Liviu Arsene, the security analyst for Bitdefender, recently shared some thoughts regarding the world of cybersecurity after coronavirus settles and what the long-term impact will be. In a recent interview, he stated “Right now IT and security teams should probably focus less on stacking security technologies designed to detect sophisticated threats, and more focused on implementing hardening technologies, such as patch management, devices control, and encryption.”
Bitdefender, a global leader in cybersecurity and threat intelligence, is highly regarded for multiple products, including GravityZone, an anti-malware technology that centralizes security management for physical, virtualized, and mobile endpoints. It has continually ranked number 1 in independent security tests since its release.
The way that businesses think about cybersecurity and how hackers operate have both been influenced by the coronavirus, Liviu claims. There has been a major shift to infrastructures and employees working remotely where before, the primary focus was on control policies, network, and perimeter security. “The pandemic has forced organizations to send employees outside the safety of their company networks, open up services and applications to the internet, and migrate infrastructure to the cloud.”
This massive shift to employees working from home outside of their organization’s secure networks has highlighted the need to reevaluate security efforts in order to properly safeguard company assets. He continued on to make the following recommendations regarding how organizations can reprioritize and what resource requirements will be needed.
Liviu’s first recommendation is that businesses need to make assessing existing policies a priority as “some of them might be dependent on internal network security appliances or technologies deployed within the perimeter of the organizations,” which in remote work scenarios, can be much less effective.
“Attackers seem to be less focused on deploying advanced and sophisticated malware and more focused on the social engineering component” It is vital that businesses are highly alert to the psychological vulnerability’s hackers manipulate. Even before the pandemic, employees were often determined as one of the leading risk factors to organizations. Now and post coronavirus, hackers are taking advantage of the opportunity to prey on peoples’ fear and insecurity. Strengthening existing defenses is more important than shopping for some new cybersecurity products.
In addition to device control, encryption, and patch management there should be a combination of employee security training and network visibility. Employees need to not be the prey-in-waiting but instead, be vigilant and understand how to identify potential attacks, especially when not working in the office. “Having better visibility across employee endpoints and networks could go a long way towards preventing threats, and that should be coupled with more frequent and up to date employee security training programs, designed to teach them about the latest threats, how to spot them and report them to IT departments.”
Outlining what needs to happen to stay secure versus doing it effectively while under pressure for time and resources, are two different things. Often organizations will focus on the restructuring of their security set up but not for long-term managed detection and response services which can expose an organization to risk. “Surveys indicate that the current economic context has placed more pressure on existing security budgets, with the majority of infosec professionals agreeing that they might not see any budget increases,” Liviu stated.
Unfortunately, it is quite likely that many organizations across the globe that scrambled to adapt to having their employees work from home have probably already been infiltrated. In the haste of transitions, hackers seized an unprecedented opportunity and soon the time will reveal just how many organizations have been affected. “It’s likely that some attacks are already in progress as we speak, taking advantage of the opportunities left behind during the transition period,” Liviu explained. “These attacks will potentially be spotted in more than 90 days and will potentially be more impactful than those that have already occurred over the past couple of months. It is these that organizations should worry about.”
Liviu stated that “Post-COVID-19, we’re likely to continue on the path of beefing up endpoints with hardening security technologies and more fine-tuned security policies. It’s also likely that organizations will focus more on employee training and procedures, and potentially train employees on how to assess the security of their local networks.”
In other words, the changes caused by the coronavirus appear to be here to stay. Employees may be outside their office perimeter for months or even possibly years to come. While the challenge of trying to keep your business secure in these unprecedented times may seem daunting, partnering with a Managed Service Provider like MBC, can give you peace of mind. Our team of strategic cybersecurity experts can assess and develop a plan to keep your organization and all endpoint devices secure. To learn more about what risks your business is facing and how we can keep your networks secure, get a free assessment today.
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