As the world becomes more connected, cybersecurity is becoming more complex. As an experienced cybersecurity expert, we know how challenging it can be to prioritise where to focus your efforts. Keeping up with today’s threats means securing every area of vulnerability: email, identity, endpoint, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and the external attack surface. To help you step up your game, our experts have listed the six ongoing threats that showcase today’s challenges in keeping your data protected.
1. Email remains a focus area for defense
According to the 2022 Microsoft Digital Defense rapport, 35% of ransomware attacks involved the use of email. Besides, phishing attacks increased by 61% from 2021 to 2022. Attackers are commonly using legitimate resources to carry out their attacks. It’s getting harder to tell the difference between genuine and malicious emails.
Using buffers like URL checking and disabling macros will help strengthen your security posture. Tackling more advanced email threats requires that you correlate email signals into broader incidents, visualise the attack, and understand how attackers are taking advantage of other parts of your corporate environment to leverage legitimate resources.
2. The enlarged identity landscape also expands opportunities for threat actors
Cybercriminals are getting more creative in circumventing multi-factor authentication (MFA). Besides, phishing kits have made it even easier to steal credentials. Managing the identity attack surface is much more than just securing user accounts. You also need to cover cloud access and workload identities. For example, attackers frequently get access to third-party accounts and then use those credentials to infiltrate the cloud and steal data. Often, this is accomplished through workload identities, which are time and again overlooked in permissions auditing.
3. Hybrid working and shadow IT have increased endpoint blind spots
The sheer number of devices in today’s hybrid workplace has made securing endpoints more challenging. Unmanaged servers and BYOD strategies contribute to the shadow IT landscape and are therefore particularly appealing to cyber criminals. And the threat only continues to grow.
4. IoT devices are multiplying, and so are IoT threats
IoT devices are an often overlooked attack vector. Interestingly, as organisations harden routers and networks to make them more difficult to breach, IoT devices are increasingly becoming the threat target of choice. For instance, an IoT device can exploit vulnerabilities to turn IoT devices into proxies by using an exposed device as a foothold onto the network. Frequently, organisations have no visibility into IoT devices, which may contain dangerous vulnerabilities, such as outdated, unsupported software.
There are emerging regulations for IoT security across the globe, but when looking to reinforce your security posture, it’s vital to first gain more visibility into all of your attack surfaces, including IoT devices.
5. Protecting the cloud is vital, but compound
Organisations are increasingly moving infrastructure, application development, workloads, and data to the cloud. This radical shift has increased the number of vectors for attackers to exploit, with many gaining access through gaps in permissions security. Cloud app development and cloud storage are top cloud attack vectors. For app development, we therefore recommend embracing a “Shift-left” security approach. This means thinking about security at the earliest phases of app development.
6. Securing the external attack surface is an internet-scale challenge
Today, an organisation’s external attack surface spans multiple clouds, complex digital supply chains and massive third-party ecosystems. Besides, it extends beyond its own assets, and includes suppliers, partners, unmanaged personal employee devices, and newly acquired organisations. Fact is, the internet is now part of the network, and despite its almost immeasurable size, security teams must defend their organisation’s presence throughout to the same extent as everything behind their firewalls.
How can we help?
As a Microsoft Solutions partner and a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), we have the knowledge and skills to assess, pilot, and deploy the right security solutions for your organisation, along with a variety of managed services to help streamline your security operations. Do you want to know more about how we can enhance your security posture? Contact us today via the form below.
Content originated from Microsoft.