ESET: As modern business is increasingly based on digital technology, and cybercrime is constantly on the increase, corporate data protection is all the more important.
Denise Giusto Bilic, her Security Researcher ESET, advises companies and organizations that have been attacked, to take five key steps in order to protect their important resources.
Step 1: Determine the range of infection.
Companies that have been attacked usually rely on their intuition to assess the situation, rather than an analytical examination of the problem. If the company has invested in developing strong emergency incident management systems, it is possible to quickly gather the evidence that will lead to sound assessments to investigate the first important questions: which systems have been breached and how? Is the infection limited to a single part of the network? They have leaked data; Are we talking about corporate data or personal data about employees and/or customers?
Step 2: Ensure business continuity.
In the event of leakage of information likely to endanger workers or customers, they must in principle be informed and warned. If the company has backed up its records, and already has an action plan, it can immediately return to its regular customer service rates.
Step 3: Limit the infection.
First, the compromised equipment and/or part of the network should be isolated. In case the communications used for the attack are found to be encrypted, the keys should be traced using reverse engineering techniques engineering, ενώ, αν η επικοινωνία πραγματοποιείται σε μη εμπιστευτικά πρωτόκολλα όπως το HTTP, ο εντοπισμός των εντολών που χρησιμοποιεί ο επιτιθέμενος θα είναι ευκολότερος. Και στις δύο περιπτώσεις, στόχος είναι η creation firewall rules to quickly establish a first line of defense. Whether the company has invested in proactive threat detection and detection mechanisms, and uses a comprehensive security solution, will determine its ability to respond to this critical phase.
Step 4: Eliminate infection and attack.
Removing malicious code is a complicated process. The first stage involves analyzing the code in detail to understand how it works, which antivirus solutions do automatically, saving valuable time in the response process. It is important to remove any malicious remnants and remove the vulnerable point from where the attack was made, strengthen the process of analyzing the packets transmitted by the network, revise the firewall settings, change the passwords on corporate networks and update the keys. At this point, it's worth determining whether the infection was the result of simple carelessness or part of a targeted series of attacks.
Step 5: Learn from any errors.
A thorough one research about what happened can be a reason for improving the procedures within the company. Removing any vulnerabilities, the existence of which was previously unknown, is an opportunity to identify other vulnerabilities and strengthen defenses. It will also show elements of the system design that need to be strengthened, and discover the weak points that exist in the current defense so that a stronger one can be designed.
