Data protection is one of the primary concerns of organizations around the world today. Information security (InfoSec), which is primarily about prohibiting unauthorized access to information, is what makes data protection possible.
By 2020, security services such as security information and event management (SIEM) and other managed services are estimated to account for nearly 50% of cyber security budgets. This implies that enterprises are increasingly prioritizing cyber security and implementing better and more robust security practices to prevent unauthorized access by attackers or malicious insiders.
Is your data secure enough to prevent unauthorized access? In this article, let’s take a look at what you can do to boost your security.
Prevent Unauthorized Data Access: 9 Tips to Help You Boost Your Cybersecurity
There are several high-level security best practices that every enterprise should adopt to protect their data from unauthorized access. Here are our recommendations to help you prevent unauthorized data access:
1. Keep Current on all Security Patches
The first step for any organization to prevent unauthorized data access is to keep current on all the security patches.
Here’s why:
Security patches address vulnerabilities in software, operating systems, drivers, etc., that attackers might use to gain access to your device and your data. Security patches for operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Android, iOS are essential because an OS vulnerability can have severe consequences. Additionally, continually update drivers and software applications as new patches become available.
The WannaCry virus that took down more than 400,000 computer systems across 150 countries was one of the most severe attacks in recent years. It attacked the vulnerability in the SMB V1 (Server Message Block) protocol of Windows and was launched by using the EternalBlue exploit.
What’s interesting is that security patches for these vulnerabilities were available long before the attack was launched. But there were thousands of users who had not updated their security patches and thus, became victims of the attack.
With the use of updated security patches, users could have prevented giving unauthorized access for the system attacks.
It is important to ensure that you download the latest security patches and updates for your operating systems and other software to protect it against cyberattacks. You can also enable automatic updates so that whenever a security patch or update is released, the system automatically installs it.
By staying prepared and updated, you can protect your data from those trying to get unauthorized access to it.
2. Detect and Respond to Intrusions Quickly
Of course, you’d want to stay vigilant and be prepared to prevent hackers from unauthorized data access.
But what if you couldn’t detect an intrusion?
What’s the way forward?
The earlier you detect an intrusion, the earlier you can respond to it. Prevention is undoubtedly important, but monitoring user activity, login attempts, logs, and other activities can also provide insights into how secure your system is.
There are several ways you can detect and respond to intrusions quickly:
IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection System/Intrusion Prevention System)
An IDS uses known intrusion signs or behavior heuristics to assess network traffic for suspicious activities.
Intrusion detection is the process of monitoring and analyzing the activities in your network or system for possible signs of intrusion incidents like imminent threats, violations, or threats to your security policies.
On the other hand, an IPS complements an IDS by proactively monitoring a system’s incoming traffic to identify malicious requests. An IPS prevents intrusion attacks by blocking unauthorized or offending IPs, prohibiting malicious data, and alerting security personnel to potential security threats.
SIEM (Security Incident Event Manager)
A Security Incident Event Manager, or SIEM, is a security management approach that enables security professionals to get insights into the activities within an IT environment. SIEM software collects and analyzes log data generated by the company’s technology infrastructure, from applications, host systems, networks, to security devices.
The software then detects and categorizes events and incidents, as well as analyzes them. Primarily, there are two main objectives of SIEM:
* Track records and provide reports on security-related events and incidents, such as failed and successful login attempts, malware activity or any other suspicious activity.
* Notify security personnel if any suspicious activity is detected that indicates a security threat.
* Implement User and Event Behavioral Analytics (UEBA)
* To prevent unauthorized data access, you need to be on top of your analytics game.
User and event behavioral analytics helps detect any anomalous behavior or instances if there are deviations from a users’ “normal” behavioral patterns. For instance, if a user regularly downloads files of 10MB size every day but suddenly downloads gigabytes of files, the system would detect this anomaly and alert the administrator immediately.
User and event behavioral analytics uses algorithms, statistical analysis, and machine learning to determine deviations from established patterns, showing which anomalies are taking place and how they could result in a potential threat. In this way, you can get alerted about unauthorized data access.
Such analytics focuses on users and entities within your system, especially insider threats like employees who could misuse their privileges to carry out targeted attacks or fraud attempts.
3. Implement Principle of Least Privilege (Minimize Data Access)
Least privilege is the practice of restricting access rights for accounts, users, and computing processes to only those specific resources required to perform legitimate, routine activities. The 2019 Global Data Risk Report says that, on average, an employee has access to 17 million files.
Implementing least privilege can help you secure your data from providing unauthorized access. The principle of least privilege (POLP) enforces a minimal level of user rights which allows the user to access specific resources needed only to perform his/her role. It reduces the risk of exploitation by unauthorized users, applications, or systems without impacting the overall productivity of the organization.
While least privilege helps provide authority for only specific resources required to complete the job at hand, it also enforces better security practices and reduces the likelihood of your organization becoming a victim to a cyber attack.
4. Use Multi-Factor Authentication
It is essential for companies to use strong authentication by implementing robust password policies in addition to multi-factor authentication. That can go a long way in preventing unauthorized data access.
As the name suggests, multi-factor authentication requires multiple pieces of information to be presented by the user and validated by the system before they are granted access to the system. This makes it difficult for attackers to compromise users’ accounts as it takes more effort than simply cracking the password.
Multi-factor authentication might use a one-time password sent via an out-of-band communication channel such as an automated phone call or SMS text message to the authorized device of the user, a security question set by the user, or biometric authentication. Though this makes authentication a bit cumbersome, it ensures better security and forces the attacker to not only break the password, but compromise the second factor as well. This makes breaking authentication much more difficult for the attacker.
Want a pro tip to prevent unauthorized access to your data?
Leverage passphrases.
While multifactor authentication should definitely be used, you can also move towards the use of passphrases instead of passwords. A passphrase is a series of random words or a sentence that can also contain spaces in between words such as, “Ten herds of elephants bowl frequently in Tanzania!!”
A passphrase doesn’t have to be grammatically correct; it can be any combination of random words and also contain symbols. It can be easier to remember a complex passphrase than a complex password. Care must still be taken to generate strong passphrases. Simple passphrases that use only everyday vocabulary words may still be easily cracked
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