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T-Mobile. Colonial Pipeline. Acer. What do they all have in common aside from being multibillion dollar companies? They’ve all been hacked in recent months due to poor cyber hygiene. As Matthew Swenson, Chief of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cyber Crime Unit at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), stressed during an August 19 GovernmentCIO webinar, “[i]f you look at the most major ransomware attacks that have occurred, basic cyber hygiene could have prevented the vast majority of them[.]”
With ransomware attacks on the rise and even nation-states getting in on the action, basic cyber hygiene priorities are critical. Don’t wait for a cyber attacker to take advantage of flaws in your environment before you strengthen your security posture. Through good cyber hygiene practices and a proactive security posture with cyber hygiene vulnerability scanning, you can avoid a damaging cyber breach.
Cyber hygiene means doing the little things consistently and correctly every time to minimize your threat surface. Taking the time to create cyber hygiene priorities ensures you’re not providing a malicious attacker with the opportunity to take advantage of gaps and vulnerabilities in your network. This can be done by asking yourself these questions about cyber hygiene priorities:
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you may want to consider evaluating your security with cyber hygiene vulnerability scanning.
Trust, but verify are great words to live by, especially with regard to cyber security. If Equifax had verified all the items on the checklist above before their 2017 cyber breach, they would have realized one of their web applications had a critical vulnerability patch available. Unfortunately, Equifax didn’t verify this patch update, and left the application vulnerable for several months before hackers took advantage of their oversight. The simple act of verifying that all critical patches and updates were applied not only to operating systems, but also to their applications would have prevented 143 million people from being exposed.
Maybe you know your company doesn’t have the best security posture, or maybe you don’t. Maybe you have a security solution in place, but realize you can be more proactive. Wherever you stand on cyber hygiene priorities, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Some of the biggest companies in the world can succumb to a cyber breach, and as breaches become more prevalent, what likelihood do you think your company has of being breached, too?
You don’t wait until you have an unbearable cavity to go to the dentist, and, in the same way, you don’t want to start thinking about security best practices until after a hacker breaks into your network. In addition to the cyber hygiene priorities checklist, there are a number of network assessments and cyber hygiene vulnerability scanning that will help you understand your current security posture, including:
We’re here to help you. If you want to be proactive and gain a better understanding of cyber hygiene priorities and how to improve your security posture, contact us and we’ll gladly help.
Don’t wait for an attacker to take advantage of your organization’s poor cyber hygiene. Let us assist with cyber hygiene vulnerability scanning, or take our short Cyber Hygiene Quiz for an assessment of your company’s cyber posture.
*This blog post was originally posted in 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and relevance.
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