Strategies to Identify Database Security Threats and Vulnerabilities at Early Stage

With the modern, sophisticated, and evolved cybercrime industry, it has become challenging for the SecOps teams to secure databases against various threats and vulnerabilities. Even the simplest data breach incident in the enterprise can have devastating impacts on business continuity and result in various legal implications.

CISOs should consider implementing stringent government policies and cybersecurity posture that secures their organization from all potential threats to their sensitive data. It is crucial that all organizations should have the capabilities to identify and mitigate database security threats and vulnerabilities quickly, to save a substantial amount of financial resources and avoid legal consequences.

According to a recent report published by IBM titled “Cost of a data breach 2022,” the average cost of data breaches in the US is USD 9.44 million, which is double the global average of USD 4.35 million. Moreover, the report also highlights that the organization that is able to identify and mitigate database security threats and vulnerabilities in 200 days or less can, on average, save approximately USD 1.12 million.

CISOs can consider the following strategies to identify database security threats and vulnerabilities quickly:

Monitor all the data sets for vulnerabilities

SecOps teams need to thoroughly evaluate their entire database to identify potential vulnerabilities that cybercriminals might leverage as a vector to accomplish a successful data breach.

All the databases are essentially built on three different aspects such as data, configuration files, and metadata. Most of the SecOps teams tend to overlook metadata and configuration files and metadata when they are securing their organization’s database.

CISOs should consider ensuring the integrity of all three aspects to strengthen database security throughout their organization. Malicious actors primarily target critical assets or devices that have more stringent compliance regulations, so it is crucial to keep such sensitive systems secure from unauthorized users. Hardening the cybersecurity posture throughout the organization by taking the complete governance of the database that reduces the attack vectors and attack surface areas.

Harden the access management policy

Another way to spot all the database security threats and vulnerabilities is to evaluate all the access rights granted to all the users. Organizations that grant excessive access privileges to all users expose the database to various security risks. Granting more access to the data sets than required as per the job roles increases the risk of internal threats. Moreover, even if there are no internal threats, these malicious actors are looking out to compromise less secure privileged user accounts and then move laterally into the business network. CISOs should consider enforcing a least privilege approach to minimize the risks of internal threats.

Also Read: Reassessing DevSecOps in the Face of Rising High-Profile Security Breaches

Track user activities

Businesses today generate a large volume of valuable data through all the channels; SecOps teams need to track all the user activities in real-time. Monitoring the user activity in all the datasets will assist businesses in spotting all the unusual activities that can be potential threats, malware, or data breach with malicious intent. It is crucial to identify all users who request access to files apart from their job description. Any request for access to sensitive data or large files and documents needs to be monitored because it can be potential ransomware as well. Monitoring all the unauthorized updates and the users that made the changes is essential to identify database security threats and vulnerabilities.

CISOs should have a unified view of what users are requesting to access in the database to identify and mitigate threats early to save financial resources.