Feb 28, 2022

Cyber attacks are evolving quickly, frustrating organizations on how best to protect themselves. Attacks are happening all the time, every second, and that in itself makes keeping a business protected that much more difficult. The unknowns of how, when, and where an attack may occur are adding complexities to today’s vulnerabilities, making it critically important to protect your business from all sides possible.

It's not about Business Size.

While we hear of attacks on big corporations more often, small-medium enterprise targets are also common. According to Cybersecurity Magazine, 61% of all SMBs have reported at least one cyberattack during the previous year. Further, 83% of small and medium-sized businesses are not financially prepared to recover from a cyber attack. And, despite these two statistics, 91% of small businesses haven’t purchased cyber liability insurance. Its time that SMB owners become prepared to deal with security breaches.

Impact of the Pandemic

Disturbingly, since the pandemic began, an increasing number of attackers are taking advantage of security weaknesses in growing sectors, including supply chain and transportation. There have been more attacks: ransomware, malware, spear-phishing, social engineering, and more in all markets, including the supply chain. Defending a business by securing the “four walls” is no longer a suitable option. Increases in the number of remote workers, cloud-based applications, and devices have created additional challenges to secure a business environment both on campus and, now, virtually. Top that with the bad actors getting smarter.

Hackers are more sophisticated.

Attackers have learned. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so are the ways bad actors attack. They find ways to use unaware third-party, fourth-party, and even nth-party applications, find the vulnerabilities, and access sensitive data areas in a business. They can spoof the DNS addresses of devices and redirect them. They can use side-channel attacks (for example: simulating the sound of a keyboard click or anything using Bluetooth connectivity) to access sensitive data locations. Guest devices can carry in malware, unintentionally and most often with an unaware user. The unassuming use of a work computer for the sporadic personal email or download can open a business up to a hacker. Even worse, some of these attacks don’t occur immediately. They can “sniff” for a long time before implementing an attack. It’s scary to imagine that just one affected device can disrupt or cripple your entire operation.

Protecting from Bad Actors

So, how can you protect your business as these bad actors evolve? What can you do to make sure of a seamless, protected environment? In other words, how can you improve your security posture now? In 2020, Gartner developed the CARE standard for cybersecurity. It outlines essential attributes a business can use to measure its security readiness. Simply put

C Are your security controls consistent?

A Are your security controls adequate for your needs?

R How reasonable are your requirements for use or access?

E How effective are the controls to meet the need?

In addition to the above

• A company should determine what devices are where on its network. Most often, ransomware attacks happen when older assets (some of which may have been long forgotten) are still active on the network. These assets are easily attacked as the security features are not current. Learn more about how to keep your wireless network working at its best.
• Ensuring that all devices are up-to-date with security features regularly is critical, especially nowadays. Best practices of most manufacturers include regular updates consistent with the identified threats. Learn more about keeping security features up-to-date.
• Next, Whitelisting. Whitelisting trusted applications and devices keeps the network under control by only allowing trusted assets access, ensuring that these assets can complete the task at hand but limiting access from other applications or network access.
• Lastly, again, working with a trusted advisor like Heartland will help solve issues and keep environments safe and employees productive.

After all, secured environments lead to increased productivity. The fewer devices on a network, the fewer operations teams need to manage and the easier it will be for employees to be productive. Using a seamless management environment that combines all allowed assets in one place instead of multiple tools or practices simplifies the job of keeping the environment secure and safe. Security should be invisible to those protected by it.

Today, defending your position against cyberattacks takes a team approach. As a leader in supply chain technology, Heartland brings decades of experience to offer real-world solutions. We will work with your organization and our team of partners to leverage a shared body of knowledge, creating solutions that make sense for your business. Taking a consultative approach, we will work alongside you and implement the right kind of security controls for your particular environment.

Learn more from our OpTech Insights podcasts Cybersecurity in Today’s Interconnected Supply Chain and CYBERSECURITY INSIGHTS WITH NATIONAL SECURITY SPECIALIST IVAN PAYNTER to discover how Heartland can help you successfully protect and secure your business today.