Even the ‘Good Enough’ IT Security Infrastructure Now Need to be the Best

Organizations across all sizes have been forced to shift to remote workers hastily, their top priority being connectivity.

As organizations return to work from the COVID-19 crisis, assuring adequate protection is getting more critical than ever. And, the scramble to set up employees to work from remote locations, has exposed many organizations to severe risk and exposure. As the organizations return to work, this doesn’t mean that the threats have reduced or stopped.

Cyber attackers live by their motto – never let a good crisis get wasted, and COVID-19 creates a perfect storm of opportunity for all.

Also Read: Cyberattack – How Threat Actors are Targeting Enterprises amid COVID-19

The top three issues that almost every business have faced in the past few weeks:
a] 94% of the data breaches start with an e-mail or the web, according to Verizon Survey in 2019.
b] Users have quickly transitioned from corporate systems to remote structures.
c] If a user clicks a link or tries to open a malicious e-mail – a hacker can infect and enter
the entire organization.

An additional layer of protection is required immediately to secure the most vulnerable and most massive attack surface of all organizations – the user’s laptop or desktop. Once compromised, cybercriminals have the proverbial ‘keys to the kingdom’

The need for the hour is a defensive posture – changing the rules to protect endpoints from the attackers, fight against the bad guys, and prevent ransomware and hackers from gaining access to corporate data and networks.

In an ideal world scenario, traditional security – like next-gen AV or anti-virus – should form the outer layer with a protection strategy to stop known traditional spam and malware.

They often have about 99% success rate for detecting known malware – which is commendable, but that also means that for every 100 e-mails, one to five makes it through traditional detection technology.

Yet, even if a single e-mail succeeds in getting through, the hacker can easily breach an entire company. But for today, is that good enough?

Also Read : WFH Security – Data Breaches Challenges Surging as Employees Abandoning Safety

The solution is to add up additional security layers in the form of lightweight, secure virtual containers having threats.

Ransomware, malware, and hackers simply can’t move outside the container and infect other corporate systems. But today, issues arise due to the users download files from the web, visit to compromised websites, or downloading of e-mail attachments containing embedded or hidden malware, VBS scripts, or macros.

By default, no files should be allowed inside the corporate networks unless they have been sanitized, and all malware removed from the existing file – not just operating anti-virus on the file.

Using the latest technology, inbound files can be easily broken down into their actual components and then get reassembled, leaving behind any VBScripts, malware, macros, and so forth. The reassembled document always remains identical to the original – and it is entirely malware-free.

The ultimate goal for almost all organizations should be to protect against known, traditional threats and contain unknown risks. This will ensure that no infected files can enter the organization, deterring hackers from delivering their malicious payload, compromising the security of an organization.