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How to Build Successful Security Awareness Training Programs in 2021 and Beyond

Security awareness training is one of the most straightforward ways to improve a business’ overall resilience against cyberattacks. That is, when you get it just right.

Thanks to the disruptions to “normal” work routines that COVID-19 has brought, launching a company-wide training program to teach end users how to avoid phishing scams and online risks is a big challenge. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has also brought a major acceleration in phishing activity. With so many office employees working outside the safety of corporate network protections, you can see why the need for training has never been more critical.

But there’s another issue: training is outside the skillset for most IT admins, and the level of effort to set up and run a program of training courses, compliance accreditations and phishing simulations can be daunting.

To help you get started, here are our top 5 recommendations for starting your security awareness program so you can maximize the impact of your efforts.

  1. Get buy-in from stakeholders.

While you probably already have some combination of security tools in place, such as endpoint protection, DNS or web filtering, etc., the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report states that phishing and social engineering are still the primary tactics used in successful cybersecurity breaches.

Make sure your stakeholders understand these threats. Send an email introducing the program to management and clearly explain the importance of educating users and measuring and mitigating your risk of exposure to phishing and other social engineering attacks.

  • Start with a baseline phishing campaign.
    When you run your first phishing campaign, you establish your starting point for measuring and demonstrating improvement over time. (You can also use this real-world data to accurately show the need for improvement to any still-skeptical stakeholders.) Ideally this initial campaign should be sent to all users without any type of forewarning or formal announcement, including members of leadership teams. Make sure to use an option that simply shows a broken link to users who click through, instead of alerting them to the campaign, so you can prevent word-of-mouth between employees from skewing the results.
  • Set up essential security and compliance training.
    Create training campaigns to cover essential cybersecurity topics including phishing, social engineering, passwords and more. Establish which compliance courses are appropriate (or required) for your organization and which employees need to complete them.
  • Establish a monthly phishing simulation and training cadence.
    Repetition and relevance are key for a successful security awareness training program. By setting up a regular simulation and training schedule, you can more easily measure progress and keep an eye on any high-risk users who might need extra attention. Using our shorter 4-5-minute modules in between more substantial training is an effective tactic to keep security top of mind while avoiding user fatigue. And if you can’t run phishing simulations monthly, strive for a quarterly cadence. If you get pushback on sending emails to everyone, then we recommend you prioritize testing users who failed the previous round.
  • Communicate results
    A great way to raise awareness and increase the impact of your phishing campaigns is to share the results across the organization. Keep in mind, the goal is to capitalize on collective engagement and share aggregate results, not to call out individuals. (Your “offenders” will recognize themselves anyway – no need to call them out!)

The critical piece is that seeing the statistics on where the organization stands as a whole.  After the baseline phishing simulation, send out an email to all employees with the results and the reasoning for the campaign. Communicating these numbers will not only help show improvement over time, it’ll also demonstrate the value of the program overall and reinforce to employees that cyber resilience isn’t just IT’s job – it’s a responsibility we all share.

Although there are numerous other tips and tricks that can help ensure the success of your security awareness training program, these are our top five basic pieces of advice to get you on your way. When you follow these steps, it won’t take long to see the very real returns on your training investment.

For more detailed tips on how you can put Webroot® Security Awareness Training to work to improve your business’ cyber resilience posture, view our white paper.

The post How to Build Successful Security Awareness Training Programs in 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Webroot Blog.

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Getting to Know Cloudjacking and Cloud Mining Could Save Your Business

Reading Time: ~ 4 min.

A few years back, cryptojacking and cryptomining emerged as relatively low-effort ways to profit by hijacking another’s computing resources. Today, cloudjacking and cloud mining capitalize on similar principles, only by targeting the near infinite resources of the cloud to generate revenue for attackers. Knowing this growing threat is key to maintaining cyber resilience.

Enterprise-level organizations make especially attractive cloudjacking targets for a few reasons. As mentioned, the computing power of cloud networks is effectively limitless for all but the most brazen cybercriminals.

Additionally, excess electricity consumption, one of the most common tipoffs for smaller scale cryptojacking attacks, often goes unnoticed at the scale large corporations are used to operating. The same goes for CPU.

Careful threat actors can also throttle back the amount of resources they’re ripping off—when attacking a smaller organization, for instance—to avoid detection. Essentially, the resources stolen at any one time in these attacks are a drop in the Pacific Ocean to their largest targets. Over time, though, and depending on particulars of a usage contract, the spend for CPU used can really add up.

