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Business Cybersecurity During Global Turmoil

Cybersecurity during global turmoil requires your business to maintain system security and awareness in your company culture.

Politically motivated bad actors are some of the most experienced and well-funded cybercriminals. Sophisticated attackers know that directly hacking a government or military system is complex, requires many resources, and might be an act of war. In state-sponsored attacks (SSA), cybercriminals linked to a nation-state will attack organizations within the rival country to gather intelligence or identify vulnerabilities in the national infrastructure.

SSAs are highly sophisticated, well-funded, and orchestrated with surgical precision. A poorly defended business in the right industry can be a massive target for state-sponsored attackers seeking to create financial damage or wreak havoc in a nation. Some of the most vulnerable organizations include public services, utilities, healthcare, local governments, and more. Additionally, organizations that are vital to the supply chain or infrastructure, companies with offices in volatile regions, and those with active government contracts, may also be at risk.

While not every business shares the same level of risk, intense international conflicts and organizations without suitable security measures become equally tempting entry-point targets to bad actors. Consider the following cybersecurity practices to spare your organization from espionage, intellectual property theft, and politically motivated attacks.

  • Employ the fundamentals of cybersecurity protection, including antivirus, patch management, network hardening, encryption, data backup, disaster recovery, and incident response plans.
  • Foster a culture of security awareness with regular phishing assessments and social engineering training.
  • Isolate critical IT systems and sensitive data to make it more difficult for attackers to steal information or disrupt operations.
  • Consult threat intelligence information to learn about relevant threats.
  • Use data geofencing to keep data within specified regions.

 

Business Cybersecurity Assessments During Global Turmoil

Peace of mind becomes especially important when discussing the stability of a nation and its people. When facing rising geopolitical tensions, organizations must be on alert to protect data, websites, and reputation against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and phishing, both common in SSA. Here are some of the most essential assessments to consider:

  • Conduct regular IT audits to evaluate your technology for hardware and software vulnerabilities and help manage risk.
  • Perform regular evaluations of structured and unstructured data and retention policies and compare them with industry standards and regulations.
  • Security training and evaluation of employees is essential. Embed security culture in the company with regularly scheduled social engineering campaigns.
  • Align policies, procedures, and processes with industry standard frameworks, such as COBIT, CIS, ISO 27001, NIST CSF
  • Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) training combines vulnerability and penetration testing with social engineering in a real-time simulation that strengthens security posture and informs strategy.

Securing Your Business

To secure your businesses from becoming an unwilling bystander in global turmoil, stay abreast of new threats, maintain basic security measures, segregate essential systems and data, and integrate security awareness into your company culture. Most importantly, make assessing your security a top priority.

Contact Securance today for a free consultation on preparing your business for SSAs.