Can Your Organization Brave The New World of Advanced Cyber Attacks?

Transcription

1 Can Your Organization Brave The New World of Advanced Cyber Attacks?

2 Overview: When it comes to defending against cyber attacks, the global business community faces a dangerous new world. It s a world in which: Cybercriminals are gaining advantage through rapidly evolving attacks. Meanwhile, organizations struggle to maintain effective defenses. Users have gone mobile. Maintaining an ironclad network perimeter is no longer possible, as access to sensitive data spreads out across laptops, mobile devices and the Cloud, expanding the company s potential attack surface. The shortage of skilled security personnel is increasing. Trends indicate that this gap is growing at an alarming rate, projecting a 47% shortage in qualified security personnel by These three key factors are dramatically adding to the security burden and will require effective countermeasures to allow organizations to grow and innovate with confidence. The Evolving Threat Landscape On any given day, news headlines reveal large and crippling data breaches perpetrated against organizations that are household names in our society: Sony, Chase, Target, Home Depot - the list continues to grow. As with other types of crimes, the actual number of incidents is grossly underreported in the media. For every data breach that is reported publicly, it s safe to assume that there are thousands more taking place against private enterprise and government agencies that go unreported to the public, and in many cases, undetected. The major factors that have contributed to this distressing state of affairs are well known in the cyber security community. In short, hacking has become a well-funded, highly skilled enterprise. It is lucrative, offering high return on investment, and presents a multitude of opportunities to spy on, steal from or sabotage the targeted organization. Furthermore, all of this is conducted with almost complete anonymity, making any form of prosecution unrealistic in most cases. The lure of high rewards with low risk has always drawn investors, and hacking is no exception. The growing number of clever cybercriminals and readily available hacking kits and tools to speed malware development has ratcheted up the frequency and severity of attacks. As a result, organizations try to defend against these attacks by deploying extensive and often complicated countermeasures. However, unless those defenses have the capability to adapt as quickly as cybercriminals can innovate, there is little hope of defending against evolving and highly advanced cyber attacks. 1 Global Information Security Workforce Study, (ISC)2, 2013

3 Adaptive security measures must be part of any successful strategy to protect data against these sophisticated attacks. Such adaptive defenses can take many forms, but they must cover a broad spectrum of threats. Capabilities must include being able to communicate between various defenses, collecting and analyzing attack information in real time, and the intelligence to learn from attacks and apply that knowledge automatically to discern patterns and block new attacks as they evolve. The Impact Of Mobility And The Cloud Mobile devices have blurred the lines between personal and business uses of technology. But for security to address mobility, it must also include laptops and the Cloud applications and services that users require to be productive off-premise. In fact, off-premise laptops may well pose the biggest risk for data breaches. Consequently, companies must find ways to protect their sensitive data everywhere, all the time. This requires security solutions that are as effective outside of traditional business structures and environments as they are within a closely-controlled corporate network. This can be accomplished by deploying countermeasures that monitor the flow of information in every direction and across all lines of communication, whether it be on the Web, via mobile or cloud networks, in or social network traffic, even on USB or other endpoint devices users may connect to. The constant and pervasive monitoring of these vectors is one of the only effective ways to secure against data theft. Addressing The Security Skills Gap The security skills gap within the cyber security community is well documented. According to a recent survey of security professionals and business executives, more than half (56 percent) said there simply isn t enough talent to handle their companies security needs. Furthermore, 52 percent said this shortage contributed to the incidence of breaches in their organizations. 2 As our cyber security workforce grows smaller in relation to the burgeoning and increasingly toxic threat landscape, companies must work smarter if they hope to protect their critical data from cyber attacks. This can be accomplished through a combination of user education and deployment of tools that allow security personnel to increase their ability to identify and stop threats across all communication channels, at every point on the 7-Stage Kill Chain Advanced Persistent Threat Awareness Study results, ISACA; 3

4 On the user side, highly visible educational campaigns can prevent many common mistakes that potentially result in data theft. These can be enhanced with technology that monitors user behavior and context to identify and actively intervene when users take any action that could jeopardize data security. Systems that automatically warn users when they are acting in a potentially unsafe manner can help to prevent a breach. For example, users trying to access a compromised website or attempting to transfer any quantity of sensitive data into the Cloud or onto removable devices can be notified in real-time that such actions are against policy and will be blocked in the future. Data is then protected while users are also simultaneously educated about their risky behavior. For security personnel, the need has never been greater for countermeasures that are straightforward in terms of their design and operation, making them easy to deploy and manage. At the same time, the solution must provide predictive, actionable intelligence across all lines of communication and potential threat vectors. Such an approach allows each member of a security team to perform the work of many, providing a considerably safer work environment with less cost and effort. Collectively, educating and empowering both users and trained personnel to prevent data theft and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) raises the overall security IQ of an organization. It also reduces the risk of data breaches without increasing the number of experienced security professionals on staff. BRAVE THE NEW WORLD With the right tools and approach, organizations can avoid costly data breaches and other criminal interference that results in decreased revenue and productivity, as well as damaged reputations. Websense recommends the following actions: Deploy adaptive security. To protect against rapidly changing technology and evolving threat landscapes, companies typically deploy multiple solutions, each with a narrow security focus, making protection across all stages of the Kill Chain impossible. These uncoordinated defenses not only create an administrative burden on any IT department, they leave gaps through which attackers may gain access to sensitive data. The TRITON APX architecture addresses these challenges with its adaptive capabilities, modular deployment options and contextual analysis of data threats. Additionally, its unified architecture, actionable security intelligence, and simplified policy and reporting capabilities let companies face the new threat levels and adopt new technology with confidence.

5 Secure the data, not the perimeter. In today s world, for all intents and purposes, the perimeter is the data. A data-centric approach can protect critical information from theft, whether on-premise, in the Cloud or on mobile devices. TRITON APX delivers real-time defense against web-based threats by tracking and identifying unusual or potentially unauthorized data movement that would indicate a potential breach. This new approach of analyzing behavior and information flows provides a larger protective surface where potential data loss or incursions can be identified and stopped. Raise the Security IQ. TRITON APX bridges the global cyber security skills gap by providing predictive and actionable threat intelligence across the entire threat lifecycle. Coupled with prebuilt policies for data loss prevention (DLP), interactive controls and dynamic behavioral analysis, TRITON APX helps educate users and security personnel alike, while extending the protective reach of your in-house security system. Websense TRITON APX protects your critical data from criminal intent outside your organization, as well as from insiders that may intentionally or accidentally put your information assets at risk. Websense delivers this level of protection on a 24/7 basis for tens of thousands of customers around the globe. It allows companies of all sizes to confidently Brave The New World of advanced cyber attacks. To find out more about how TRITON APX can help your organization prevent data theft, please visit BRAVE THE NEW WORLD Websense, Inc. All rights reserved. Websense, the Websense logo, TRITON and TheatSeeker, are registered trademarks of Websense, Inc. in the United States and various countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owner. [WP-US-EN-08JAN15]