“Hackers have definitely transitioned away from launching ransomware attacks indiscriminately,” says Webroot threat analyst Tyler Moffitt. “It used to be, ‘everybody gets the same payload, everyone has the same flat-rate ransom.’

“That’s all changed. Now, ransomware actors want to go after businesses with large attack surfaces and more pocketbook money than, say, grandma’s computer to pay if they’re breached. Cloud is essentially a new market.”

High-profile cloudjacking incidents

Arguably the most famous example of cloudjacking, at least in terms of headlines generated, was a 2018 attack on the electric car manufacturers Tesla. In that incident, cybercriminals were discovered running malware to leech the company’s Amazon Web Service cloud computing power to mine cryptocurrency.

Even with an organization of Tesla’s scale, the attackers reportedly used a throttling technique to ensure their operations weren’t uncovered. Ultimately, they were reported by a third-party that was compensated for their discovery.  

More recently, the hacking group TeamTNT developed a worm capable of stealing AWS credentials and implanting cloudjacking malware on systems using the cloud service. It does this by searching for accounts using popular development tools, like Docker or Kubernets, that are both improperly configured and running AWS, then performing a few simple searches for the unencrypted credentials.

TeamTNT’s total haul remains unclear, since it can spread it’s ‘earnings’ across multiple crypto wallets.  The fear though, now that a proven tactic for lifting AWS credentials is out in the wild, is that misconfigured cloud accounts will become prime targets for widespread illicit cloud mining.

SMBs make attractive targets, too

Hackers aren’t just launching cloudjacking attacks specifically against storage systems and development tools. As with other attack tactics, they often see MSPs and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as attractive targets as well.

“Several attacks in the first and second quarters of 2019 involved bad actors hijacking multiple managed service providers,” says Moffitt. “We saw that with Sodonakibi and GrandCrab. The same principles apply here. Hacking a central, cloud-based property allows attackers to hit dozens and potentially hundreds of victims all at once.”

Because smaller businesses typically share their cloud infrastructure with other small businesses, compromising cloud infrastructure can provide cybercriminals with a trove of data belonging to several concerned owners.

“The cloud offers an attractive aggregation point as it allows attackers access to a much larger concentration of victims. Gaining access to a single Amazon web server, for instance, could allow threat actors to steal and encrypt data belonging to dozens of companies renting space on that server hostage,” says Moffitt. 

High-value targets include confidential information like mission-critical data, trade secrets, unencrypted tax information or customer information that, if released, would violate privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.

Some years ago, smaller businesses may have escaped these cloud compromises without too much disruption. Today, the data and services stored or run through the cloud are critical to the day-to-day even for SMBs. Many businesses would be simply crippled should they lost access to public or private cloud assets.

The pressure to pay a ransom, therefore, is significantly higher than it was even three years ago. But ransoms aren’t the only way for malicious actors to monetize their efforts. With cloud mining, they can get right to work making cryptocurrency while evading notice for as long as possible.

How to protect against cloudjacking and cloud mining

Moffitt recommends using “versioning” to guard against cloudjacking attacks. Versioning is the practice of serializing unalterable backups to prevent them from being deleted or manipulated.

 “That means not just having snapshot or history copies—that’s pretty standard—since with ransomware we’ve seen actors encrypt all of those copies. So, my suggestion is creating immutable backups. It’s called versioning, but these are essentially snapshot copies that can never be edited or encrypted.”

Moffitt says many service providers have this capability, but it may not be the default and need to be switched on manually.

Two more tactics to adopt to defend against cloud jacking involve monitoring your configurations and monitor your network traffic. As we’ve seen, capitalizing on misconfigured AWS infrastructure is one of the more common ways for cybercriminals to disrupt cloud services.

Security oversight of devops teams setting up cloud applications is crucial. There are tools available that can automatically discover resources as soon as they’re created, determine the applications running on the resource and apply appropriate policies based on the resource type.

By monitoring network traffic and correlating it with configuration data, companies are able to spot suspicious network traffic being generated as they send work or hashes to public mining pools that are public and could help identify where mining is being directed. 

There tends to be a learning curve when defending against emerging attacks. But if businesses are aware of how cloud resources are manipulated by threat actors, they can be on guard against cloudjacking by taking a few simple steps, increasing their overall cyber resilience.

The post Getting to Know Cloudjacking and Cloud Mining Could Save Your Business appeared first on Webroot Blog.

