Handling the Cybersecurity Effects of the War in Ukraine

The crisis between Russia and Ukraine is impacting the whole globe. Newsfeeds are being flooded with all kinds of information, and we might have no idea what is true and what is bogus, therefore, in these trying times, it’s more important than ever to safeguard our data, especially when there is also an increasing danger for a cyberwar.

We’ve prepared for you a list of tips you can take to ensure your sensitive information is protected. During this period of increased uncertainty, focusing and executing on these particular, concrete areas of action can help assure that both yourself and your organization are safe from cyberattacks:

Keep Your Users and Employees Informed.

When it comes to protecting your organization from attackers, having rules in place simply serves as the first step in making sure they react to occurrences in the proper manner.

Providing your staff with cybersecurity education options that are relevant to their business and role should be your next step in threat prevention. Some issues that you should cover in future training are:

• How to detect harmful links;
• How to identify malicious attachments in emails;
• How to identify impersonation attempts;
• How to navigate safely and prevent visiting malicious websites.

Last but not least, when it comes to social engineering approaches, your workers might always be the weakest link in your organization’s chain of command, as attackers might use phishing or spear-phishing assaults to fool them into clicking on malicious links that will ask them to submit their credentials, among other methods of compromise.

All companies should place a high premium on increasing their employees’ cybersecurity knowledge.

If user data gets stolen in an assault, this has the potential to cause data breaches and system breakdowns, among others. Make sure you keep safe and that you employ the necessary tools to protect the most important assets in your company.

Make Email Security a Top Concern.

The email is a prominent target for cyber attackers, as a result of human error and the nature of the information that is communicated through it.

Today’s digital world requires email security as an integral part of any organization’s cybersecurity architecture. Employees should know how to stay safe from phishing attempts and malicious attachments in order to not put the company they work for, or themselves in danger.

Secure Your Network.

The regularity with which cyberattacks target the corporate sector, as well as the overall lack of cybersecurity preparation across all sectors, serve as justifications for the need for threat defense in business.

It is critical to have cybersecurity rules in place for your risk managing and mitigation activities since they control how your complete workforce should manage different digital safety problems.

You should start thinking of using a high-quality traffic filtering application, as the threats targeting the domain name system (DNS) are becoming more prevalent than ever.

All Systems Should Be Updated and Patched.

Patching reduces the attack surface of a company, by making it less vulnerable to cyberattacks or security breaches since the flaws are usually fixed before being discovered by malicious actors.

Patch management resolves any out-of-date software problems, as it also relates to system features that could improve the system, in this way ensuring that operating systems, cloud apps, and third-party applications are all adequately protected.

Consider using an automatic patch management solution, as it will always be more accurate than a manual patch management solution, since human error may be the cause of a failure that occurs when patch management is performed manually.

Prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks from Happening.

It is usually necessary, to begin with, an effective privileged access management approach before implementing an effective privilege escalation countermeasure.

This can only be accomplished in a genuinely effective manner with the use of an automated solution that will assist you in monitoring and protecting privileged accounts from both internal and external threats.

You will be able to escalate and deescalate privileges from anywhere in the globe if you use an automated PAM program. A PAM strategy should, of course, always be founded on the concept of least privilege, which means that users and applications or services should only have access to the resources that are absolutely needed to execute a job, rather than the maximum amount of access possible.

You’re Only as Strong as Your Passwords.

If you want to ensure that everyone in your business follows a well-defined password policy, you must adopt one in your organization.

It is recommended that strong passwords be at least eight characters long, include a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that makes them difficult to guess, and Multi-Factor Authentication should be enabled for all user accounts.

It might seem to be general knowledge, but you should not leave the credentials of routers, printers, even if your apps and operating systems are well-protected, all it takes for a cyberattack to take place is a single neglected router with default credentials.

Regularly Back Up Your Data.

Because modern ransomware exfiltrates data and exploits it as a double-extortion strategy, backing up data alone is no longer an option for enterprises in today’s world of information security. If you run your business properly, a backup plan should be put in place as a precaution.

Information saved in the cloud should be encrypted, and backups should be verified on a regular basis to ensure that they are performing as expected. It may be beneficial to have an offline backup, such as a hard disk as well. Don’t forget to protect your backups using endpoint protection on your servers.

Conclusion

It may be tough to keep focus in these difficult times but it’s important to understand the fact that malicious actors don’t take breaks and they never leave their guard down, not even in these highly challenging times. By remaining on top of your cybersecurity efforts you can obtain compliance and stay safe. And remember: maintaining a firm foundation by focusing on the fundamentals will help you better protect yourself and your company.

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Dora Tudor

Cyber Security Enthusiast

Dora is a digital marketing specialist within Heimdal™ Security. She is a content creator at heart - always curious about technology and passionate about finding out everything there is to know about cybersecurity.