There are two common answers to this question; 1) I don’t know. 2) I think we’re secure.
Either answer is unlikely to tell you much about your business cyber readiness, but to be fair it’s not an easy question to answer. There is a lot to know about cyber-security and the threats you will face before you can effectively start to defend your business.
The 2018 OAIC data breach statistics revealed that over 75% of successful security breaches start with human error. The most common cyber attacks come in the form of malicious emails sent to unsuspecting employees, meaning employees are literally the first line of defence.
A Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) allows a business to selectively consume externally provided cyber security services to meet the business objectives of your organisation. Here at Cythera we have built a wide range of services and platforms that our customers can consume on a monthly basis, allowing for business to consider contracting security services rather than managing them in-house (or worse, doing nothing at all.)
In Information Technology our businesses are often very project driven; “We need a new endpoint solution”, “We need to look at life-cycling our wireless”, “Our company needs a risk management platform”. In cyber security, this approach often leads to our clients ‘not knowing what they don’t know’.
Often, when we are presenting the state of the cyber security landscape and the risks that unprepared customers expose themselves and their businesses to, we get a real sense that customers nod but don’t really appreciate the gravity of the reality. Seeing statistics on a page and bridging that to a scenario that they can wrap their heads around and relate to their business is hard. Too regularly we have to see a customer being impacted themselves before they realise the magnitude of the danger to their business and their staff that a cyber attack brings.
Often, when we are presenting the state of the cyber security landscape and the risks that unprepared customers expose themselves and their businesses to, we get a real sense that customers nod but don’t really appreciate the gravity of the reality. Seeing statistics on a page and bridging that to a scenario that they can wrap their heads around and relate to their business is hard. Too regularly we have to see a customer being impacted themselves before they realise the magnitude of the danger to their business and their staff that a cyber attack brings.
One common question we get asked by customers who have been on the receiving end of a cyber incident, is how to go about reporting the incident to authorities. Many of us are well aware of the avenues to take when we are the victim of common crimes like theft or criminal damage, but what’s less clear is how to go about reporting incidences of cyber-crime.
Last month a cross-platform assistant for creating malicious MS Office documents, named EvilClippy was released.
It allows an attacker to hide VBA macros, stomp VBA code (via P-Code) and confuse macro analysis tools.
Attackers can now hide malicious code from anti-virus and macro analysis tools by leveraging undocumented features in the way macros are stored within an office file.
We help a lot of Australian businesses out with security incidents, as well as recovering from hacks and breaches. Many of them can be attributed back to human error or poor security hygiene. I thought I would share some of my top tips to help you avoid a costly hack, or brand damaging breach.
Businesses with multiple locations have been stringently handcuffed to costly, complex private networks such as MPLS for years. It’s been an unavoidable cost and it’s compounded if you operate in isolated areas throughout Australia.
Buying IT security can be a complicated process.
Today, there are literally thousands of security vendors who all claim to have the latest and most secure security product on the planet to help defend your businesses from cyber-attack. But which ones do you pick?
This week while on-boarding a new customer, before we could even start we needed to help them recover from a compromise they had received before coming to us.
A user had suffered a phishing attack and had their Office365 email credentials stolen. Email phishing is the act of sending emails purporting to be an entity (such as Google) or an individual (such as your CEO), often using a crafted email with graphics and text from legitimate emails included to fool users into entering login information or opening an attachment. The attacker can then use the stolen credentials to gain access to your organisation, or use malware the user clicks on to gain a control channel into your environment.