Applications Based Attack Surface
Reducing the attack surface, identifying and countering cyberthreats, and recovering from an assault throughout the infrastructure—edge, core, and cloud—are the first three key practice areas to be prioritized in order to advance cybersecurity and Zero Trust maturity. In order to improve your security posture, this blog article will concentrate on decreasing the attack surface, which is an essential part of cybersecurity.
Any region inside an environment that a cyber attacker may target or exploit is referred to as the attack surface. These points may include improper setups, insufficient authentication procedures, unpatched systems, high user rights, exposed network ports, inadequate physical protection, and more.
Across cybersecurity, reducing the attack surface refers to decreasing possible ports of entry and vulnerability that an attacker may use to breach a system, network, or organization across a variety of domains, such as the edge, the core, or the cloud. By lowering the attack surface, firms may innovate and prosper while simultaneously giving bad actors less opportunity to carry out effective assaults.
Organizations use a variety of techniques and tactics to lessen the attack surface, such as:
- Put the Zero Trust principles into practice: The idea behind Zero Trust security is that businesses shouldn’t blindly trust anything that’s attempting to access their systems from the inside or the outside. Instead, they should make sure that everything is legitimate before allowing access. By implementing technologies like multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity and access management (IAM), micro-segmentation, and security analytics, to mention a few, organizations may realize a Zero Trust model.
- Regularly patch and update: It is possible to mitigate known vulnerabilities and reduce the chance of exploitation by keeping operating systems, software, and applications updated with the most recent security updates.
- Make sure the setting is safe: In order to minimize the attack surface, systems, networks, and devices must be appropriately configured using security best practices, such as turning down superfluous services, creating strong passwords, and enforcing access limits.
- Put the least privilege principle into practice: Restrict user and system accounts to the minimal amount of access required to carry out their duties. This strategy lessens the possibility of an attacker getting access without authorization.
- Segment your network: By isolating important assets and restricting access across various network segments, segmenting a network into zones or segments with varying security levels helps contain an attack and stops a cyber threat from moving laterally.
- Assure the security of the application: In order to defend against frequent application-level assaults and minimize the attack surface of online applications, safe development methods, frequent security testing, code reviews, and the use of web application firewalls (WAFs) are recommended.
- Apply ML and AI: Use these tools to proactively find and fix vulnerabilities so that the attack surface is considerably reduced. Businesses may expand their security capabilities with the use of AI/ML technologies.
- Collaborate with vendors that uphold a safe supply chain: With infrastructure and devices that are created, produced, and supplied with security in mind, you can guarantee a reliable base. Suppliers that provide a safe development lifecycle, a secure supply chain, and thorough threat modeling help you stay ahead of potential attackers.
- Inform users and raise awareness: By teaching staff members and users how to identify and report possible security risks, phishing scams, and social engineering techniques, the likelihood of successful attacks that take use of user weaknesses is reduced.
- Make use of partnerships and skilled professional services: Knowledge and solutions that may not be accessible internally can be brought in by working with skilled and experienced cybersecurity service providers and establishing alliances with business and technological partners. An organization’s entire security posture may benefit from this.
With the assistance of seasoned services or partners, you may uncover opportunities for improvement within your attack surface by conducting frequent audits, penetration tests, and vulnerability assessments in addition to starting with an assessment. It’s critical to keep in mind that maintaining cybersecurity is a continuous effort, since cyber threats continue to change. Furthermore, cybersecurity is crucial for businesses hoping to develop a strong, profitable, and inventive company. Through the proactive use of these measures, businesses may successfully decrease the attack surface, therefore mitigating risks and increasing the difficulty with which attackers can exploit vulnerabilities. This improves the defensive posture against both new and evolving threats. You may improve your cybersecurity maturity by decreasing your attack surface.
