Any company supported by OT and IT environments must take seriously the possible daily threats against its systems. The data is compelling when it comes to the fact that an average company employs a little more than 1400 cloud services, but only 8% apply cybersecurity measures and policies to counter attacks.
Since nearly 90% of organizations facilitate the connection of personal devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) to their networks, it is not uncommon for cyber exposure to increase exponentially. For this reason, we will thoroughly review the challenges and solutions you must take into account to secure your systems, such as the Tenable.io platform, which protects your business and reduces vulnerabilities.
Challenges associated with cyber exposure
Modern businesses face all kinds of threats, especially when it comes to cyber exposure. If, as an entrepreneur, you lack tools, your IT specialists need more support, you depend on manual processes and the visibility of the attack surface becomes difficult, you definitely need to implement effective measures.
To protect the OT infrastructure, IoT operability and the convergence of IT processes, you must take into account several trends in this sector:
The range of threats and vulnerabilities expands
In the field of OT organizations, there is concern about the misuse of their sensitive information. Some 65% of these companies see it as a serious threat because they use outsourced maintenance, protection and service management services.
They also indicate that 60% are concerned about attacks that affect operations and 20% see nation-state aggressions as alarming.
Cyber-attacks increase in intensity
It is no coincidence that many OT companies experience incessant attacks that affect their operations. It is estimated that at least 90% of organizations suffered a significant incident of cyber exposure in the last 2 years.
These events caused disruptions, data leakage, and downtime for their systems or equipment. Among the most relevant events, phishing attacks represent half the cause of identity theft or passwords.
The risks and losses from cyber exposure are immeasurable
In fact, almost 50% of organizations in the sector make great efforts to quantify the detrimental effects of cyberattacks on their operations. The task is to determine the damage caused by downtime,
However, there are other relevant factors, such as unpatched vulnerabilities (already identified), intellectual property theft, decreased staff productivity, economic loss, customer migration, and brand discredit.
More sophisticated threats have become a priority
Experts in the area of security argue that OT companies need to be vigilant in the face of new strategies and techniques of cybercriminals. This requires reducing the risk of infrastructure disruption, improving sensitive data against unauthorized access, simplifying IT complexity, tightening third party access controls, and ensuring that outsourced services protect sensitive information.
Cybersecurity is a complex issue for staff
Due to the dependence on manual processes and the lack of trained human talent, it is complex to better visualize your attack surface. While only 20% can meet the requirement, the rest cannot. To avoid incidents, organizations need an inventory of software and hardware if they want to comply with security requirements.
5 Tips to Reduce Cyber Exposure
In combination with the use of the Tenable.io platform, you can rely on these 5 basic tips to protect the attack surface from cyber exposure, from your main containers to the cloud. These recommendations are:
Promote the visualization of digital assets
Whether it’s the data center or the cloud, you need tools capable of showing you the entire visibility of your infrastructure. In this sense, you must resort to more effective strategies, such as the use of APIs for metrics and virtual instances to monitor the organizational phase during the connection and disconnection of short-lived assets.
Constantly monitor dynamic assets
This measure is due to the fact that there is an enormous number of connected elements that lack adequate security. Scheduled scans and monitoring serve the function of protecting the processes related to the Internet of things. Also, in analyzing the information they generate, it fulfills the purpose of finding the compromised equipment.
Change Risk Management for the Cloud
Whenever there is a migration of assets to virtual servers or containers, cyber exposure becomes a major challenge for your business. At this time, the most relevant solution for transferring IT assets to the cloud is to implement reliable encryption systems and prioritize access for personnel who require these services.
Alternate protection from static to dynamic assets
Technology is advancing at a pace that seems to prevent proper adjustment to this uncontrollable expansion of vulnerabilities. The incorporation of dynamic assets that appear and disappear faster and faster raises questions that are difficult to resolve.
As this trend becomes more complex when you add AI, IoT, robotics, automatic learning, and other novelties, you need to track the interactions of your applications with an advanced solution like Tenable.io.
Recognize industry trends and risks
As you incorporate technologies such as IoT and SaaS, your computing ecosystem may become more vulnerable as the network expands. If your systems are designed to allow access rather than protection, you must assume the possibility of an unauthorized incursion. This means making wise risk management decisions.
Based on a realistic security assessment, we suggest you make internal and external scans of assets to decipher the hackers’ intentions. Checking the degree of vulnerability is intended to give you an accurate picture of the attack surface.
The internal review must be authenticated and non-authenticated to see the possibility of manipulation. Meanwhile, the external one allows you to visualize the blind spots detected by the hacker.
Advantages of using Tenable.io
As we have seen, it is necessary to go a little beyond the traditional approach to avoid risks from cyber exposure. An efficient way to face the challenges of cybersecurity is with the Tenable.io platform, which stands out for its advantages:
- It allows you greater visibility in real-time, controlling blind spots.
- It is an intuitive solution that helps you execute operations efficiently.
- Its tracking function makes it possible to record priority activities so you don’t waste time.
- You have different integrations for your systems, such as MDM solutions, patch management, password vaults and more.
- It has a license for elastic assets that eliminates duplication and saves you cost.
Although it may seem like a daunting task, taking the necessary measures to counter cyber exposure is within your reach. You need a team of highly trained professionals, aware of the management of sensitive information and specialists in OT and IT environments.
To learn more about the wide range of solutions we have for your interconnected infrastructure, just contact us at GB Advisors and a specialist will be happy to assist you.
