyond the use of conventional vulnerability scanners and manual penetration testing, testing needs to account for the tactical, behavioral, and ever-more-complex attack surface that hackers are targeting. It also needs to be automated to keep up with the speed at which the ever-evolving cyber world is changing. Developing defensive strategies and anticipating the moves of malicious cybercriminals are prudent measures to improve cybersecurity. It is accomplished through continuous validation testing.

Ongoing behavioral validation testing based on digital and human intelligence inputs makes it possible to close the gap in protection and discovery. Simulation results can be obtained quickly, frequently, and independently of the tester's skill level—a point that may introduce vulnerability.

Having A Plan for Business Continuity and Cyber-Resilience

Remedial measures are essential to continuity since breaches will always happen. To maximize resilience, industry and government entities should set up incident response plans that include mitigation, business continuity planning, and secure backup procedures in case networks and devices are compromised. Training and tabletop exercises can assist in implementing incident response plans in the event of a genuine incident.

Training information security personnel, establishing automated detection and backup systems, and optimizing response processes, cyber-resilience, and company continuity after an intrusion require ongoing development.

Since information sharing keeps the corporate and government sectors updated on the latest ransomware, viruses, malware, phishing, insider threats, and denial of service attacks, it also plays a critical role in resilience and business continuity. Sharing information also results in the creation of working procedures for resilience and lessons learned, which are essential procedures for resilience and lessons learned, which are essential for the success of commerce and the prosecution of cybercrimes.

Meeting The Security Challenges of Emerging Technology

Emerging technology is a tool that both threat actors and cyber-defenders can employ. The current state of cyber threats includes artificial and machine intelligence, quantum computing, the Internet of Things, 5G, virtual and augmented reality, and more.

A possible cybersecurity route that blends machine and artificial intelligence is automation. Artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly speed up security. It will enable real-time analysis and threat identification. Companies will be able to monitor activity within their system and spot any strange activity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be used by malevolent hackers to find vulnerabilities and…

READ MORE

Chuck Brooks, President of Brooks Consulting International, is a globally recognized thought leader and subject matter expert Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies. Chuck is also Adjunct Faculty at Georgetown University’s Graduate Applied Intelligence Program and the Graduate Cybersecurity Programs where he teaches courses on risk management, homeland security, and cybersecurity. LinkedIn named Chuck as one of “The Top 5 Tech People to Follow on LinkedIn.” He was named as one of the world’s “10 Best Cyber Security and Technology Experts” by Best Rated, as a “Top 50 Global Influencer in Risk, Compliance,” by Thompson Reuters, “Best of The Word in Security” by CISO Platform, and by IFSEC and Thinkers 360 as the “#2 Global Cybersecurity Influencer.” He was featured in the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Onalytica "Who's Who in Cybersecurity" – as one of the top Influencers for cybersecurity. He has an MA in International relations from the University of Chicago, a BA in Political Science from DePauw University, and a Certificate in International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law.