In today’s world, cyber security infrastructure and awareness are prerequisites for the smooth running of almost every industry. It is mainly because cyber attacks have the potential to negatively affect an organization’s efficiency and output. Cyber security awareness is even more essential for small businesses as they are being plagued by a variety of cyber threats including cryptojacking, ransomware, phishing, password tracking attacks and advanced persistent threat attacks (APT).
The major reason for the presence of small businesses in the cyber criminals’ target range is the low complexity of their cyber security infrastructure. Reportedly, the most common challenges faced by a small business emanate from employees’ negligence. With limited resources and less complex infrastructure, generating awareness is the only way for small businesses to safeguard themselves against cyber threats.
According to National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant, “To know how to defend yourself or your organization, it is important to understand how the attacks happen and what methodology do cyber attackers use to harm organizations.”
Risks Faced by Small Businesses Due to Inefficient Cyber Security Management
Gauging the vulnerabilities and leakages in any particular department is difficult until and unless it is put to test. In absence of such introspection, a small business risks losing a lot of valuable time and money. The major risks faced by small businesses include-
Cyber attackers can steal an employee’s credentials to carry out a number of criminal activities like identity theft and targeted spear-phishing attacks. They can also use these stolen credentials to access your company’s corporate network.
A compromised cyber security infrastructure can lead to a data breach and the loss or exposure of sensitive information.
Successful payment frauds or theft of sensitive bank details and passwords can result in substantial monetary losses for the company and its employees.
Recovery from a cyber attack including the costs of cleaning up the systems can serve as a huge financial hit.
Damaged reputation and the loss of customer base are other major consequences of suffering a cyber attack.
Upping the Ante
Adopting the best cyber security practices has become a vital step for all small businesses to stay afloat. The following are some effective measures that small business organizations can take to secure their data and systems-
Deploy cyber security awareness tools where employees are subjected to a cyber attack drill and their reaction towards such a dummy attack is recorded and analyzed. These dummy attacks involve different attack vectors and customized templates to generate cyber security awareness.
Regularly upgrade the already existing cyber security infrastructure to a more complex one.
Use VAPT services to identify the vulnerabilities in your organization’s cyber security infrastructure and correct them as soon as possible.
Remove the software and hardware that is no longer in use to prevent it from getting corrupted. Along with this, update the already existing software regularly.
Employ cyber security experts who are equipped with the knowledge of dealing with cyber attacks in minimum reaction time.
Restrict or ban the use of removable media in the organization to secure its digital infrastructure.
Make sure the data is encrypted while posting any of it online, allowing only authorized users to access it.
Restrict data access to a bare minimum for preventing data breaches and insider threats.
According to the trends observed globally, small business organizations bear the major brunt of cyber attacks as they don’t have sufficient reactionary capacity to defend themselves against such attacks. As recovering from a successful cyber attack can be an uphill task, cyber security awareness for the employees takes a front seat in such respect along with the review of the organization’s level of preparedness and reaction time.
What can be the cruelest but most effective way to test your employees if they are aware of the risks and preventions of a phishing attack? Godaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar and web-hosting company, simulated a phishing test for employees to increase alertness levels against phishing attacks.
On December 14, an email tucked underneath the snowflake banner with the words “GoDaddy HOLIDAY PARTY” from “Happyholiday@Godaddy.com” was sent to hundreds of Godaddy employees offering a holiday bonus. The message in the email said, “2020 has been a record for GoDaddy, thanks to you!”
“Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus!” it further added.
To ensure that the recipients receive the bonus, they were asked to fill in the personal details by December 18. But instead of receiving the bonus, two days later, almost 500 employees received an email from the company’s Chief Security Officer, Demetrius Comes.
Though many criticized the bonus offer in GoDaddy’s test as insensitive, companies do organize phishing simulation tests to educate employees on cybersecurity.
GoDaddy is not the first company this year to provide phishing email awareness for employees. Earlier this year, Tribune Publishing, a giant newspaper company in America, sent out a similar phishing email to the employees.
The email circulated by several employees on Twitter said the company was providing targeted bonuses between $5,000 to $10,000. Only to find out later that it was a phishing test sent from the company.
Why Should Organizations Run ‘Employee Phishing Test’?
Imagine the consequences, if GoDaddy’s phishing test was not a test but a real phishing attack from a hacker! Roughly 500 employees failed the test, so, almost 500 of them would have submitted their personal information to hackers. This could have led to a complete disaster for the company.
