Every company needs IT experts or third-party suppliers to access their networks at some point. This is to change or improve the operation of some of its internal processes. However, such access represents a latent threat or risk to the company sometimes. Therefore, you must take precautions to strengthen your business’s remote access security.
In this sense, as a leader of your organization, you must have a solid knowledge of remote access security strategies to grant secure permissions to external suppliers. In this way, third-party vulnerabilities will not affect the stability of your company. Also, you’ll prevent them from evolving into potential cyber-attacks.
That being said, to learn more about the best practices for maintaining a secure remote access system, we have prepared seven tactics for you to follow to protect your company from triangulated attacks coming from access to your systems by third parties. Though, first, let’s get to know how important it is to do so.
Why do you need to protect your company’s remote access system?
The importance of protecting your remote access system lies in the number of risks and threats that vulnerabilities from external providers and third parties represent for your organization.
Specifically, it’s about protecting your company from attackers who take advantage of these third party weaknesses. In fact, thanks to them, they could gain access to your privileged information.
Furthermore, users outside your company may not apply best practices in cybersecurity. That is, their protocol level is weak, their password policy is not as strong, or their remote connection methods are vulnerable.
All of these third-party breaches can lead to the exposure of your most critical data. Therefore, it is relevant that you avoid at all costs that these vulnerabilities become risks to your company.
How can you improve your company’s remote access security?
In theory, these tactics will help you find a balance by providing the necessary access to third parties while protecting your organization from potential cyber-attackers. Apply each of these steps and your remote access system will be much more secure and protected.
Monitor connections and third-party access to your network
Constantly monitor your external providers’ sessions in your network. Performing this action intelligently will allow you to know the origin, relationships, and permissions of each of these connections. Besides, complement the monitoring by running a vulnerability manager software to understand trends and patterns that are out of place.
Strengthen the security of your digital environment
The world of Digital Security is made up of variables that you cannot control; but there are others that you can: the internal security of your company is one of them. So, protect your organization with a multi-layered defense strategy. Make sure it covers all devices, applications, and data so they are out of reach of potential threats from your external providers.
Evaluates third-party suppliers
Even your suppliers’ business partners represent a risk to your company if they don’t exactly apply good cybersecurity practices. In this case, conduct a thorough assessment of the vulnerabilities of these third parties. Also, identify factors such as what type of credentials they’re using, who’s using them, and whether their security measures are on par with those of your organization.
Check your suppliers and partners’ credentials
Check constantly for third-party access to your company’s systems. You’d rather also make sure you keep track of shared accounts, which you should delete if they represent a risk to your business. This step should be done after you have previously ensured that the cybersecurity practices of your suppliers and their partners are similar to your company’s.
Limit access to your suppliers
Physical network segmentation is a cybersecurity practice that consists of limiting the access of users, accounts, and computer processes only to the resources necessary to carry out routine and legitimate activities. Apply this tactic to further control the permissions of your providers to your organization’s systems. Even more, set a predetermined access path through a privileged access management solution.
Enable specific permission controls
Use a privileged access management solution to grant certain permissions to your suppliers across multiple target systems. Also, try to limit the commands of each user. This will provide a high level of control over your company’s digital security.
Train your company members, suppliers and third parties on risk and threat prevention
Knowing the best practices in cybersecurity, and risk and threat prevention isn’t enough. Therefore, bring your team under constant training that focuses on how to apply these security measures. This way, preventing and sealing off possible vulnerabilities in your organization will be much more effective.
What software can help you improve your company’s remote access security?
Due to its main characteristics, we believe that BeyondTrust—former Bomgar—is the right software to improve your remote access security.
This cybersecurity tool seeks to provide high-level protection and security to companies and their customers. In fact, it offers functions such as privileged access management, session and password control, audits of platform changes, vulnerability monitoring, and remote support.
If you consider that BeyondTrust is the right tool for your organization, contact us to have exclusive access to a free trial of this application. At GB Advisors we have the purpose of helping you build a more secure infrastructure for your company, no matter what.
