With the ink barely dry on our lean, mean 2023 budgets, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and barrel ahead with an updated cybersecurity strategy. If the rise in the number of cyber attacks and data breaches over the last year taught us anything, it’s that malicious players are becoming increasingly sophisticated at finding the weak spots in the digital corporate network.
The challenge of protecting the organizational network against cyber attacks has never been greater. As businesses shift more and more of their data, resources, and infrastructure to the cloud, their networks sprawl beyond the traditional geographic boundaries. This continuously evolving, cloud-based corporate network presents threat actors with more attack windows than ever before.
Organizations across all verticals and industries are working hard to tighten their network security strategies and protect their network, workforce, and customers against threat actors. As companies invest in processes and tools to batten down the hatches, the hacker community continues its attempts to find a way into the corporate network. That’s why we’ve put together a list of some of the biggest risks IT and Security professionals need to prepare for in 2023.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) fatigue is a relatively new attack method, but it’s already hit industry giants like Cisco and Uber – to name a few. Like phishing, MFA fatigue attacks are a type of social engineering attacks, where attackers try to bypass a company’s security measures by exploiting human error.
In an MFA fatigue attack, malicious players first obtain an employee’s account credentials, and then attempt to bypass MFA by bombarding the user with MFA requests. In a successful attempt, the user will eventually get fed up with the repeated requests and approve authorization. Once they’ve bypassed MFA, hackers have access to the corporate network, and if it’s not segmented, they can easily poke and prod the network to access valuable corporate data and resources.
Today’s organizations rely on a high number of third-party applications to keep their business running smoothly. While third party software and cloud-based services help businesses remain agile and efficient, they also expand a company’s attack surface.
An Organization’s network is only as strong as its weakest link, and in recent years malicious players have increasingly set their sight on locating and exploiting the weakest link in businesses supply chains. Once exploited, a vulnerability in a supplier’s network can allow hackers to access the internal resources of tens or even hundreds of the companies that rely on it.
This one’s an oldie but a goodie. Even though companies train employees to be wary of suspicious emails, this method of social engineering still hits many businesses every year. Over the past year, we’ve also seen a rise in Smishing attacks – phishing attacks executed via SMS messages.
Hackers will put a malware attachment in a seemingly innocent email or SMS message, and all it takes is a distracted employee to click on it – and the malware is in the corporate network. Other phishing emails might contain a legitimate looking link to a site that will ask for employees’ credentials. Either way, the attackers have gained a foothold into the corporate network.
As malicious actors find new methods to break through an organization’s defenses it’s critical companies continuously update their security tools and practices to keep their network safe. Adopting Zero Trust strategies helps companies ensure that their network and employees are secure. The Zero Trust principle of “never trust, always verify” enables companies to protect themselves against today’s risks.
Implementing Zero Trust least privilege principles, and using a converged cloud-based network security solution to segment the corporate network, will help companies minimize their attack surface. This ensures that their most valuable resources remain out of a hacker’s reach.
Perimeter 81’s Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) platform provides businesses with an easy-to-use, cloud-based solution that helps them put the most advanced security measures in place to ensure valuable company resources remain secured from any type of sophisticated threat.
Want to see how it works? Book your demo with Perimeter 81 today.