Providing this kind of real scenario phishing attacks helps employees understand what the falsified email might look like. And how it can trick them into falling for the scam by offering some incentive or creating a sense of urgency. The test helps the employees in recognizing phishing emails as well as to avoid and report it.
According to phishing statistics 2020, 97% of the users are unable to recognize a sophisticated phishing email. This is probably why phishing attacks, Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks and other email-based attacks are rapidly increasing every passing year. In fact, BEC attacks yielded the most profit for cybercriminals in 2020!
How to Detect Phishing Attacks?
Phishing attacks today have evolved and become more sophisticated than ever before. These attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between a legitimate email and a fake email. But here are a few ways that your organization can follow to detect phishing attacks and protect your organization and the employees against phishing attacks:
Email domain name
It is advisable to always check the name, email address and make sure no alterations (additional letters or numbers) have been made in the email domain or the email address. For example, a legitimate email address might be john@business.com but an altered email address can be john@busineess.com or john@busiiness.com. If you are receiving an email from an unknown organization then you can also check the organization’s domain name by writing the company’s name in a search engine like google.
Sensitive information and sense of urgency
A legitimate company or any government agency would never ask you to send your sensitive information over email. So, if an organization is asking you to send your credentials or personal information like username or password through email, it is recommended to not send it and get the mail verified personally. Moreover, most of the time scammers create a sense of urgency. Just because if there is not much time left then you don’t have enough time to think or cross-check. But you do not want to be in a hurry when it comes to losing your personal information.
Poor spellings and grammatical errors
You can often spot a phishing email if it contains poor spelling and grammar errors in the message. Legitimate companies have qualified and trained employees to write emails and the emails are double-checked before the emails are sent out to their staff or clients. So, if a message has poor spelling or grammar errors, it’s always better to cross-check if the email is from a legitimate company.
Too good to be true or designed to make you panic
It is common for phishing emails to offer a coupon for free stuff or to instill panic. The email message will either be offering some rewards which you were not expecting or will create panic by claiming that your account is compromised. To receive the reward or to secure your compromised account, you will need to verify you are the legitimate person by either giving out your credentials or by entering your login details. The common goal of both messages is to get your credentials or personal information.
Suspicious links or attachments
Phishing emails come in many different forms but no matter how the email is delivered to you, it always comes with a gateway. It can either be a link to redirect you to a bogus website or an attachment that you are asked to download. No legit companies will randomly send you links or attachments and if they want you to download something then it will be from the official website.
How to Prevent Phishing Attacks?
Your email spam filters might help you keep away numbers of phishing emails from landing into your inox but malicious actors are constantly finding ways to outsmart spam filters. So, it is highly recommended to add extra layers of protection against phishing attacks. Here are some precautious steps your organization can implement:
Protect the devices by keeping the software up to date with the latest security updates and patches.
Enforce strong password policy, passwords that are not easily guessed and avoid sharing passwords to elude the risks of password sharing at work.
Add an extra layer of security for the password with multi-factor authentication.
Encourage your employees to report suspicious emails with tools like Threat Alert Button.
Routine backup the confidential or important data in an external hard drive or cloud storage and also encrypt all sensitive company information.
There are multiple steps your organization can take to prevent email phishing attacks, however, it is important that your employees recognize the phishing emails.
Your organization must get a regular VAPT service in order to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats. It is a must to implement tools like KDMARC to prevent your email domain against domain forgery and protect your brand.
These services and tools help your organization in safeguarding against cyberattacks and it is highly recommended that you continue. But all it takes is one untrained employee to be tricked by a phishing attack to give away all the information.
The most effective way to educate employees is to provide cybersecurity training with tools to make them aware of the latest cyberattacks including phishing. It will not only provide them with the knowledge of most of the common cyberattacks happening worldwide but will also help them to avoid them.
You can also provide security awareness email samples and phishing awareness emails to employees. It can be done regularly or periodically but to remind them of how it looks and what they should look out for.
Making sure your organization and the employees strictly follow the cybersecurity protocols is the best way. In fact, it is the best possible way out to protect your organization against cyber threats.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” – Abraham Lincoln
The malicious actors have succeeded in fooling the employees to give out personal information. They have even succeeded in jeopardizing an organization’s network and IT infrastructure. But it’s up to you if these threats shouldn’t harm your organization in the present or in the future by taking the right steps!
With the significant rise in the use of digital systems over the years, there has been a rapid increase in cyber frauds around the world. Cyber criminals have grown much more sophisticated, making it more complicated for organizations to defend themselves against cyber threats.
