By Jarno Limnell, director of cyber security, Stonesoft.
The 21st century cybercrime situation
The invention of the internet has opened the door to a new wave of corruption; cyber-theft knows no boundaries and cybercrime has been on the rise over the last decade. Thieves have devised cleverer methods of attacking and infiltrating a business’ defences and will stop at nothing in order to get hold of valuable information or money. However, businesses from around the world are not alone in the quest to find out what they can do to protect themselves from this new type of attack; governments are also looking for ways to protect organisations from cybercriminals.
In the UK, the government has made a number of announcements in the battle against cyber-crime, whereby it will be working with a number of private companies to tackle cyber threats in the UK. This mirrors the warning in July by MI5 and GCHQ that the country was under daily cyber espionage, with approximately 70 sophisticated operations per month. Additionally, the government also announced
More recently, the Home Affairs Committee published a report on e-crime detailing that the UK is too complacent about cyber war and that the potential for a cyber-attack against the UK is so serious it is marked as a higher threat than a nuclear attack.
Tech trends raise security concerns
In recent years, companies have had to change or adopt new ways of doing business in order to remain competitive. Cloud computing , ecommerce and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) are just a few of many emerging trends that businesses have had to embrace in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Cloud computing has slowly turned into an everyday norm; however, adoption has still been relatively slow in some industries. For example, in the finance sector, many banks are still apprehensive about implementing cloud technologies. This is often because security implications are too great to ignore given the nature of their business and the sensitive data they handle. Many banks outsource the housing of customer data to datacentres, who are likely to also host data from other organisations. The biggest concern here is of a breach on another organisation’s data and the impact that will have on the bank’s data.
Ecommerce is a popular trading method amongst many retailers. However, its associated security risks depend on the vendor being used by the business to handle online transactions and how trustworthy this partner is deemed to be.
Additionally, BYOD has provided hackers with another avenue into the company’s network. Users are choosing to use their own devices over ones that the organisation provides them, but often lack knowledge of the security implications in doing so. Research from the University of Glasgow found that companies significantly increased their risk of data leakage when employees used their own smartphones and tablets to access cloud storage services such as DropBox.
Other avenues into the business
Hackers are constantly looking for a way into the organisation meaning businesses need to also consider the various threats that they face on a daily basis. These can range from Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) to Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks – the latter of which has been fairly prevalent in the news lately, with attacks occurring in all sectors from banking to government.
However, there are other types of attacks and these arise when using the internet. When it comes to web-based attacks, new vulnerabilities can be found in web browsing and office software and are often used in zero day attacks meaning that there are no fixes available. These types of attacks are executed by luring the end user to open mail attachment or to click a link that directs the user into a web server hosting malicious content. Compromised end-user computers are then joined together to become botnets, ie a network of compromised hosts that are controlled by cyber criminals. These botnets are then used to send spam, steal sensitive information or execute further attacks such as DDoS.
Businesses learning to build stronger security defences
Today’s economic climate means that it is imperative that Britain promotes the fact that it is doing everything possible to be a safe environment for businesses to operate within. To do this, both the government and businesses must prove that security is extremely important to them.
From a national perspective, the UK government is asking for better collaboration between the private and public sector when coordinating responses to cyber threats. In doing so, it launched the “anti-cyber threat centre”, which is made up of experts from MI5, GCHQ, the police and businesses from a variety of sectors. This is a positive step forward for the state as it shows that it understands the role that cooperation plays in making the fight against cybercrime successful.
However, businesses need to also be doing their best to protect their networks and the company’s most prized asset, i.e. data, from the hands of cyber criminals. At the bare minimum, they should be developing and executing a thought-out security policy, which includes regular maintenance and systems that are updated in a timely manner. Furthermore, companies shouldn’t just be relying on one system to secure their networks – a layered approach, which is made up of firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS) etc, makes for a far more efficient defence system for hackers to try to infiltrate.
Any security policy that is implemented should be discussed with employees. This will ensure that they all understand the value of the data they handle, how the system can be hacked into and the role they play in ensuring the safeguarding of sensitive information.
It is extremely difficult to pre-empt a hacker’s next step. However, a collaborative approach, which takes into account experts from within and external to the organisation, is needed in order to even have a chance at fighting cybercrime – at the very least, businesses owe it to themselves and their customers to ensure everything is being done to keep their data safe, honouring the trust element bestowed on them by customers in the first place.
There is no shame in being hacked and over the next few months, there are likely to be more announcements made by companies who become more open to disclosing that they have been compromised, all thanks to the string of high profile cyber-attacks that have occurred in the last few months.
