What have you been doing for cyberattack prevention? Listing IT assets and assessing vulnerabilities alone? In the modern scenario of increasingly complex networks and evolving cyber threats, assessing vulnerabilities alone with traditional vulnerability management tools is just not enough.
Hackers are getting smarter, and protecting your network is getting harder. Unlike the basic lackluster measures, you need true prevention to combat and stop modern cyberattacks.
Why is Basic Prevention Not Enough?
- Security risks beyond software vulnerabilities account for 31% of all ransomware attacks.
- 60% of all attacks in the year 2019 were due to unapplied patches.
- NASA, Amazon, and Citrix are popular names that were breached due to misconfigurations.
Basic visibility into your IT assets doesn’t provide the entire picture of your threat landscape. A basic list of network devices is never enough because your threat surface could contain unaccounted network devices that could be the point of entry for hackers. And without proper visibility into your attack surface, you cannot take any actions to shut out points of attack.
Basic detection of vulnerabilities doesn’t recognize real dangerous threats. Software vulnerabilities or CVEs alone are security risks of the old. In the modern era, misconfigurations, posture anomalies, missing patches, and asset exposures are the new security risks that all go under the radar, which can be potentially devastating.
Basic remediation of vulnerabilities with patching is no longer enough to combat modern cyberattacks. Patches don’t account for mitigating security risks beyond CVEs, leading to a higher chance of cyberattacks hitting your organization through misconfigurations and other risks.
But does basic prevention account for all these issues and fix them? Because a modern cyberattack is no longer simple, and hackers use every means to get into your network.
What is True Prevention of Cyberattacks?
True prevention is a holistic approach to combating cyberattacks by incorporating significant changes into your cybersecurity strategy. From better visibility of your IT inventory and broader detection of security risks, to integrated remediation of security risks beyond CVES with security controls. It’s a continuous process of trying to stay ahead of the attacker by exponentially reducing your organization’s attack surface by detecting and mitigating the modern vulnerability landscape.
True Visibility of IT Assets:
You cannot protect your network if you don’t know what’s in it. So, true prevention starts with true visibility. Network devices like switches, desktops, routers, workstations, and other devices constitute security risks. True visibility ensures you have an eye over your IT network. It also ensures that you don’t miss out on devices that could potentially be the cause of cyberattacks.
True visibility further detects helps you normalize your IT assets from posture anomalies and dangerous deviations, like unwanted devices or unusual ports and connections, that could be the starting point of a cyberattack.
True Detection of Security Risks:
With complete visibility over your network, finding security risks is the next step in true prevention to ensure that all the bases of potential cyberattacks are covered. Basic detection isn’t enough to cover all the bases for potential cyberattacks.
Modern cyberattacks exploit security risks like misconfigurations, posture anomalies, asset exposures, deviations in security controls, etc., along with software vulnerabilities, and it’s critical to detect all security risks to truly prevent cyberattacks.
True Remediation of vulnerabilities:
True remediation isn’t just applying patches. Instant mitigation of security risks with necessary measures like patches, fixes, and other security controls while keeping in mind different critical factors like duration of the gap between detection and application of patch and more. Security controls to fix system deviations, misconfigurations, and hardening your system become critical in reducing potential points of attack.
With attack surface reduction in mind, true remediation becomes the final step of true prevention.
True vs. Basic Prevention: A Comparison
| Basic Prevention | True Prevention | |
| Visibility | Limited visibility and coverage over IT networks without insights to plan the next steps of cyberattack prevention. | Extensive coverage and visibility into IT networks with actionable insights to efficiently plan the next steps of cyberattack prevention. |
| Detection | Basic detection that’s limited to software vulnerabilities and CVEs alone. | Comprehensive detection of CVEs, misconfigurations, posture anomalies, security deviations, and asset exposures. |
| Remediation | Basic patching CVEs and software vulnerabilities with vendor-supported patches. | Mitigation of all security risks with patches and advanced security controls. |
True prevention overcomes the limitations of basic prevention and helps you efficiently combat cyberattacks by rapidly and exponentially improving your organization’s security posture by reducing its attack surface.
Preventing cyberattacks might seem like a far-fetched idea that’s difficult to achieve. With so many variables in play, the job might sound daunting.
But with true prevention and advanced vulnerability management, cyberattack prevention is no longer wishful thinking but an imminent reality now.
