Reinforcing attack surface cyber security during business growth

RiskXchange Reinforcing attack surface security during business growth 1 RiskXchange The leader in Third-Party Cyber Risk Management

You’d be hard-pressed to find a business whose goals don’t include growth in some form of way. 

Growth presents itself in many ways, whether you are expanding your infrastructure, your team, or breaking into new markets. Growth is inevitable and necessary for surviving in the current global business landscape. 

The only way to ensure that this growth is sustainable is by reinforcing your system and data protection measures. When it comes to business growth, ideally, your strategy should include a targeted plan to enhance your attack surface cyber security as you grow. 

The challenge, however, is that growth rarely goes according to plan. Your company will often outgrow the infrastructure you have in place on the path to growth, rather than growing to fill the infrastructure that is already in place. 

Other unprecedented events, which don’t involve growth, can also expand your attack surface. 

A prime example is COVID-19. The pandemic changed the way companies operate all over the world as a result of social distancing and the other changes we needed to make as businesses and as a society, in general.

Remote working stretched our networks and security measures too thin to be effective against most types of modern attacks. 

This is doubly risky because our operations then create a much larger attack surface for threat actors to target; the moves we’re making to secure our networks now, therefore, may be the most critical of all.

Acquire a comprehensive overview of your entire digital ecosystem

All points of entry into your digital ecosystem is a potential point of entry for a cyberattacker. From your third and fourth-party vendor ecosystems to the devices your teams use to access your business networks and data. 

Accounting for all potential points of entry and endpoints is only possible by elevating your visibility over your entire digital network. In doing so, you will be able to create a more secure line of communication and data access. 

This will also open up new avenues for password protection and user access levels that will further escalate your security measures and help you ensure that your data and network resources don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Segmenting your system and putting up more firewalls and digital barriers will also make it harder for an attacker to get through to your data.

Make predictionsーand addressーwhat could go wrong

Forecasts and simulations can give you the opportunity to step back from your processes and assess whether or not your risk and exposure have decreased as a result of the measures you have taken.

These tools can run scenarios imitating a malicious attacker to practically hack into your system. This process will identify where gaps exist in your security measures and where a potential cyberattack could take place. 

It can also identify the potential methods a hacker may use to gain access to your systems. This information can then be used to patch vulnerabilities, secure your attack surface further, and give you a more realistic view of your attack surface cyber security

While executing this kind of testing internally could yield valuable insights, having your ecosystem vetted by an external team will help you make sure that you are covered on fronts that your internal teams may not have accounted for or have considered to audit.

Get ahead of attack surface security for a more powerful security posture

The best way to protect your business from cyberattacks is to ensure that all steps are taken to eliminate these threats when they are just vulnerabilities.

In the current digital landscape, threats to data are evolving in line with the technologies that protect your ecosystem from these threats. Keeping ahead of the security curve is vital. 

Make sure your company’s attack surface is not only protected in the present but also prepared to scale by really committing to cyber risk management and keeping your strategy in line with the latest trends and threats we’re seeing.