Birmingham, U.K. – Dec. 18, 2020 – CyberQ Group, an award-winning cyber innovator, today announced that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organisation dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment.

CyberQ Group are world-renowned cyber experts trusted by leadership teams for their cyber intelligence, strategy, and operational capability. The company takes global organisations from a reactive, technology-based approach to embedding cyber protection at the very core of their organisation.

“We are proud of the billion-pound client base that has placed their trust with us and continue to use our services to protect their businesses and reputation. Innovation and change are in our DNA, and our range of cyber security services have been specially adapted to keep cloud infrastructure protected. We work closely with organisations to ensure security is integrated at the foundations so they can benefit from the significant advantages of a managed cloud security solution,” said Chris Woods, founder and CEO, CyberQ Group. 

“As an global award-winning security services innovator, we have many international clients with sophisticated security requirements in their digital transformation to cloud services. We are always looking for revolutionary security services and are pushing for further insights into cloud security. Our partnership and collaboration with CSA will provide our clients with even greater knowledge around the latest threats and protection for cloud services,” Chris Woods added.

“We welcome CyberQ Group into CSA – their global recognition and background in cyber innovation will help propel our community forward,” said Jim Reavis, co-founder and CEO, Cloud Security Alliance.

About the Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, certification, events and products. CSA’s activities, knowledge and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud — from providers and customers, to governments, entrepreneurs and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which diverse parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For further information, visit us at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.

About CyberQ Group

CyberQ Group is an award-winning UK-based cybersecurity services provider and innovator with a global reach, having a network of cyber experts in Europe, South Africa and Asia. The core team consists of highly experienced cyber and risk professionals who are experts in the subject matter, assisting clients in selecting the right mix of cybersecurity solutions and services to improve overall business and cyber resilience.

Let’s look at scenario one for the moment. You are a business person, and you are flying from London to Manchester, you have done this trip hundreds of times now as you are a regular traveller and you are already through security and are now waiting on your flight to start boarding. It has been delayed for almost an hour, which is going to mean that you will be cutting it fine for the meeting in Manchester. You intended to work on your presentation for that meeting in your company’s office in Manchester when you arrived, but now you won’t have time to do this, and it is extremely important that you get this pitch right as this could be a really great customer if you can bring them on board.

You decide that you are going to get your laptop out and do some work on your presentation while you wait for your plane. You get it out and look on your laptop for your presentation, but you have it stored on the company cloud storage and to save storage you don’t sync files to your laptop. Your only option is to connect to the internet and download the file to your laptop; that way you can efficiently work on it on the plane as well. You click on the Wi-Fi button on your laptop to turn it on, and you get some available options come up, one of them is “London Free Wi-Fi” so you click on the available network and select connect (That was mistake one).

Now you open up a web browser and attempt to connect to the web portal for your company cloud storage, enter your corporate login details and download your files (mistake number two). You then decide that since you have the file that you will just check if you had been paid your expenses claims for last week and logged into your bank account. You have a look through the details and then log out of your bank account (that was mistake number three). You then hear over the PA that the flight is delayed for another 30 minutes, so you open up your presentation and make a few simple changes until you are happy with the final result.

Since you no longer need to make any changes you decide that you will re-upload the file to the cloud storage (mistake number four) and then grab yourself a coffee. You do and sit back to enjoy it, and by the time you have finished, your plane starts to board. You pick up your carry-on luggage and board the plane to Manchester. None the wiser as to what is happening while you were in the air, you arrive at Manchester and grab a taxi to the office but when you arrive at the office something strange occurs. The cab fare is £20 and when you go to pay with your debit card it declines. That can’t be right you checked before you boarded the plane and there was almost £1K in your account. You shrug it off and pay with your credit card and make a mental note that you will have to check what happened later after you have your first meeting.

You arrive just a few minutes before your potential customers do and get ready for them in the board room. You connect your laptop up to the network and open the presentation (mistake number five), do a quick run through to make sure you are still happy with the changes you made to it before you boarded the plane in London, which you are. A few minutes go by and then the board room phone rings and its Janet from reception telling you that your guests have arrived. You go and meet them in reception and then head back into the boardroom with them to start the pitch. Everything is going well until about 30 minutes into the discussions when suddenly your laptop starts to freeze and misbehave. Then an image comes up on your screen that says “your system and files have now all be encrypted, and you need to reach out to ***** email address to negotiate the cost for decryption of your files” (or something along those lines).

The same message starts to appear across all the machines in the business at the Manchester office and then a few minutes later starts to spread across the private VPN between sites and all devices across all sites have the same message. All files are encrypted with no access. As you would imagine, the meeting was over, and it’s probably likely that they won’t be doing further business with your organisation.

So, you can see that this issue escalated quickly but did you know why I was indicating on each occasion why the businessman – let’s call him Harold made a mistake? Let’s look at each occasion and then discuss what happened that Harold didn’t know at each point.

Mistake number one – connecting to the free Wi-Fi. At this time what Harold connected too, it was actually a connection set up by a malicious actor, so that they could collect and capture any traffic that anyone using the network was transmitting. So that then brings us to mistake number two – Harold then logs into the corporate network giving the malicious actor login credentials to the cloud platform.

Mistake number three – Harold logged into his personal bank account, giving the malicious actor access to the account. If you remember when Harold tried to pay his card declined that’s because why Harold was in the air flying from London to Manchester, the malicious actor transferred all of the money out into an offshore account and then probably moved it another ten times before finally exchanging it for bitcoins which was also then transferred several more times between different bitcoin wallets (you could say that money is gone forever now).