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What DoH Can Really Do

Reading Time: ~ 3 min.

Fine-tuning privacy for any preference

A DNS filtering service that accommodates DNS over HTTPS (DoH) can strengthen an organization’s ability to control network traffic and turn away threats. DoH can offer businesses far greater control and flexibility over their privacy than the old system.

The most visible use of DNS is typically the browser, which is why all the usual suspects are leading the charge in terms of DoH adoption. This movement has considerable steam behind it and has extended beyond just applications as Microsoft, Apple and Google have all announced their intent to support DoH.

Encrypting DNS requests is an indisputable win for privacy-minded consumers looking to prevent their ISPs from snooping on and monetizing their browsing habits. Businesses, on the other hand, should not easily surrender this visibility since managing these requests adds value, helping to keep users from navigating to sites known to host malware and other threats.

Here are three examples of how.

1.  By enhancing DNS logging control

Businesses have varying motivations for tracking online behavior. For persistently troublesome users—those who continuously navigate to risky sites—it’s beneficial to exert some control over their network use or even provide some training on what it takes to stay safe online. It can also be useful in times of problematic productivity dips by helping to tell if users are spending inordinate amounts of time on social media, say.

On the other hand, for CEOs and other strategic business units, tracking online activity can be cause for privacy concerns. Too much detail into the network traffic of a unit tasked with investigating mergers and acquisitions may be unwanted, for example.

“If I’m the CEO of a company, I don’t want people paying attention to where I go on the internet,” says Webroot DNS expert Jonathan Barnett. “I don’t want people to know of potential deals I’m investigating before they become public.”

Logging too much user information can also be problematic from a data privacy perspective. Collecting or storing this information in areas with stricter laws, as in the European Union, can unnecessarily burden organizations with red tape.

“Essentially it exposes businesses to requirements concerning how they’re going to use that data, who has access to it and how long that data is preserved” says Barnett.

By optionally never logging user information and backing off DNS logging except when a request is deemed a security threat, companies maintain both privacy and security.

2. By allowing devices to echo locally

With DoH, visibility of DNS requests is challenging. The cumulative DNS requests made on a network help to enhance its security as tools such as SIEMs and firewalls leverage these requests by controlling access as well as corelating the requests with other logs and occurrences on the network. 

“Let’s say I’m on my network at the office and I make a DNS request,” explains Barnett. “I may want my DNS request to be seen by the network as well as fielded by my DNS filtering service. The network gets value out of DNS. If I see inappropriate DNS requests I can go and address the user or fix the device.”

Continuing to expose these DNS requests through an echo to the local network provides this, while the actual requests are secure and encrypted by the DNS protection agent using DoH. This option achieves the best of both worlds by adding the security of DoH to the security of the local network.

3. By allowing agents to fail open

DNS is instrumental to the functionality of the internet. So, the question is, what do we do when a filtered answer is not available? By failing over to the local network, it’s assured that the internet continues to function. However, there are times when filtering and privacy are more important than connectivity. Being able to choose if DNS requests can leak out to the local network helps you stay in control by choosing which is a priority.

 “Fail open functionality essentially allows admins to make a tradeoff between the protection offered by DNS filtering and the productivity hit that inevitably accompanies a lack of internet access,” says Barnett.

Privacy your way

The encryption of DoH enables options for fine-tuning privacy preferences while preserving the security benefits of DNS filtering. Those that must comply with the needs of privacy-centric users now have control over what is revealed and what is logged, while maintaining the benefits of communicating using DoH.

Click here to read related blogs covering the transition to DNS over HTTPS.

The post What DoH Can Really Do appeared first on Webroot Blog.

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Cyber Resilience for Business Continuity

Reading Time: ~ 2 min.

“Ten years ago, you didn’t see state actors attacking [small businesses]. But it’s happening now,” warns George Anderson, product marketing director at Carbonite + Webroot, OpenText companies.

Sadly, many of today’s managed service providers who serve small and medium-sized businesses now have to concern themselves with these very threats. Independent and state-sponsored hacking groups use sophisticated hacking tools (advanced persistent threats or APTs), to gain unauthorized access to networks and computers, often going undetected for months or even years at a time. In fact, according to the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, cyber-espionage is among the top patterns associated with breaches targeting businesses worldwide.

