The frequency at which organizations face a cyber breach is expanding the conversation about how to prevent one and how to prepare to get back on track after one occurs. Obviously, there are a couple schools of thought on the subject — one being that there’s nothing you can do to avoid one; the other being that you can be proactive while also planning for the worst.
A simple look into your junk mailbox is a clear indication of the potential landmines you can click on to put your computer and/or your system at risk. Phishing emails, spam, and any variety of dangerous messages from strangers are plentiful. However, there are many other means through which a cyber breach can occur.
The Proactive Route
When’s the last time you audited your policies? You can find many patching issues through an audit process. These are areas where you’re vulnerable, which is why frequent auditing is good proactive policy.
User input is also an area that can lead to a cyber breach. When developers don’t put precautions in place, much user input goes directly to libraries and frameworks, which leads to structured query language (SQL) injection, which leads to data breaches. Take preventative measures and look into more robust, secure development practices.
It is also important to take a look at your web application firewall (WAF). This seems rudimentary, but it’s surprising how many times the WAF is where the lack of focus leads to cyber breach.
The Importance of Being Ready to React
You think you’ve done everything you can, but you could still be at risk. How do you detect when you’ve been breached, and what do you do next?
Remember, it’s not a breach until your data leaves your system. You could have something rooting around in your servers that you can detect, which you can do by looking at your outbound data. Whether by programmable proxy or by WAF, there are ways to check outbound responses for sensitive data, which is an important step to take in protecting your data.
It’s a good idea to look at the size of the content in an outbound response to see if you’ve been compromised. For instance, if you have a normal response to a URL that is under 10k of data, but you find that the response is actually closer to 100k, this should raise a red flag that prompts further investigation.
At AMD Technology, we’ve gained the trust of our clients who depend on us to offer cutting edge, enterprise grade tech to keep them safe and secure. Find out more about how we can protect your organization from cyber breach by contacting us today.