As technology advances, we rely even more heavily on the internet today. Everything we do can be done online including work, entertainment, shopping, and banking. The internet has made doing everyday tasks considerably easier.
However, it has also led to a drastic rise in cyber crimes around the globe. Seeing how Indians have started doing online banking transactions more now, the number of online banking frauds in India has increased substantially.
According to the RBI’s annual report, bank frauds of ₹100,000 and above have more than doubled in value to ₹1.85 lakh crores in FY20 as compared to ₹71,500 crores in FY19. Also, the number of such cases has increased by 28% in the same period.
However, the financial sector has been putting consistent efforts to secure the systems and users. But malicious actors are duping people over the internet by various means to steal their money or sensitive information.
Reports on Recent Online Frauds in India
According to a report by Hindustan Times, India has lost a total of ₹615.39 crores in more than 1.17 lakh cases of online banking frauds from April 2009 to September 2019. The occurrence of these frauds is spread over a decade. But the banking industry is witnessing a significant rise in the number of online banking frauds.
“There was a concentration of large value frauds, with the top 50 credit-related frauds constituting 76% of the total amount reported as frauds during 2019-20. Incidents relating to other areas of banking, like an off-balance sheet and forex transactions, fell in 2019-20“, said RBI.
“₹129 crores have been lost in just the last three months of 2019 and a total number of 21,041 such cases were registered in these three months”, said Anurag Thakur, MoS, Ministry of Finance in Lok Sabha in reference to a recent online fraud in India.
How to Prevent Online Banking Frauds?
Consumers aren’t the only ones facing online fraud. With the increasing number of data breaches and fraudulent emails targeting retailers and organizations, businesses are increasingly at risk of online fraud.
Becoming a target or a victim of such fraud does not only bring disruption to business operations. It also causes the organization the loss of customers’ trust, brand reputation and sensitive data.
So, it is critical that organizations adopt certain cyber security measures to avoid learning an expensive lesson, which can often lead to more grievous consequences.
Best practices to Prevent Online Banking Frauds:
Keep financial data separate
Organizations must use a separate system dedicated to performing financial transactions and backing up the data in an external drive regularly. Moreover, restrict or limit access to financial information and data.
Know who is asking
Banks never ask for personal information over the telephone, emails, or text messages. Therefore, avoid sharing PINs, passwords, or your organization’s financial information without proper verification.
Keep it secret and safe
Create a strict password policy to avoid the risks of password sharing at work. Also, never leave files containing access to the financial information in an unsecured place. Moreover, make sure to always leave your computer locked when unattended.
Manage user authentication
Restrict email address/IP locations to allow only authorized users to make transactions on behalf of the organization. Make purchases only on authorized and legitimate websites and review the organizational financial statements regularly.
Cyber awareness training
Educate employees about cyber security awareness. It helps in simulating cyber attacks to check the number of vulnerable employees in your organization and train them accordingly.
Providing this training makes the employees familiar with the attacks and give them the knowledge of what needs to be done when such attacks occur.
Where to Report Online Frauds in India?
In case you failed to take the precautions and become a victim then it is urged to immediately register a complaint with the local police or cyber crime authorities.
Also, the moment you realize that a suspicious transaction has been done from your bank account or your debit/credit card, inform the respective bank immediately.
Scams and online banking frauds have been constantly evolving and rapidly increasing over the years in India. Organizations should come up with more comprehensive and complex cyber security measures to protect the business and the customers.
Moreover, every industry should embrace a culture that following cyber security protocols is not a necessity but mandatory.
Cybersecurity attacks are evolving, getting more sophisticated, more frequent, and spreading worldwide. It seems like not a day is passed without an organization suffering a data breach or a customer of a bank losing money from the account through stolen credentials.
While most industries worldwide are affected by the imminent peril of cybersecurity threats, the banking industry is one of the prime targets. After all, the sector deals with what the attackers want the most, ‘money and personal information’.
Cyberattacks: The Roaring Trade
Cyberattacks on financial firms have become a flourishing money-making business for cybercriminals. As per the report from a cybersecurity firm’s research, cyberattacks against banks spiked by a massive 238% from the beginning of February to the end of April 2020.
In 2017, financial firms saw the highest volume of cybersecurity attacks over any other industry. This threat landscape is widening as it is getting more sophisticated and diverse. The annual cost of cyberattacks in the banking industry has reached $18.3 million per enterprise.
We have witnessed cybersecurity attacks making headlines for several years. Some of the most headline-making cyberattacks have been the DDoS attacks. These attacks flood customer-facing bank websites with traffic and take them offline or attacks on the Swift based money transfer systems, among others.
