Verizon Enterprise Solutions offers advice on how to defend against the Mirai malware attack.
The origins of Mirai, malware that primarily infects home-use computer systems to turn them into remotely controllable botnets, are well-known, stemming from the cyberattack that paralyzed the United States last October.
However, the possibility of a new outbreak, which could also infect our country, brings back nightmares for many organizations across diverse sectors. For this reason, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a company active in the telecommunications sector and author of one of the most authoritative annual reports on cybersecurity, highlights several essential best practices to be ready to react in case the worst-case scenario occurs.
“When a breach occurs, it’s essential to identify the exact point of vulnerability and other avenues that hackers might attempt to access your systems,” says Laurance Dine, Managing Principal at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a cybersecurity expert. “Beyond the detected breach, hackers may have found additional access points to your assets through, for example, phishing techniques, a trend also highlighted in Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigation Report.”
Traditional defenses are no longer sufficient. In 93% of cases, attackers take a minute or less to compromise a system, while data theft occurs within minutes in 28% of cases. But even when these attacks take days, the victim often doesn’t realize they’ve been attacked for weeks, if not years. So, what can be done? Here are some of the best practices identified by Laurance Dine:
- Know your industry, including the most frequent types of attacks
- Implement and promote two-factor authentication
- Apply patches as quickly as possible
- Grant access only to users who absolutely need it
- Monitor all input and encrypt data
- Train employees, a key factor in developing awareness
- Strengthen defenses
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