Blog
Cyber attackers can just walk through your front door
Blog by Andy | Posted on Friday November 9 2018
… and you won’t hear them knocking
It’s never been easier for cyber criminals to conduct a cyber attack.
Think of your digital presence as a physical property with regular doors that can be closed and locked. It’s always been typical behaviour for online criminals – hackers and agents looking to deliver unpleasant payloads like viruses or malware – to act like an opportunistic burglar. They’d explore the perimeter, looking for weak locks (with poor encryption), or vulnerable systems similar to a door left on the latch.
Casing the joint
If the target was worth it, attackers would spend some time watching it and observing the behaviour of the legitimate users to see if any activity was inherently insecure and open to exploitation. Ah, the grand old days, when criminals had to do a dishonest day’s work.
Organised crime
These days, it’s never been easier to be evil online. Downloadable and easy-to-use scanning tools can be found on search engines. They have done all the joint-casing already, showing connected interfaces with known vulnerabilities. All the crim has to do is arm themselves with the right digital crowbars and the knowledge and will to use them, and boom – there goes your organisation’s sensitive information.
All kinds of systems are open to attacks and the typical factors are signposted:
- Lack of authentication
- weak passwords
and the biggest one (and the hardest to fix) …
- human error
Not going to fall for this one again.
Turn your locksmith’s attention to ‘behaviour’
Ok, so we all need to be more vigilant and harden our security just as much for our digital environment as we are for the buildings we live and work in.
According to the National Crime Agency, nearly half a million businesses might have fallen victim to BEC (business email compromise) fraud at some point. IT workers are among the most likely to fall victim due to the nature of their work and the volume they deal with. Joining them are employees working in legal firms, HR and finance as these are high-value targets for fraudsters.
Feeling the shame?
A quarter of the victims of impersonation fraud were apparently so ashamed they decided to hide their mistake from their team due to fear. Imagine one of your staff falls for a phishing campaign. How would you know?
BARRICADE!
Picture the scene: It’s a dark and stormy night. Suddenly your system locks up. You get a message demanding online payment to release your sensitive data. This is no trick-or-treater. Halloween is over, and this is not a prank.
Unfortunately, this scene isn’t fantasy, either. It’s a constant battle between cyber crime and security systems, and we’re often vulnerable without even knowing it. If we can’t prevent passwords being stolen and systems becoming compromised, what can we do? Well, perhaps we can make things a lot more difficult for the wrong’uns. It’s time to deadbolt those digital doors, nail up your Windows with virtual wooden panels (see what we did there?), and monitor the CCTV of your privileged account access.
Manage and protect your organisation’s most vulnerable secrets
And, here’s a way to do all that: let Thycotic change the locks and give you the only key, allowing you to discover, manage, and delegate access to all privileged accounts. It addresses all the authentication control, weak passwords and human error aspects of your vulnerable environment. And Thycotic does all this by giving you a single central dashboard to monitor and administer your organisation, meaning there’s no more guesswork and you can take control of your security strategy.
FIND OUT MORE about how Thycotic can harden your digital environment.
We’ve even got some FREE TOOLS for you, so you can test the strength of your locks. Gratis. Forever.
WEAK PASSWORD FINDER FOR ACTIVE DIRECTORY
Get your FREE Thycotic Weak Password Finder Tool from Idency. A fast and easy way to find weak passwords among your Active Directory users and improve your security.
PRIVILEGED ACCOUNT DISCOVERY FOR WINDOWS & UNIX
Privileged Account Discovery for Windows & Unix from Thycotic will save you hours of effort while making your organisation much more secure from hackers targeting your privileged account credentials – and it’s absolutely free!