We have also witnessed big banks suffer these attacks over a decade. Recently, hackers stole $81 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh. In fact, last month, a powerful DDoS attack struck Hungarian banks and telecom services. It was the most powerful and one of the biggest cyberattacks Hungary had ever encountered.
As fast as the organizations are adopting new-age technologies, hackers are constantly finding ways to penetrate and target exploitable security vulnerabilities. Thus, making it evident that cybersecurity attacks are increasing rapidly every passing year.
A Strong Barricade For The Assets
Banks not only store money but also gather network activities and personal information of the customers. Information that includes names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, and dates of birth. This data has inherent value and can be used for other malicious activities such as identity theft, which can often lead to more disastrous and grievous consequences.
In today’s world, cybercriminals are getting advanced with modern technologies. They develop custom-built malicious code that is not necessarily picked up routinely by antivirus protection. So it is very important for the sector to address the modern times demand.
The banking industry needs to realize the assets they have in store and what mechanisms might be used by attackers to get into their organization. They need to identify the weak points and the measures needed to strengthen the IT infrastructure, based on the risk assessment to defend against those potential threats.
It is high time to shift from passive cybersecurity to active cybersecurity, which is switching from what is largely reactive to embracing the white hacker to test the strength of IT infrastructure security. Regardless of how sophisticated the attack is, it mostly starts by trying to trick the employees into doing something that jeopardizes the system.
Therefore, the industry should not only focus on the systems but also get the employees to take the measurements to defend the loophole. Making the employees understand the approaches that these attackers take and what can be done to minimize the exposure to that risk.
According to a report by Deloitte India, cybersecurity attacks are getting complex each passing day and to prevent these threats banks will also need to hire Chief Risk Officers. The officers who are experienced in taking responsibility and lead the firm with military-level cybersecurity solutions to identify the modern sophisticated cyberattacks.
Having a CRO (Chief Risk Officers) will help the firm in managing the operations to prevent cybersecurity threats. It can also fill the responsibilities, including identifying, evaluating, reporting the threats and monitoring the external and internal cyber threats to the firm.
Methodology For Mitigating The Threat
It’s about time for financial firms or any industry to stop relying on the obsolete IT infrastructure. Instead, they should adopt cybersecurity measures that are more complex and sophisticated than ever before to prevent prevailing and emerging cyber threats.
Here are some basic steps the financial firms can implement to minimize the risk of a cyberattack:
Identify and classify the assets- It is important to identify and categorize the information assets, based on its level of sensitivity, value, and criticality to the bank. Information assets including various categories of data that are highly-restricted, confidential, internal use, and the public.
Risk assessment- It is advisable for every bank to prepare a cybersecurityrisk assessment, and implement a cybersecurity protection plan to address those threats identified in the risk assessment procedure. This helps the organization to mitigate the factors that cause disruption in running a smooth business operation.
Identify threats and vulnerabilities– Threat and vulnerability can be subjected to a person, an organization, weaknesses in the system or the network. So it is not a necessity but mandatory for the organization to identify these threats and vulnerabilities through penetration testing in order to patch the weaknesses that can be exploited to gain access and affect the system.
Analyze risk- As mentioned earlier, the bank has the assets that the hackers sought for. So, analyzing the risk to these assets based on the impact or criticality is a way to go for an organization. The process should occur on a regular basis to identify any new potential threats.
Educate employees- All employees should be aware of the threats and consequences of ignoring it. For instance, they should be aware of the hazard by clicking a malicious link or opening an attachment from an unknown person. So, it is crucial to provide cybersecurity awareness training for the employees with tools that helps in raising awareness to prevent cyberattacks. It is particularly important because most of the cyber incidents are the result of “human error.”
Whether exchanging emails across networks or dumping them in your spam folder, a huge amount of data is sent, received and stored. You may not realize but there are high chances that an unsecured email might have landed in your inbox which can act as a source of data exploitation. Now you wouldn’t want that, would you? That’s why email security is very essential for our daily routine in order to keep a check if any malicious email is accessing our inbox or not. The cybersecurity professionals working in every industry vertical must stay updated with the prevailing attacks possible through emails.
According to ComputerWeekly.com, 82% of organizations claimed to have faced email-based cybersecurity threats in 2018. Whereas, ransomware seems to be the biggest cyber threat in the coming year. The reason being, ransomware attacks that encrypt critical business files and demand for ransom in return are often sent to individuals working in organizations by emails only!
