The companies' power to adapt is as decisive for a business as its capacity to generate profit. For this, organizations depend on prepared leaders, who visualize and calculate actions considering the worst scenarios, from the loss of the team's main talents to natural disasters.
Working with planning is the custom when it comes to the broader view of the business. But when the risks on the agenda are digital, which involves invasions, leaking customer and partner data, the option is often to stay with the level of protection that is already in place.
After all, what could be so serious?
There is an inherent misconception in the current culture around cybersecurity incident response. A mindset that says you can prepare by doing the bare minimum, equivalent to painting a leaky wall and hoping it doesn't rain. And if the weather doesn't help, there's nothing to worry about; after all, there's more paint to touch up.
In other words? When the inevitable happens and organisations are breached, the plan doesn't go much further than crisis management. In short, discussing how to minimise the impact of an attacker already inside the network, or how to effectively and quickly resolve any events that could damage brand reputation.
The critical step that has been overlooked is preparedness. Which in cyber security means monitoring, detection and response.
The false sense of security
Many companies insist on investing considerable resources in old-fashioned defence solutions, despite all the evidence that these tools are flawed. The recent Microsoft Exchange breach is proof that no application, network or data centre is invulnerable. And even if the organisation decides to change the software in the on-premises environment, with a transition to some different brand, for example, the problem remains. Because there is a good chance that they are trading one set of risks and vulnerabilities for another.
The implications for a company of maintaining a false impression regarding its own ability to counter attacks can define the future of the business.
There is an evolving threat landscape, and this truth will sooner or later impose itself on the company that is not prepared to act at the first sign of a breach. Type SolarWinds into some internet search engine and see what a neglected risk can cost. Attackers increasingly work laterally through a succession of infected devices on their way to their goal, or set up bases across the network to exploit whenever they want.
Upgrading protection
Yes, a good backup ensures data returns within seconds of a ransomware attack. Just as firewalls and antivirus also create obstacles for cybercriminals looking for loopholes to steal data and break into corporate environments. Tools like these solve problems of one of the pillars of information security, such as availability and detection. But information security today involves broader concepts such as integrity and confidentiality, which have emerged as a promising model to protect corporate resources from external and internal threats. With the complete dissolution of the traditional security perimeter, it has become insufficient to raise barriers with piles of tools and software, which often do not even talk to each other.
We are in the age where the attack surface expands far beyond the field of view of enterprise IT teams. So it's not about doing more, it's about updating the possibilities for protection.
When the attack surface suddenly expands, as it did in the mass home office migration we saw during the pandemic, professional criminal groups sense weaknesses and opportunities. In fact, ransomware increased sevenfold during the pandemic, phishing skyrocketed 350%, and hackers made headlines with attacks targeting vaccine manufacturers, government agencies, large institutions, and even tech giants.
Therefore, security needs to encompass all business processes.
And the right response to today's threats requires, without exception, a platform such as Vision, whose main objective is to monitor and contain cyber attacks in real time. It is a triad of methodologies, with incident response, proprietary cybersecurity technologies, and a team of specialist engineers to address each phase of the attack.
This combination solves a bigger problem than the threat itself. It solves response time.
Attacks achieve success when there is significant delay or negligence in understanding what is happening and what needs to be done to mitigate the threat. Response time correlates with risk. This means that if response time is high, risk is realised.
The Vision platform, besides being agile to detect a threat, adds artificial neural networks capable of orchestrating the response process and positioning the engineer at the right moment to make the best decision. Thus, it unites human intelligence, irreplaceable in the stages executed, and the most modern technology. And the result of this combination is a very low response time.
Context to business is what connects everything
To understand the impact that an emerging threat can have on an organisation, it is necessary to consider human factors, computer architectures, organisational culture and daily emergencies. Vision uses models that connect the business variables with the threat intelligence from the SOC - Security Operation Center. With this, it is possible to interpret the threats, specific, linked to the reality of a given company, and act in an early manner, so that the impact does not happen.
A new mindset, accompanied by modern solutions, accelerates large-scale change towards a more effective strategy. Now is the time to adjust our security posture. By understanding in depth the true risks that business takes, we can prepare for the inevitable without false impressions that we are safe.