Cyber incidents are escalating in frequency and severity as hackers across the globe continuously seek vulnerabilities to exploit. They are looking for a way into your network and access your business’s most valuable assets. When attackers reach their goal, whether fully or partially—essentially when their attempts succeed—it indicates a failure of the security measures in place. It means the controls you had to protect against such attacks were either insufficient or ineffective.
As an organization under constant threat from malicious actors, safeguarding your data is crucial. Allowing an easy way for attackers is not an option; you must take proactive steps to secure your information. The most effective approach begins with strengthening your organization’s internal controls. Enhancing these controls is vital, but understanding the roles of correlation, risk mapping, and mitigation is equally important.
What Makes an Internal Control Effective
Internal controls are measures your organization takes to defend your business from various risks. From a cybersecurity perspective, internal control refers to the technical or non-technical controls placed and implemented within your environment that protect your organization’s digital assets from unauthorized access, modification, or destruction.
There are three types of controls that should be implemented: Preventive, Detective, and Corrective.
Preventive controls aim to stop accidents before they occur, Detective controls are designed to identify and alert you to potential threats as they happen, and Corrective controls focus on responding to and mitigating the damage after an incident has occurred. Together, these controls form a comprehensive defense strategy against cyber threats.
Preventive Controls
Preventive controls focus on stopping security issues before they happen. Strong internal controls strategy concentrate on preventing problems before they occur, acting as a shield against potential threats. These measures are crucial for reducing the chances of security incidents and protecting valuable information.
Here are some key preventive measures:
- Firewalls act as a barrier, keeping your internal network safe from outside threats and stopping unauthorized access.
- EDR helps organizations respond quickly to cybersecurity incidents by detecting and mitigating threats on servers, desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.
- Access control systems make sure that only the right people can reach sensitive information, based on their job roles.
- Password policy is a non-technical control that is developed and enforced to ensure strong passwords are used and are regularly updated, making it harder for unauthorized users to get in.
- Encryption protects data by scrambling it so that only those with the correct key can read it, keeping sensitive information safe.
- User training programs educate employees about cybersecurity best practices, helping them spot and avoid potential threats.
Detective Controls
Once you have taken care of the preventive measures, the next step is to address the detective controls. These controls involve monitoring and analyzing data and information to identify any suspicious activity or patterns. They also include conducting thorough investigations into any incidents or breaches that occur. Crucially, these detective controls are instrumental for identifying security incidents in real-time, enabling a swift response to limit potential damage. Here are a few examples:
- Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS): These tools keep an eye on network traffic for any suspicious activity and send alerts if someone tries to access the system without permission.
- SIEM (Security Information Event Monitoring) collects logs from various devices in your environment and gives you an interface to monitor these logs and catch any unusual or unauthorized actions by users, allowing for quick identification of potential security issues.
- Security Audits and Compliance checks are thorough reviews of internal controls and associated procedures to find potential gaps.
Corrective Controls
Lastly, corrective controls are crucial in mitigating the damage from security incidents and preventing their recurrence. These controls are implemented after an incident has occurred and aim to correct any exploited weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Corrective controls can also include forensics investigations to determine the cause of the incident and procedures for recovering from the incident and restoring systems to their previous state.
Key examples include
- System backups, which ensure that essential data and systems are regularly copied and stored, allow for quick restoration during a cyberattack or system failure. Backups ensure continuity of business operations and minimize incident impact.
- Disaster recovery plans also contribute significantly, providing a clear roadmap for an organization’s recovery from significant security incidents or disasters, thereby maintaining smooth business operations.
- Incident response procedures outline the steps an organization will take to address security breaches, helping to minimize their impact and reduce the likelihood of future occurrences.
Some technological controls encompass aspects of all three control types. For example, Security Automation primarily falls under Corrective controls but also has aspects of Preventive and Detective controls.
- Corrective Control: SOAR automates the response to security incidents, helping to contain and remediate threats quickly after they are detected.
- Detective Control: It also plays a role in identifying and analyzing threats through automated detection mechanisms.
- Preventive Control: By integrating and automating security processes, SOAR can also help prevent threats by proactively addressing vulnerabilities and reducing the time it takes to respond to potential incidents.
How Does Correlation Improve Cybersecurity?
Correlating internal network traffic with external threat data is vital for any cybersecurity strategy. If you’re not doing it, you’re missing out on essential insights that could keep your organization safe.
Collecting vast amounts of threat data won’t win the war on cybercrime. The real challenge is making sense of that data and turning it into actionable intelligence. That’s where threat intelligence and its correlation with internal data come in. It gives you a deeper understanding of your threat landscape, helps you spot new threats, and assesses the severity of those threats with all the threat intelligence feeds.
Threat intelligence usually comes in structured feeds filled with Indicators of Compromise (IOCs). These feeds often include additional contexts like Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) used by the attackers, threat categories, and attribution.
The security monitoring and automation tools compare threat feeds and network logs, which can significantly cut down detection and response times by identifying patterns and relationships in the data, helping spot active attacks, prioritizing significant threats, and adjusting defenses to prevent future incidents.
When executed effectively, threat correlation offers a range of benefits, including more comprehensive coverage, better prioritization of threats, faster incident detection, and ongoing improvement of defenses.
Mapping and Mitigating the Risks
Risk mapping is identifying and visually representing potential threats to your organization. This helps you understand the likelihood and impact of different types of attacks. For instance, you might map out risks like phishing attacks, insider threats, or ransomware. By categorizing these risks, you can better assess which areas of your business are most vulnerable and require more robust protection.
Consider a scenario where ransomware is a significant concern for your organization. A risk map might highlight the critical systems and data most likely targeted. With this information, you can implement targeted defenses, such as enhanced encryption, regular backups, and user training focused on avoiding phishing emails that often deliver ransomware.
The most effective way to visualize risks is to use your assets to generate a numeric score for each threat. Then, use that score to handle the most important alerts and cases first.
Once risks are mapped, the next step is mitigation, i.e., taking action to reduce their potential impact. Mitigation strategies can vary depending on the type of threat and its severity. If your risk map identifies phishing as a high-priority threat, mitigation might involve several strategies:
- Implementing email filtering to block suspicious messages
- Conducting regular employee training to recognize phishing attempts
- Enforcing multi-factor authentication adds an extra security layer for access to sensitive systems.
Essential best practices for effective cyber risk mitigation are not just reactive measures; they are proactive steps toward understanding what needs to be protected. They start with inventorying and assigning a specific numeric value to all IT assets, such as systems, applications, data, and users.
Mapping your attack surface is crucial to identify weak points and potential breach areas while monitoring for vulnerabilities and prioritizing remediation based on risk, which is essential to stay ahead of threats.
Developing a strategy for early detection and swift recovery ensures business continuity in the face of incidents. Some key aspects include:
- Continuous monitoring and adaptation to changes in the threat environment. In the face of emerging risks, the proactive approach remains relevant and effective.
- A tightened internal control system, security training, and skilled personnel can bolster defenses. Employee security awareness is vital to long-term success.
- Finally, leveraging AI and automation to enhance efficiency and improve response times, creating a more robust cybersecurity framework.
The Bottom Line: Building a Strong Cybersecurity Ecosystem
Improving your organization’s cybersecurity requires a well-rounded strategy. Start by ensuring complete coverage of internal controls, focusing on prevention, detection, and correction. Connect your internal data with outside threat information to better understand and prepare for potential risks.
Lastly, Identifying risks and creating specific plans to manage them will strengthen your defenses, ensuring your security keeps up with changing threats. These steps will provide you with a solid framework for future cyber threats.
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