These eye-opening facts call for proper email protection solutions that are needed to be implemented in every organization as a defensive system against invading cyber threats. As far as cybersecurity is concerned, the best solution is using email security tools that incorporate a wide range of security techniques that email accounts and services have. Proceed further for the top 5 email security practices that can benefit your organization from email-based cyber risks.
The 4 Types of Email Security Practices
Never click the “unsubscribe” link in spam emails:
At times, certain emails manage to surpass the spam filter and land in your inbox. For instance, you come across one such certain email and on opening it, you discover that it looks like a phishing email. What would be your first instinct? In any normal situation, users tend to unsubscribe suspicious-looking emails but that is not actually safe!
Hackers are good manipulators and they use such links to fool people into clicking attachment which redirects the targeted users to a phishing site. Apart from that, these links also provide hackers with a back door for access into your system.
Avoid Public WiFi:
Never access emails from a public WiFi because they are less secure and hackers choose public WiFi to steal information by passing through a weak network. Cybercriminals require nothing but a laptop and basic software to hack into public WiFi networks and monitor all the traffic. Accessing emails via unsecured public networks can lead to misuse of user’s credentials and a huge loss of sensitive data. This could also result in further intended targeted cyberattacks that are down the line.
Email Encryption:
Disguising and encrypting email content potentially protects the sensitive data that is sent and received, from being read by anyone except the intended recipient. With email encryption, you can secure your emails over untrusted networks from eavesdroppers or any third person trying to invade in between the email exchange. This security strategy reduces the chance of disclosure of information as well as alter of message content.
Employee Education:
Limit the chances of cyber risks in your organization by providing employees with cybersecurity awareness training tools. Along with the implementation of policies and email security tools to prevent cyber threat postures, it is essential to encourage employees to become proactive in combating attack vectors like ransomware, phishing emails, and cyber scams. Security awareness tools is an AI/ML-based security attack simulation tool that assesses the real-time threat posture of an organization. With the unlimited number of attack campaigns and automated training campaigns, this product builds cyber awareness among the employees in an organization and creates a resilient working environment.
Implementing and working on the above-mentioned email protection solutions will not only keep your data safe but will also be beneficial in the long term. In order to protect your business, it is important to make sure that all your employees are empowered to make email based decisions and are protected from data thefts.
Hackers are everywhere nowadays and they won’t stop holding back from discovering vulnerabilities and exploiting your data. Secure your organization now with a robust email security tool in order to reduce the chances of becoming a victim of the prevailing cyber threats.
Every year, the industry of cybersecurity in India faces new challenges and responsibilities to safeguard the growing online data and the digital economy. Did you know the digital economy currently comprises 14-15% of the total economy of India? While with more than 120 recognized ‘data centers’ and clouds in India, the digital economy is targeted to reach 20% by the year 2024!
Moreover, the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and data analytics, has again become a huge challenge for the cyberspace as apart from becoming a more complex domain, it is giving rise to technical issues and the anticipated cyber risks.
However, with the development and introduction of advanced technologies in the market, India is yet to face and tackle new problems in the domain of cybersecurity. This disruptive innovation has brought India to crossroads with a complex network of modern enigmas and unprecedented harm.
Below mentioned are some of the major cybersecurity challenges that our nation is facing:
Email-based and internet-facing applications still remain to be among the top threat vectors.
With people depending more and more on the cloud infrastructure and solutions, human error continues to be the primary source of misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.
In the research analysis of 50,000 emails, a significant increase in the conversation hijacking attacks by 400% between July and November 2019 was experienced. Therefore, this still continues to be a major cyberrisk.
Growing online transactions seems to have generated considerable incentives for cybercriminals.
Phishing and unethical cyber practices have grown a hundredfold in the past few years, making it easier for even non-technical perform hacking.
Cloud, 5G and IoT devices have evolved as among the biggest cybersecurity threats of 2020.
The New Cybersecurity Approach for 2020
Back in late 2019, India was at the target of two cyberattacks in the same month. Moreover, the malware attacks at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant were believed to have happened due to phishing attempts on employees. After experiencing these devastating cyber risks, India is all set to fill the security gaps with the new Cybersecurity Strategy 2020!
With the vision of creating a “cyber-secure nation” for businesses as well as individuals, the Indian government is ready to release the cybersecurity strategy policy in January 2020 with an aim to achieve the target of $5 trillion economy.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, the IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney has stated that our country holds an estimated amount of USD 1.9 billion in cybersecurity service enterprises and USD 450 million of cybersecurity products from India. Along with the presence of multinational and Indian entities, engaging in R&D cybersecurity, all in total currently amounts to USD 5 billion worth cybersecurity ecosystem in India. (source: The Economics Time)
The cybersecurity companies in India have come up with innovative and leading technology-based products and services to reduce the prevailing cyber threat postures in organizations across the nation. As a contribution to creating a “cyber-secure nation”, these companies are effortlessly providing the best defensive tools and VAPT services for all the industry vectors.
