HOW TO PROTECT YOUR COMPANY FROM CYBER ATTACKS: In the aftermath of the Equifax breach, here's what we've learned.

AuthorMiller, Derek B.

It's been a little over a year since it was announced that hackers stole the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and in some cases the driver licenses and credit card numbers of nearly 148 million Americans in a massive attack on the credit monitoring company, Equifax. How could a company charged with being a gatekeeper of the credit histories of millions of Americans inadvertently open its gates to credit thieves? It appears that the hack came as a result of security failures on many levels.

PREVENTION

First and foremost, Equifax's inability to protect millions of Americans' PII comes down to the credit agency's failure to act. In March of 2017, a cybersecurity arm of the US Department of Homeland Security, US-CERT, issued a warning about vulnerabilities in the web application software, Apache Struts. According to Equifax, it notified the company's systems administrators about the program vulnerability, but the recipient list was outdated and the administrators who would have installed the patch never received the notice.

Aside from failing to patch the vulnerability in the Struts program, Equifax also failed to put security measures in place that would have prevented the hackers from jumping from the insecure, internet-facing systems to backend databases. Don't let failure to prioritize cybersecurity bring down your business. Come up with a plan to protect your organization's assets by applying security policies, reviewing and testing access control procedures, training your employees, and developing a incident response plan (IRP).

DETECTION

Costly delays and crucial errors caused Equifax to remain unprotected from the Apache Struts vulnerability for months. It wasn't until a week after the warning about the Struts vulnerability that the company ran a series of scans to identify any vulnerable systems, but the scans failed to reveal any problems. On top of that, a digital certificate that was used to authenticate computer servers and systems and inspect network traffic had expired about 10 months before the breach occurred.

Timely detection of a compromised system or device is crucial to properly secure your company from hackers and other cyber threats. Be sure your business or company has a thorough intrusion detection system (IDS) in place. IDS' take into account known threats and intruder types, methods and processes used and, when necessary, can sound alarms and notifications.

RESPONSE

...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT