Cybercriminals pay attention whenever we are relaxing, looking to seize the opportunity for an attack. This is especially apparent when there is a skeleton crew, typically during common vacation times and holiday seasons. Reduced workers due to illness is also an increasing issue. The 2021 Cybersecurity Workforce Study reported that 60% of respondents said their organization could face direct risks due to staff shortages. If unprepared and unprotected, organizations could face losses in not only revenue but their reputation.
Increased vigilance is encouraged during riskier times, but having the proper controls and awareness in place year-round can go a long way in preparation. From patching vulnerable systems, mandating multi-factor authentication (MFA), increasing cyber awareness training, and backing up data, there are several steps organizations can take to keep their defenses up. Leveraging Managed Detection and Response (MDR) furthers cybersecurity, providing proactive protection against cyberattacks.
Continuous Protection from Attacks
It can be challenging for growing organizations to identify and respond to active threats during regular business hours, never mind when employees are on vacation, out sick, or even new to working from home. Cybercriminals take advantage of short staffing, resulting in longer than usual incident response times due to staff availability issues. Even upon their return, employees might find the entire environment has been impacted, or there is a backlog of issues to be addressed.
In fact, a recent report revealed a 30 percent increase in the average number of ransomware attacks over the holiday season compared to the monthly average. There is also a 70 percent average increase in November and December compared to January and February – this highlights how attackers take advantage of holiday work schedules. This time period also aligns with spikes in illness, meaning even more workers are out of the office.
Cyberattacks impact organizations of all sizes. Many of which can’t afford to build and maintain a security operations center (SOC) to detect and contain cyberattacks around the clock. Protecting your organization with limited staff and resources may seem difficult, if not impossible. But, robust cybersecurity is no longer limited to the organizations that can afford advanced tools and tickets to automate threat and vulnerability detection, build a comprehensive set of policies to foster secure behaviors, deploy a regular training program and use a SOC for hunting, detecting, and remediating incidents as they occur. Maintaining cybersecurity isn’t limited to building your full cybersecurity stack or SOC and hiring an internal team of experts to keep it running 24/7.
With staff taking time off and being more difficult to get ahold of in an emergency, ransomware and other cyber-attacks can take time to spread through networks. Thin staffing means more alerts for each person, meaning there is a higher chance someone might not notice an intrusion, and it might take longer to detect and respond to a threat. Even forensic and response teams brought in by cyber insurance providers, and other third-party assistance will likely have thin skeleton crews, so it could be days or weeks before someone can come in and help. Smaller organizations might not even know an attack has occurred until they return to the office, enabling attackers to run rampant in the meantime.
Any time of year when organizations may be less prepared to fend off a cyberattack is an opportunity for successful compromise. With IT operations and security teams short-staffed (especially if they weren’t large teams, to begin with), it creates a perfect storm for increased risk with fewer resources to help mitigate or resolve incidents, let alone prevent them. As the number of cybercrimes increases, organizations need a sophisticated approach to ward off cyberattacks before they happen. With managed detection and response, organizations can collect and correlate data across multiple security layers to make it easier to detect threats quickly.
Staying One Step Ahead of Cyberattacks
Especially as high-profile incidents have clarified the importance of cybersecurity, organizations may be hesitant to invest in a comprehensive cybersecurity program because the perceived investment in time and resources needed to build such a program can be daunting. Thankfully, you don’t need a stack of complex technology or in-house cybersecurity experts to build a robust program that protects your organization.
Cybersecurity must go beyond IT staff and be embraced as a business function that spans people, process, and technology. Each organization has something to protect, whether financial and employee information, go-to-market strategies, customer data, intellectual property, or more. Organizations can face financial losses, operational downtime, and irreparable damage to their reputation and customer trust in a breach. In the middle of a crisis, you don’t want to realize that your organization is unprepared – you need to have an incident response plan before an attack happens.
The longer the attack continues, the higher risk of damage and, therefore, the higher the potential financial loss. Preventing, detecting, and responding to a cyberattack on your own requires a large stack of tools and multiple budget requests – made all the more complicated when accounting for holiday schedules. An outsourced 24/7 SOC to monitor and respond while you’re away can help your organization’s IT and security teams rest easily.
Defendify’s Managed Detection & Response is always-on, closely watching activity, analyzing data and trends, identifying anomalies, and counteracting attacks in real-time. Learn more about MDR in our latest webinar, and reach out to see how we can help your organization discover and contain cyberattacks even when you’re away from the office.
Resources & insights
Steps to Prevent Cyberattacks: Managed Detection and Response
Breach Prevention While Away from The Office
Shop Smart with Data Breach Detection
Steps to Prevent Cyberattacks: Managed Detection and Response
Breach Prevention While Away from The Office
Shop Smart with Data Breach Detection
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