Our country is fully inclined towards the path of sustainable development but to achieve that, we have to combat various hurdles such as patching up of the existing vulnerabilities in the cyber world. And this can only happen with the proper formation of critical IT infrastructure and consistent partnership between the public and private sectors working as key aspects for a cybersecurity framework.
It is vital to be visionary and recognize the upcoming challenges from the future in order to be fully prepared and preventing our organizations from becoming another cyberattack’s victims. We don’t have to match the worldwide standards in security when we are capable enough of setting up the highest standards in the world!
Applications are the most favorable medium for cybercriminals who seek to steal data or breach user’s security defenses. Being available 24/7 to users, web applications hold high chances of becoming a target for hackers trying to seek access to the confidential back-end data. According to the cybersecurity research, there were more than 3,800 publicly disclosed data breaches, exposing 4.1 billion compromised records. A huge amount of data is stored in web applications. With the increasing number of transactions taking place on websites lately, the need for comprehensive web application security testing must be considered a mandatory step.
But what actually the term ‘Web Application Security Testing’ means? Basically, it is the process of checking the security of confidential data from being exposed to unauthorized individuals or entities. The purpose of this security testing is to ensure that the functionality of the website is not being misused or altered by any user. Apart from that, it also ensures that no user holds the authority to deny the functionality of the website to other users.
In order to have the best web application security practices, it is important to have knowledge of the following main key terms:
Vulnerability
A flaw, weakness or misconfiguration in a web-based application code that empowers attackers to gain a certain level of control of the website or possibly over the hosting server.
Website Spoofing
Act of creating a hoax website to mislead users or target audience of the authenticated website for fraudulent intent.
URL Manipulation
The act of altering or manipulating information in the URL to get access to the confidential information and this information is passed on through the query string.
SQL injection
A computer attack in which malicious code is inserted in a weakly-designed web application and is then passed on to the backend database. As a result, malicious data produces a confidential database query result.
XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting)
A security breach where the malicious scripts are injected into the otherwise trusted websites. This attack occurs when a cyber-attacker uses a web application to send malicious code to different end-user in the form of a browser-side script.
Types of Web Application Security Testing
When it comes to web application security, there are more than one standard ways to perform:
1. Vulnerability Assessment
Done through automated software, this type of testing is performed to scan web applications against known vulnerability signatures. It is the process of identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities in the web application whereas it provides the knowledge, awareness, and risk background check which is necessary to understand.
2. Dynamic Application Security Test
This automated application security test includes dynamic scanning of a live running web application for analyzing the common vulnerabilities which are susceptible to attack. This process of dynamic vulnerability scanning requires a proper set up of the OWASP ZAP testing standard.
3. Static Application Security Test
SAST solutions analyze the web application from “inside out” in a static form. Under this security application approach, both manual and automated testing techniques are involved. It is helpful in identifying bugs without requiring to execute applications in a production environment. Also, Static Application Security Testing, developers can scan the source code to systematically identify and eliminate existing application security vulnerabilities.
4. Penetration Test
Penetration testing or ethical hacking is the practice of testing web application security in order to identify the security vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited by attackers. It can be performed either automatically or manually. This security testing is best for critical web applications and especially for those that are undergoing major alterations.
5. Runtime Application Self Protection
Under this approach, various techniques are applied to instrument a web application to detect and block attacks in real-time. When an application runs live, RASP ensures to protect it from malicious input or behavior by inspecting the app’s performance behavior.
Does Web App Security Testing Help in Reducing the Organization’s Risk?
Every organization has got either one or multiple website applications, which eventually become the scope of potential data and security exploitation on an extremely broad level. Moreover, with developers working day and night on introducing the latest technology and frameworks with the code deployed, they often fail to think of security as a priority.
Any organization’s web application in today’s date can be easily affected by a wide array of security issues. Cyber attacks like SQL injection, Remote Command Execution, Path Traversal, and XSS can lead to harmful results like access to restricted content, installation of malicious code, compromised user accounts, loss of customer trust, damaged brand reputation and much more.
Knowing that such attacks not only make web applications vulnerable but also lead to potential damage to the security, best web application security practices offer to preemptively address the security vulnerabilities and take action against them accordingly.
