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It’s no secret that hackers are growing increasingly cunning. The threats they devise are now adaptable and highly capable to camouflage themselves in any digital infrastructure. Fortunately, there are ways to stop this. Modern problems require modern solutions, which is why today’s workplace needs threat prevention.
Threat prevention might sound very general, but it is a very specific notion that correlates with your company’s cybersecurity. If you want to find out what it is, as well as why it is important and how you can achieve it, then keep on reading.
What is Threat Prevention?
In the context of enterprise cybersecurity, the term threat prevention refers to the solutions and policies that are put in place to protect a corporate network. Back in the day, this used to be achieved mostly at the level of the perimeter and relied heavily on traditional antivirus and firewalls above anything else.
However, hackers eventually caught on and started creating malicious code variants that rapidly bypassed these defenses. Malware started spreading via the DNS, on email, through software vulnerabilities, and even from inside the network perimeter. To keep up with these constantly evolving digital dangers, threat prevention solutions have become increasingly innovative over the past few years.
Therefore, a threat prevention suite includes multiple cybersecurity tools these days. Predictive malware protection, intrusion detection, and prevention systems, and additional layers of endpoint security threat prevention are the most common options.
Why is Threat Prevention Important?
In today’s rapidly growing malware economy, traditional detection and response are not enough to keep your enterprise’s digital integrity untouched. Recent studies show alarming numbers in terms of how often cyberattacks on businesses occur, as well as how much money you can end up losing because of them.
Accenture’s Ninth Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study conducted in 2019 in collaboration with the Ponemon Institute registered a 67% increase in data breaches over five years. In addition to this, average mitigation costs grew by a whopping 72% over the same period. In addition to this, the report found that 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, with only 14% of them being prepared to protect their data.
The Ponemon Institute published a separate report on the State of Cybersecurity in 2019, which uncovered that 45% of small and medium businesses consider their tools and policies ineffective in the face of cyberattacks. What is more, 66% of study respondents were targeted by a hacking attempt over the 12 months before the study.
Unfortunately, things have not started looking any brighter for businesses trying to stay safe. Steve Morgan of Cybersecurity Ventures predicted in 2017 that a cyberattack will happen every 11 seconds by 2021. Well, 2021 is now, and for this reason, I cannot stress the importance threat prevention has for your enterprise enough.
Types of Threat Prevention
There are two main types to consider for your enterprise when it comes to categorizing threat prevention solutions and policies. These are network threat prevention and endpoint threat prevention, according to the infrastructure they protect. Let’s have a look at each one and see what goes into threat prevention.
Network Threat Prevention
Your company’s online perimeter is vulnerable to many network threats that target your business data and software assets. The following cybersecurity layers are thus necessary to protect your enterprise against attackers wanting to exploit system vulnerabilities:
- Traditional server firewall
- Intrusion prevention and detection system
- Predictive DNS traffic filtering
- Network traffic logging
- Traffic pattern analysis
Endpoint Threat Prevention
Due to the increasingly dynamic nature of the modern office, network threat prevention is no longer enough. Employees can enter your enterprise network from anywhere in the world these days. For this reason, endpoint threat prevention relies on several measures that ensure the cybersecurity of your company’s workstations regardless of their location in the world. Here are the essentials:
- Predictive DNS traffic filtering
- Category-based web page blocking
- Strong email protection
- Privileged access management and zero trust
- Regular software patching
How to Achieve Threat Prevention
If you’ve reached this point in the article, you might be curious how you can achieve threat prevention for your company. I’ve narrowed it down to five essential steps for you, and we’ll discuss each one in the following section. Let’s get into it.
#1 Secure the Company Network Perimeter
Network threat prevention might be the more traditional approach, but it is still necessary nowadays. Our Heimdal™ Threat Prevention – Network is a revolutionary DNS filter that adds HIPS/HIDS capabilities to your corporate system, stopping cyber attackers in the tracks.
Heimdal® Network DNS Security
Its AI-driven neural network does not only detect but also predicts advanced threats. Therefore, you won’t be taken by surprise when a new malware strain appears and tries to infect your enterprise. In addition to this, it is a software-free solution that does not require anything to be installed on endpoints. This is particularly efficient in the case of traffic sniffing attacks, which are a popular technique among hackers that want to penetrate your online perimeter.
#2 Protect Endpoints Regardless of Location
As I mentioned previously, securing the company network must be accompanied by proper endpoint threat prevention to ensure that you have all your bases covered. Our Heimdal™ Threat Prevention – Endpoint module comes in completion to its network counterpart, filtering traffic on your company endpoints at the level of the DNS, HTTP, and HTTPS.
Heimdal® DNS Security Solution
With it, your enterprise will benefit from complete protection against DNS attacks, as well as infamous threats such as ransomware, data breaches, exploits, and more. Our solution also allows you to perform category-based blocking of web pages, making sure that your company’s private information is safe regardless of where in the world your employees choose to work from.
#3 Respond to Incidents Quickly
In case an incident does occur and your company falls victim to a cyberattack, how quickly you respond is essential to the outcome. The sooner you act, the lower mitigation costs will be. A next-generation antivirus and firewall can help you with this, but it is also your responsibility as a business owner to train your staff on how to react to a security crisis.
All systems must be taken offline upon threat detection and not a second later. This will stop the malware from spreading and give your team time to sanitize the network. If the infection is discovered by someone outside your IT team, the appropriate staff should be notified immediately. These are just a few of how you can ensure that your company responds to an attack the right way.
#4 Be Proactive with Your Cybersecurity
In this day and age, true cybersecurity should be proactive, not reactive. Adding predictive qualities to your digital defenses through machine learning is the first step to consider. By making use of artificial intelligence, your IT department will be able to detect novel threats on top of known ones. This is essential when you want to stay on top of the game and nip hacking attempts in the bud. Our offering of Heimdal™ Threat Prevention is a simple way to integrate AI on top of DNS traffic filtering.
In addition to this, a more hands-on approach should cover more than just the DNS. Your company’s communications should be protected as well through email security, as well as adequate fraud prevention. This closes many gaps as far as human error is concerned, helping you protect your infrastructure proactively.
#5 Integrate a Complete EPDR Approach
And speaking of proactive protection, the key takeaway of threat prevention should always be the prevention part. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. As cyber attackers constantly update their tactics and new malware strains pop up every day, simple detection and response just don’t cut it anymore.
Thus, your company needs endpoint prevention, detection, and response. The golden standard for threat prevention, this approach integrates vulnerability management and access governance on top of traditional antivirus and firewall. It is perfectly complementary to network and endpoint security, adding proactive layers of defense throughout your systems.
Wrapping Up…
Threat prevention is essential to your company’s cybersecurity, as it is an effective way to add multiple layers of proactive protection. As cyber attackers become more cunning, so should the solutions we use to stop them. This is where Heimdal™ comes in. If you are ready to take your digital defenses to the next level, then don’t hesitate to reach out at sales.inquiries@heimdalsecurity.com and book a free consultation with our experts.
Alina Georgiana Petcu is a Product Marketing Manager within Heimdal™ Security and her main interest lies in institutional cybersecurity. In her spare time, Alina is also an avid malware historian who loves nothing more than to untangle the intricate narratives behind the world's most infamous cyberattacks.