These attacks can be difficult even for highly sophisticated enterprise security teams to detect, stop or recover from. But all businesses, no matter their size, must be ready for them. As such, MSPs, themselves ranging in size from a few techs to a few hundred professionals, may find they need help protecting their SMB customers from APTs; that’s on top of the consistent onslaught of threats from ordinary, profit-motivated cyberattackers. That’s where the concept of cyber resilience comes in.

What does cyber resilience look like?

“Being [cyber] resilient – knowing that even if you’re knocked offline you can recover quickly – is essential for today’s businesses,” George says.

The reality is that today’s organizations have to accept a breach is pretty much inevitable. Their level of cyber resilience is the measure of the organization’s ability to keep the business running and get back to normal quickly. “It’s being able to absorb punches and get back on your feet, no matter what threatens,” as George put it in a recent podcast with Joe Panettieri, co-founder MSSP Alert & ChannelE2E.

Read more about how businesses can build a cyber resilient company culture.

How can businesses and MSPs achieve cyber resilience?

Because cyber resilience is about both defending against attacks and preparing for their inescapability,  a major component in a strong resilience strategy is the breadth of coverage a business has. In particular, having tested and proven backup and disaster recovery solutions in place is the first step in surviving a breach. If a business has reliable, real-time (or near real-time) recovery capabilities, then in the event of an attack, they could make it through barely skipping a beat.

Now, George has clarified that “no single solution can offer complete immunity against cyberattacks on its own.” To reduce the risk of events like data loss from accidental deletion, device theft or hardware failure, your clients need multiple layers of protection that secure their devices and data from multiple angles. Here are George’s top data protection tips:

Ultimately, George says ensuring business continuity for MSPs and the businesses they serve through comprehensive cyber resilience solutions is the primary goal of the Carbonite + Webroot division of OpenText.

“We want to up the advocacy and stop attacks from happening as much as we possibly can.  At  the  same time, when they inevitably do happen, we want to be able to help MSPs recover and limit lost time, reputation damage, and financial impact so businesses can keep functioning.”

To learn more about cyber resilience, click here.

The post Cyber Resilience for Business Continuity appeared first on Webroot Blog.

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MSP Insight: Netstar Shares Cyber Resilience Strategies for Remote Work

Reading Time: ~ 5 min.

Guest blog by Mit Patel, Managing Director of London based IT Support company, Netstar.

In this article, Webroot sits down with Mit Patel, Managing Director of London-based MSP partner, Netstar, to discuss the topic of remote work during a pandemic and tips to stay cyber resilient.

Why is it important to be cyber resilient, specifically when working remote?

It’s always important to be cyber resilient, but a lot has changed since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown that needs to be taken into consideration.

Remote work has posed new problems for businesses when it comes to keeping data secure. Since the start of lockdown, there has been a significant increase in phishing scams, ransomware attacks and malicious activity. Scammers now have more time to innovate and are using the widespread anxiety of coronavirus to target vulnerable people and businesses.

Moreover, the sudden shift in working practices makes the pandemic a prime time for cyber-attacks. Employees can no longer lean over to ask a colleague if they are unsure about the legitimacy of an email or web page. Instead, they need to be confident in their ability to spot and avoid potential security breaches without assistance.

Remote work represents a significant change that can’t be ignored when it comes to the security of your business. Instead, businesses need to be extra vigilant and prioritise their cyber resilience.

What does cyber resilience mean to you?

It’s important to differentiate between cyber resilience and cyber security. Cyber security is a component of cyber resilience, referring to the technologies and processes designed to prevent cyber-attacks. Whereas, I believe cyber resilience goes a step further, referring to the ability to prevent, manage and respond to cyber threats. Cyber resilience recognises that breaches can and do happen, finding effective solutions that mean businesses recover quickly and maintain functionality. The main components of cyber resilience include, training, blocking, protecting, backing up and recovering. When all these components are optimised, your cyber resilience will be strong, and your business will be protected and prepared for any potential cyber threats.

Can you share some proactive methods for staying cyber resilient when working remote?

Absolutely. But it’s important to note that no solution is 100% safe and that a layered approach to IT security is necessary to maximise protection and futureproof your business.

Get the right antivirus software. Standard antivirus software often isn’t enough to fully protect against viruses. Businesses need to consider more meticulous and comprehensive methods. One of our clients, a licensed insolvency practitioner, emphasized their need for software that will ensure data is protected and cyber security is maximised. As such, we implemented Webroot SecureAnywhere AnitVirus, receiving excellent client feedback, whereby the client stressed that they can now operate safe in the knowledge that their data is secure.

