10 Strategic Moves To Build A Defense Against Cyberattacks

Threat analysts and incident responders spend a lot of time dealing with ransomware and cyberattacks. Even though cybersecurity analysts wish that the scale of the problem was smaller, they’re learning more about how to keep companies secure against cyberattacks. Threat intelligence indicates that the leading cause of security breaches and cyberattacks is threat operators’ break-ins using software vulnerabilities, followed by brute force attacks, stolen credentials, and abuse of trusted tools. However, there’s no reason to be pessimistic about ransomware because companies can grow more resilient and fight back. Here’s a 10-point strategy to build a strong defense against cyberattacks:

10 Strategic Moves To Build Strong Defense Against Cyberattacks

1. Remain Updated on the Evolving Threat Landscape – The ransomware threat landscape will unquestionably develop as threat actors employ new methods to disrupt companies’ operations. Companies need to maintain better communication with their security staff and key executive stakeholders about the current state of ransomware threats, possible impact on business, and proactive steps in preventing cyberattacks. Keeping up with the newest changes will enable more focused efforts to fix vulnerable applications rather than attempting to patch everything.
2. Analyze How Losing Critical Data Can Impact Businesses – To fully comprehend the impact of a ransomware attack, companies need to first obtain complete visibility into their assets and comprehend where critical data resides, how it’s accessed, and how it’s used throughout companies. Complete data mapping exercises ensuring that confidential information is only accessible to those on a need-to-know basis. Conduct business impact studies on the risks associated with not having access to the data. It’s worth checking that their backup methods are operational and resistant to today’s ransomware threats attempting to sabotage them.
3. Assess Internal and External Preparedness – When there is no systematic security posture assessment, there’s an increased threat of significant ransomware attacks. Depending on the companies’ unique blend of people, processes, technology, and governance capabilities, assess the most critical risks and remember to consider any third-party risks. Companies can create a prioritized mitigation roadmap outlining the steps needed to achieve their security goals, which are aligned with strategic business objectives.
4. Review and Test Incident Response Plans – Using the most recent ransomware threat intelligence for tabletop exercises and testing simulations emphasizes the importance of regularly testing and updating their incident response plan. Their plan needs to include testing and restoring backups to ensure they’re adequate for assisting in responding to attacks. Companies need to include their key stakeholders in the testing to gain their support. Having difficult conversations ahead of time will save valuable time and ensure companies are focused on what is most important during a ransomware attack: preserving key operations and returning to normalcy.
5. Implement Zero Trust – A zero trust strategy approach to cybersecurity, when properly deployed, simplifies, and unifies risk management by making security a single use case across users, devices, connection sources, and access methods. How zero trust eliminates implicit trust and continuously validates every stage of digital connection can address ransomware risks. Ensuring that network connection between network segments is authorized, multifactor authentication works in tandem with zero trust.
6. Identifying Exposed Assets and Block Common Ransomware Attacks – Companies should adopt a record-keeping system to keep track of every asset, system, and service they own on the public internet. The system should include tracking all major cloud service providers and leased internet service providers (ISPs) and spanning common and frequently misconfigured ports and protocols. Remote desktop protocol (RDP) accounts for numerous ransomware infections since threat operators can easily discover RDP due to working from home has become more common. Multifactor authentication can be very useful in ensuring that users using the accounts are who they say they are. Companies should be aware of multifactor bombing attacks, in which threat operators are attempting to generate numerous approval requests (usually push notifications or SMS messages) to deceive users into approving the wrong one. It’s safer for users to enter a one-time passcode number from their devices only when they need to while accessing certain services.
7. Preventing Known and Unknown Threats – Companies should attempt to turn the unknown into the known and supply new defenses faster than threat operators can respond. Stop known exploits, malware, and command-and-control traffic from accessing their network to prevent known threats and cyberattacks. Blocking these can increase the cost of executing ransomware attacks enough to help deter threat operators. Additionally, as more sophisticated threat operators deploy new zero-day exploits and develop new ransomware variants, companies should focus on identifying and blocking unknown threats and cyberattacks.
8. Automate – When ransomware attacks and cyberattacks are detected, numerous hours of manual labor are needed to stitch different information sources from multiple tools together. Companies should implement tools that enable automated ransomware remediation using pre-written response and recovery playbooks. SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response) technologies automate the entire process, allowing response teams to quickly shut down ransomware, reduce data losses, and limit financial effects.
9. Make Sure Cloud Workloads are Secured – To protect cloud workloads from ransomware, make sure all cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, and container images are securely configured and steps are taken to reduce vulnerabilities, including any security features disabled by default. Examine open-source packages and libraries for patchable vulnerabilities. Identify and eliminate too permissive or unused IAM entitlements.
10. Use Retainers for External Expert Support to Reduce Response Time – Once potential breaches are identified, it’s vital to act quickly. When companies have an incident response (IR) team retainer in place, IR specialists become an extension of their team, ready to step in whenever they need help.

With ransomware groups continuously developing new methods and techniques to disrupt companies’ operations, it’s important for businesses to utilize the 10-point plan mentioned above to combat ransomware attacks and other cyberattacks. At SpearTip, our certified engineers are working 24/7/365 at our Security Operations Center monitoring companies’ data networks for potential ransomware attacks and cyberattacks and are ready to respond to incidents at a moment’s notice. SpearTip can examine companies’ security posture improve the weak points in their networks and engage in their people, processes, and technology to measure the maturity of the technical environment. The ShadowSpear platform, an integrable managed detection and response tool, delivers a cloud-based solution collecting endpoint logs regardless of machines’ location.

If your company is experiencing a breach, call our Security Operations Centers at 833.997.7327 to speak directly with an engineer.