On the other hand, users now are becoming more aware of securing their data and therefore will trust secured web applications with their personal records and financial details, so it is up to the organization to provide them with robust security.
Therefore, continuous security testing is highly crucial for regularly running web applications in order to mitigate potential vulnerabilities by fixing and improving security. As more secure the web application is, better will be the brand reputation of an organization.
Always remember that web application is 100% secure and it takes only one small vulnerability for a hacker to exploit everything that comes in its reach. With web application security testing tools, one can minimize cyber risks and can have the full trust of customers.
Cryptojacking has provided cybercriminals with a new means of filling their pockets at the expense of organizations around the world. And the worst part? Your company may already be a victim of cryptojacking and you might not even know it!
What is Cryptojacking?
Cryptojacking refers to the unauthorized use of someone’s computer for mining cryptocurrency. As cybercriminals keep coming up with new ways of attacking businesses, cryptojacking has become one of the most rapidly growing cyber attack vectors globally.
Instead of holding your company data for ransom or stealing it, threat actors can tap into your organization’s computing power for mining cryptocurrency. The theft of your organization’s computing power through cryptojacking can have tangible financial consequences.
It can lead to the potential degradation in service, loss of income and productivity, higher cloud usage or energy consumption, frequent replacement of hardware and system performance issues.
How does Cryptojacking Work?
Cryptojackers trick victims into clicking on a malicious link that loads cryptomining code on their computer. Alternatively, they can infect an online ad or website with JavaScript code that executes automatically once it is loaded in the victim’s browser.
However they do it, the cryptomining code works silently in the background while the unwary victims continue to use their computers normally. Hackers often use both these methods to maximize their return.
Unlike the other kinds of malware, cryptojacking does not damage the computers or their data. It steals CPU processing resources. Individual users may find slower computer performance just a little annoying, however, organizations with several cryptojacked computers can suffer severe financial losses.
How Prevalent has Cryptojacking been in 2020?
Varonis discovered the Monero cryptojacking malware while investigating a company that was secretly plagued by cryptojacking for over a year. This was one of the biggest recent cryptojacking attacks.
As per CSO Online, 90% of all remote code execution attacks are linked to cryptomining.
According to a report by Digital Shadows, cryptojacking kits are being sold for as little as $30 on the dark web.
According to a report by arXiv,cryptojacking is responsible for 4.32% of all Monero in circulation.
As per a report by ENISA, 2020 witnessed a 30% year-on-year increase in cryptojacking the month of March.
How to Detect Cryptojacking?
Cryptojacking is one of the stealthiest and most difficult-to-detect cyber attack vectors. It can not only have an adverse impact on your entire business operation but can also make it difficult for you to identify which of the systems have been compromised if any.
So, here are a few major things you should keep your eye out for:
Deteriorating System Performance
A decrease in the performance of your computing devices like laptops, desktops, tablets, and mobile devices is the first symptom of cryptojacking. Instruct your employees to immediately report any fluctuation in their system’s performance to IT.
Quick Overheating
Mining for cryptocurrencies is a resource-intensive process, which can cause your computing devices to rapidly overheat, resulting in system damage. A problem may be indicated if the fans of your systems are running longer than they normally do to cool down the system.
Increasing CPU Usage
Regularly monitor and analyse the CPU usage of your systems. If you spot an unreasonable increase, it may be a sign that cryptomining scripts are running on your system without your knowledge.
Undo Changes on Webpages
Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for websites where they can insert a cryptomining code. Frequently monitor your own websites to look for any changes to the webpages or the files on the web server.
How to Mitigate the Risk of Cryptojacking?
It is extremely difficult to detect if and when your computer systems have been compromised by cryptojacking. However, you can take some basic preventative measures to protect your systems and networking systems against this threat. Here are some effective tips to prevent cryptojacking:
Train Your Organization’s IT Team
Make sure your IT team is satisfactorily trained to detect and understand cryptojacking. It should be aware and vigilant enough to catch the earliest signs of an attack and should be ready to take immediate steps to get the situation under control.
Implement Anti-Cryptomining Extensions
Implement one of the many available browser extensions for blocking the cryptominers across the web.
Disable JavaScript
Disable JavaScript while browsing online to prevent the cryptojacking code from infecting your system.
Use Ad Blockers
Cryptomining scripts can be often found embedded in web ads. Use an ad blocker to detect and block any malicious cryptomining codes.