Protect your network. DNS Protection is a critical layer for your cyber resilience strategy. DNS will protect you against threats such as malicious links, hacked legitimate websites, phishing attacks, CryptoLocker and other ransomware attacks. We have implemented DNS Protection for many of our clients, including an asset management company that wanted to achieve secure networks with remote working capability. In light of the current remote working situation, DNS Protection should be a key consideration for any financial business looking to enhance their cyber resilience.

Ensure that you have a strong password policy. Keeping your passwords safe is fundamental for effective cyber resilience, but it may not be as simple as you think. Start by making sure that you and your team know what constitutes a strong password. At Netstar, we recommend having a password that:

  • Is over 10 characters long
  • Contains a combination of numbers, letters and symbols
  • Is unpredictable with no identifiable words (even if numbers or symbols are substituted for letters)

You should also have different passwords for different logins, so that if your security is compromised for any reason, hackers can only access one platform. To fully optimise your password policy, you need to consider multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication goes a step further than the traditional username-password login. It requires multiple forms of identification in order to access a certain email account, website, CRM etc. This will include at least two of the following:

  • Something you know (e.g. a password)
  • Something you have (e.g. an ID badge)
  • Something you are (e.g. a fingerprint)

Ensure that you have secure tools for communication. Collaboration tools, like Microsoft Teams, are essential for remote working. They allow you to communicate with individuals, within teams and company-wide via audio calls, video calls and chat.

When it comes to cyber resilience, it’s essential that your team know what is expected of them. You should utilise collaboration tools to outline clear remote working guidance to all employees. For example, we would recommend discouraging employees from using personal devices for work purposes. The antivirus software installed on these devices is unlikely to be of the same quality as the software installed on work devices, so it could put your business at risk.

Furthermore, you need to be confident that your employees can recognise and deal with potential security threats without assistance. Individuals can no longer lean across to ask a colleague if they’re unsure of the legitimacy of something. They need to be able to do this alone. Security awareness training is a great solution for this. It will teach your team about the potential breaches to look out for and how to deal with them. This will cover a range of topics including, email phishing, social media scams, remote working risks and much more. Moreover, courses are often added and updated, meaning that your staff will be up to date with the latest scams and cyber threats.

Implement an effective backup and disaster recovery strategy

Even with every preventive measure in place, things can go wrong, and preparing for disaster is crucial for effective cyber resilience.

In fact, a lot of companies that lose data because of an unexpected disaster go out of business within just two years, which is why implementing an effective backup and disaster recovery strategy is a vital layer for your cyber resilience strategy.

First, we advise storing and backing up data using an online cloud-based system. When files are stored on the cloud, they are accessible from any device at any time. This is particularly important for remote working; it means that employees can collaborate on projects and access necessary information quickly and easily. It also means that, if your device is wiped or you lose your data, you can simply log in to your cloud computing platform and access anything you might need. Thus, data can easily be restored, and you’re protected from potential data loss.

Overall, disaster recovery plans should focus on keeping irreplaceable data safe. Consider what would happen to your data in the event of a disaster. If your office burned down, would you be confident that all your data would be protected?

You should be working with an IT support partner that can devise an effective and efficient disaster recovery plan for your business. This should set out realistic expectations for recovery time and align with your insurance policy to protect any loss of income. Their goal should be to get your business back up and running as quickly as possible, and to a high standard (you don’t want an IT support partner that cuts corners). Lastly, your IT support provider should regularly test your strategy, making sure that if disaster did occur, they could quickly and effectively restore the functionality of your business.

What else should fellow MSPs keep in mind during this trying time?

In the last four years, cyber resilience has become increasingly important; there are so many more threats out there, and so much valuable information that needs protecting.

We have happy clients because their machines run quickly, they experience less IT downtime, and they rarely encounter viruses or malicious activity. We know that we need to fix customers’ problems quickly, while also ensuring that problems don’t happen in the first place. Innovation is incredibly important to us, which is why we’ve placed a real focus on proactive client advisory over the last 24 months.

That’s where a strong cyber resilience strategy comes into play. MSPs need to be able to manage day-to-day IT queries, while also focusing on how technology can help their clients grow and succeed in the future.There is plenty of advice around the nuts and bolts of IT but it’s the advisory that gives clients the most value. As such, MSPs should ensure they think like a customer and make technological suggestions that facilitate overall business success for their clients.

The post MSP Insight: Netstar Shares Cyber Resilience Strategies for Remote Work appeared first on Webroot Blog.