A 5 Step Plan on How to Protect Yourself from Cybercrime

Recently, I wrote an article for Help Net Security to discuss the modus operandi of cybercriminals and how this can lead to different types of cyber attacks.  While we have previously encountered huge distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that appear to come from nowhere and flood the victim’s network security, we have begun to see much more stealth and more sophisticated attacks causing just as much, if not more, damage.

In the latest report from the Radware Emergency Response Team (ERT), we tracked the rise of these web stealth attacks.  One of the most common is a ‘Login-Brute-Force’ attack.  It may not sound like a stealth option, but the aim is to saturate login servers by creating bogus requests that will eventually lock out legitimate users.  This creates a massive overload on the login servers, and in most cases also on the organization’s call centers, which receive calls from frustrated, legitimate users.  Once the chaos is in place, attackers can use the same attack method to steal information.

With these new threats developing, and in some cases being deployed alongside more traditional attacks, here is a five step plan on how to protect yourself from cybercrime:

Know your enemy

Pay attention to law enforcement agencies like the FBI and government bodies, in order to get the latest cybercrime warnings.

Choose a single point of command

Use one Command and Control (C&C) that includes all aspects of the data center:  network, servers and applications.

Have an emergency response infrastructure and team ready to operate

Develop and implement an incident response infrastructure.

Separate critical networks

Make sure that your sensitive data is stored on a properly protected network with no simple access.

Don’t be a domino

Understand every point of weakness both inside your organization and externally to those who you rely on.

If you’re interested in learning even more about the current state of cyber attacks, I invite you to download the Global Application and Network Security Report written by the Radware Emergency Response Team.

You can also view my article in Help Net Security here.