The cybersecurity posture of an enterprise impacts its bottom line for the foreseeable future. It is not just about the costs arising from the breach itself; enterprises need to ensure that they employ a security-first approach to cyber security by continually monitoring the unique digital footprint across all business lines and subsidiaries
Digital risks are dangerous and hard to combat, especially since they target people on infrastructure that sit outside the corporate environment. Organizations need to monitor and secure their digital footprint across channels continuously.
Back when organizations could control their actions with on-premises systems and networks, they only needed to consider their digital footprint in terms of online reviews or social media. Today, however, as organizations move their business-critical operations to the cloud, their digital footprint has exploded exponentially.
Security Stack Vulnerabilities
The strategies and techniques of threat actors have evolved, and the platforms where they launch attacks have multiplied. Security teams of an organization can no longer rely on email blockers and spam filters to effectively address phishing scams and fraud attacks.
Therefore, it is crucial that businesses evaluate the tools in their security arsenal and see if their current solutions have adequate coverage for phishing links, text, and visibility across the Dark Web, digital footprints, social media, and domains.
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Most often, organizations take action only after a security breach has happened. Security teams must take stock of the individual vulnerabilities that cause an attacker to target their business and prioritize their security strategy around those vulnerabilities.
With digital transformation revolutionizing how businesses operate and implement new procedures and systems, prioritizing security strategy development is necessary. Exposure can come from many avenues – for instance, business leaders with large followings on digital financial services or social media are popular targets because they represent profitable avenues.
Mapping the company’s digital footprint can help answer why they may be a potential target of a fraud campaign or a phishing attack; it can weed out possible lapses and determine where the weaknesses are.
Mitigation Strategy
Along with identifying phishing and fraud attacks, organizations need to have a comprehensive mitigation strategy to reduce risk and disrupt threats. The type of attack, the platform, the target, and the risk rating are crucial to the digital footprints strategy.
The main focus of mitigation strategies should be on dismantling the threat actor’s infrastructure at its source. While spam filtering and blocking can address individual threats, they are ineffective at stopping cyber criminals from launching future attacks. Organizations can team up with social networks to disable fraudulent profiles and posts, domain registrars to remove malicious sites and disrupt an attacker’s entire campaign more effectively.
IT security leaders believe collaborating with digital risk protection service providers can help alleviate the time and resources needed to identify and react to risks, including working with platforms to have threats removed.
Awareness Training for Employees
A single phished email can bring down the entire network. Organizations should conduct employee training to prevent phishing attacks through email; however, phishing has evolved far beyond the traditional email setup.
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Employees are falling victim to phishing attacks via social media and other fraud campaigns that have extended across digital channels. Regular employee training helps organizations keep up with the ever-changing threat landscape.
Organizations can go one step further and reward employees for making the right choices. Giving out rewards to employees who routinely report phishing attempts can create a positive reinforcement cycle that might outlast the impact of security awareness training.