Educate Your Employees
The IT team is not solely responsible for securing the organization against cyber threats. Each of your employees should know what to look out for. Provide your employees with basic cybersecurity awareness training to make them understand the importance of following security protocols set by the IT team.
Instruct your employees to immediately notify IT if their systems are overheating or running slowly. They should also know about the risks involved with clicking on suspicious links or downloading files from untrustworthy sources.
Accelerating rate of cyber-attacks is no more an unfamiliar situation for us. Web application based cyber attacks are the most common. Akamai Technologies , a content delivery network, released a report in 2017 for quarter 3 which mentioned India at 7th position in the list of top 10 targeted nations for web application attack.
As per recent figures, i.e. for the data from 8th Nov 2018 to 15th Nov, 2018, India still continues to be among top 10 marked nations for web application based attacks.
Countries
Attacks
Russia Federation
18,754,282
United States
15,512,265
Ukraine
5,176,643
Netherlands
3,606,021
India
2,724,440
Canada
2,101,396
Sweden
1,896,300
Germany
1,845,175
Bulgaria
1,538,136
United Kingdom
1,455,023
Source: Akamai Technologies State of the Internet Report
As per World Bank, the number of secured servers in India is 10,350 which, when put against 500 million internet users, is a clear indication of the need for better and secure infrastructure to be able to support the data surge.
Even at the earliest attempt, it will take a few years to remedy this problem. And still, it won’t guarantee an organizations’ safety. According to recent research, 75% of cyber attacks are web application based. Improper coding can stem serious concerns in web applications security. Such vulnerabilities allow attackers to gain direct access to servers to extract sensitive data from the database. In a framework where hackers have access to such sensitive data; with a bout of creativity and some human error, any web application can be susceptible to web attacks.
A web application can be secured by performing a vulnerability assessment and penetrating testing. , Anteelo is an end-to-end cyber security firm provides a complete suite of manual and automated VAPT services.
You have your eye on a new piece of security technology or service and you want to evaluate it before deciding whether to commit to the effort of a full deployment. Alternatively, you may already be committed to full-scale deployment but wondering where to start. So where should you deploy it first to test it most effectively and have the greatest impact?
Human nature, caution and conventional wisdom dictate that you should put it in a lab environment or in a low-importance section of your network. That is sensible, isn’t it? The change board will give you less hassle and if there is a problem, you are going to get less flack, aren’t you?
But will that approach give you most information and practical experience about the new system’s deployment difficulties, effectiveness in your environment and what it will detect? Will it give you the maximum protection as soon as possible?
Any tool that gives you fresh insight on the behavior of your systems tends to find something interesting. Those of us who have deployed such things have the stories to go with them – from mundane discoveries such as finding that all servers in one network had the wrong DNS settings and were thus being slowed down, to critical detections of previously unobserved persistent attackers.
However, there is an argument to be made for deploying this new tool on your production systems, close to your crown jewels. These are the things you really want to protect and the environment in which it really needs to work. Yes, this approach is higher risk, but it is also higher benefit. Will a deployment on a low throughput, obscure bit of network really tell you much? On the other hand, couldn’t one real detection on your primary systems during the evaluation period convince you and your management of the system’s value?
Granted, this may not be a sensible suggestion for inline systems that process all traffic, but with the right technology it can work. Many security technologies monitor traffic and provide alerts rather than enforce actions — or at least they have a mode in which they can act in this way. A new security solution deployed on a span port or network tap may actually pose more risk to production traffic in terms of confidentiality than in disruption or performance. It is also easy to turn off or detach such solutions by removing the span connection. Other security tools rely on collecting logs from your existing devices. Building an architecture that allows forking and diverting the streams of log events can support easy introduction of such types of new security tooling.
As an example, consider the evaluation of a new security monitoring tool, perhaps one with user and entity behaviour analytics (UEBA). Will you get much information from deploying it on a test/staging environment that will typically have a small number of users and occasional traffic? Or would you get a better sense of its value from connecting it to your production active directory, primary applications and remote access system? Wouldn’t that give you a better idea of how easily it can be connected, how well it copes with actual production loads and whether it can really differentiate between normal and suspicious behaviour?
Designing taps such as those mentioned above into your network and log architectures future-proofs your environment, making it easier to evaluate other products down the road and deploy them into final production. It can also help in emergencies, as incident response teams wishing to deploy their tooling will be looking for very similar facilities overseeing your most critical systems.
So next time you have a new security system to test, think about ignoring conventional wisdom and throwing (some) caution to the wind. Sometimes the radical step is the right one. Deploying security tools on your crown jewels first may be the optimal approach.
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