Top 5 external attack vectors you need to focus on to enhance your security against targeted attacks

The External attack surface is a digital battleground

Over the last few years, organizations’ IT environments grew at a fast pace adding cloud and 3rd party applications to gain easier access to resources and higher productivity. However, this has created an expanding attack surface that is becoming complex and dispersed and leaves most organizations susceptible to targeted attacks by malicious actors. State sponsored hackers and Cybercriminals are constantly searching for hidden back doors, misconfigurations and exploitable vulnerabilities as a starting point for their targeted cyber attacks. In this blog we will discuss those top five threats.

 

Top critical attack vectors in enterprises’ external attack surface

Attackers are constantly on the lookout for new attack pathways leveraging misconfigurations and weaknesses in organizations digital attack surface to launch targeted attacks. Following are the top five risks:

 

1. Infrastructure misconfigurations

IT environments have become complex and dynamic, with many new assets that are created every month as organizations expand their on-prem and cloud infrastructure, adopting new SaaS applications and relying on 3rd party solutions. Organizations are spreading their compute processes and sensitive data at a fast pace in many cases without validating their security coverage.

As new processes are defined, and new services are configured and launched by the various IT, operations and marketing teams, misconfigurations and human mistakes emerge as a critical risk vector.

The fast pace of change and the complexity of the new environments and services, and in some cases the lack of expertise in cybersecurity best practices leads to misconfigurations that unintentionally expose your external facing assets to cyberattack.

 

2. Abandoned infrastructure & services

As organizations grow and evolve, changes in their IT infrastructure and IT staff leaves behind equipment and services that are no longer needed. This can be servers, applications, systems and 3rd party services that are no longer in use that might have exposures that can create back doors to your IT infrastructure. In many cases these unknown or unmanaged assets will run outdated software with known vulnerabilities that weren’t patched and might provide a leverage for cybercriminals to exploit and steal sensitive data or launch cyber attacks. Organizations need to identify those assets, secure them or take them down in order to eliminate potential risks that can cause massive damage.

 

3. Broken access control

Broken access control lets unauthorized users access restricted resources and can be used by bad actors. By exploiting this type of vulnerability, attackers can circumvent your security procedures and gain unauthorized access to your infrastructure, applications or your sensitive information. One example can be unsecure cloud storage that might expose your sensitive information or weak authentication that might give attackers access and elevated privileges enabling them to gain control over your services and applications. Attackers are constantly trying to gain unauthorized access to critical assets and services by bypassing or manipulating your security process used to identify and authenticate a user as a way to launch their targeted attacks.

4. Sensitive data exposures

Sensitive Data Exposure occurs when an organization unknowingly exposes sensitive data or when a security incident leads to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, or unauthorized disclosure of, or access to sensitive data (OWASP). With the adoption of new cloud environments, SaaS applications, and enabling on-prem services to support remote working, organizations are opening their infrastructure to allow their data to be shared among the various platforms and be accessed from everywhere. This change increases the risks of mistakes and vulnerability that might expose sensitive data and allow bad actors to access it without the need to breach the organization.

 

5. Default and weak credentials

A default or weak credential vulnerability is a type of vulnerability that enables unauthorized users to gain access to configuration settings of your device or service, and any potential hacker can use this to hack such devices or service, if those credentials are not hardened. Attackers can easily identify and access internet-connected systems that use shared default passwords, for example there are  worms running across the internet, which are configured to search for systems set with a default username and password. It is imperative to make sure all default manufacturer passwords and other weak credentials will be changed to restrict network access to critical and important systems.

 

Ovalsec external attack surface management and protection

As organizations’ digital infrastructure continues to expand, so does the risk of cyberattack. Identifying  and preventing targeted attacks leveraging assets’ misconfigurations and vulnerabilities across your entire external attack surface is critical. To do so, you need an effective external attack surface protection platform in your arsenal.

Ovalsecs external attack surface protection platform provides organizations with the most advanced risk detection techniques available today, enabling security teams to improve security and increase agility in preventing targeted attacks. By using real world attacker methodologies and applying cutting-edge attack techniques, Ovalsecs solution allows organizations to gain full visibility on their external attack surface, close security gaps, and reduce the risk from targeted cyberattacks.

Get free external attack surface security assessment

Ovalsec external attack surface security assessment will enable you to gain visibility into your internet-facing assets and associated risks that can be exploited as part of targeted attacks. To schedule your security assessment, please contact us at [email protected]