Discover the best ways to mitigate your organization’s attack surface in order to maximize cybersecurity
Fortunately, by executing a
few best practices, these same defenders can also improve their visibility of
the attack surface, and with it, gain enhanced understanding of what’s
necessary to minimize and manage it.
What is the corporate attack surface?
At a basic level, the
attack surface can be defined as the physical and digital assets an
organization holds that could be compromised to facilitate a cyber-attack. The
end goal of the threat actors behind it could be anything from deploying
ransomware and stealing data to conscripting machines into a botnet,
downloading banking trojans or installing crypto-mining malware. The bottom
line is: the bigger the attack surface, the larger the target the bad guys have
to aim at.
Let’s take a look at the
two main attack surface categories in more detail:
The digital attack surface
This describes all of an
organization’s network-connected hardware, software and related components.
These include:
Applications: Vulnerabilities in apps are commonplace, and can
offer attackers a useful entry point into critical IT systems and data.
Code: A major risk now that much of it is being
compiled from third-party components, which may contain malware or
vulnerabilities.
Ports: Attackers are increasingly scanning for open
ports and whether any services are listening on a specific port (ie TCP port
3389 for RDP). If those services are misconfigured or contain bugs, these can
be exploited.
Servers: These could be attacked via vulnerability exploits
or flooded with traffic in DDoS attacks.
Websites: Another part of the digital attack surface with
multiple vectors for attack, including code flaws and misconfiguration.
Successful compromise can lead to web defacement, or implanting malicious code
for drive-by and other attacks (ie formjacking).
Certificates: Organizations frequently let these expire, allowing attackers to take advantage.
This is far from an
exhaustive list. To highlight the sheer scale of the digital attack surface,
consider this 2020 research into firms on the FTSE 30 list.
Full article on www.welivesecurity.com