Mistake number four – Harold uploaded his updated file to the company cloud storage which the malicious actor intercepted and modified to include a little something extra (Ransomware bug) before sending it onward to the cloud storage using the stolen credentials that Harold had already given him (remember mistake number two).

Mistake number five – Harold connected his machine to the corporate network. He then executed the modified version of his presentation on his machine, thus executing the virus. As Harold continued on with his regular work, the ransomware bug has started to do its worst in the background and well you know the final result. Everything was encrypted, and it was all possible because of that first step – connecting to the free Wi-Fi connection at the airport. 

This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but you can see how easy it was carried out and the malicious actor didn’t really have to do much at all to make this happen, Harold basically gave them keys to the network and said go for it without even knowing that he had done it.

You are probably thinking okay great I get it, the house burnt down, and it was all Harold’s fault, and technically yes it was Harold’s fault, but that is not the lesson here. Harold should have received awareness training from his organisation, and he should be made aware that he should NEVER connect to free Wi-Fi. Harold carries a company smartphone that has the ability to be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot and share access to the internet. This is what should be done at a minimum. This will stop the scenario at mistake one and prevent that day which could have been the best day of Harold’s career.

Obviously, there are some issues with the way the company has set up the network that allowed it to spread right through the organisation and a lack of good quality antivirus/IDS/IPS that could have stopped or at least minimised the effect, but I want to leave this at the free Wi-Fi, for this is the lesson I want you all to learn. That alone could save you from a similar fate as Harold, my poor imaginary businessman.

I want to describe another scenario for you now just to ensure you really understand the dangers I am trying to bring to your attention if you use the free Wi-Fi. Let’s look at a hotel, they could have hundreds of guests stay over a week, and guests expect to have fast internet available to them when staying but should you use the free Wi-Fi? NO, never use the free. Let’s look at the hotel free Wi-Fi for a moment, if you have 30 guests all connected to the Wi-Fi at one time (it will probably be horribly slow but that isn’t the issue here), as a malicious actor I could do the same scenario I described in the airport and just capture all data on the network.

I could also scan the network and gain access directly to machines on the network to steal data or infect them to spread my viruses or expand my access even further. I could go on for probably another ten minutes on ways that this could be used to my advantage but by now you must have started to understand what I am trying to get across to you all by now.

Never ever use free/public Wi-Fi connections it’s not worth the risk, use your mobile as a hotspot, buy a mobile connection that can be used outside of the office anything. Just remember the ease at which the incident could escalate and do the right thing here.

Already scoring a domain name is quite tricky due to several pre-registered .COM domain names. Domain squatters make this task even more difficult by grabbing domain names with the hopes of selling them for massive profits.

Many renowned companies and celebrities have faced domain squatting and have gone to court for it, such as:

• Microsoft went to court against squatter “Mike Rowe” who demanded a sum of $10,000 to release the domain “MikeRoweSoft.com.”
• Madonna fought a court battle through the World Intellectual Property Organization and won to control the site madonna.com.

However, despite being increasingly common, domain squatting lacks proper recognition. The defining lines of this cybercrime remain hazy, allowing this practice to fall under a grey area.

So what is domain squatting?

In a nutshell, domain squatting also referred to as cybersquatting, is the registration and use of a domain name to sell it at a more massive profit. In most cases, cybersquatters register a reputable brand’s domain name before the real company has had the chance to do so.

The cybersquatter will then sell that domain name to the legitimate company at a much higher cost and gain immense profits through the act. Since cybersquatters register domain names under bad faith, “registering a domain in bad faith” has evolved to become a legal term and is defined by:

• Registering a domain name to sell it to the competitor at higher profits
• Registering the domain name in an attempt to block the legitimate trademark from obtaining it.
• Registering a domain name to block clients from reaching that specific trademark and try to disrupt the trademark business.

Along with recognising domain squatting as an illegal practice, many initiatives have long since been put into place against it.

Legal Action against Domain Squatting

Since domain squatting has long been recognised as illegal, anyone who is abused by these squatters can take action against them. This is even possible in the UK, where there are no specific laws related to cybersquatting.

In the UK, anyone who falls victim to cybersquatting can take legal action using the Trade Mark Act of 1994 by claiming trademark infringement. Also, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is available to resolve cybersquatting issues.

This is a precedent in the UK for cybersquatting set by the British Telecommunications plc and the English Court of Appeals. This precedent is designed to rule in favour of legitimate companies in cases where it seems evident that the domain names were registered to exploit the “distinctiveness and reputation of the trademark.”

In 1999 the US took action against cybersquatting by putting up an Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). It was set up to provide trademark protection from cybersquatters.

Moreover, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) also executed a consultative study on trademark and domain name issues. This study culminated in forming the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a structure that successfully protects brand owners’ rights.

The UDRP has a complaint requirement which should necessarily contain the following three elements:

• The domain name has been registered in “bad faith,” and the registrant has no rights or legitimate interest in it.
• The domain name of the accused is confusingly similar to the complaint’s brand trademark.

Successfully launched complaints to the UDRP can either elect to have the disputed domain name cancelled or transferred its control to the complaint holder.

Prevention against Domain Squatting

Dealing with domain squatters can be a messy job, and in some cases, companies might even face public reputational damage, as Microsoft did in its case against Mike Rowe. Therefore, prevention is much better than setting things straight once they go downhill. Following these tips might help prevent domain squatting:

1.    Pre-register domain names:

Domain squatters often work by buying recently searched domain names, which they can sell later on at a profit. Therefore, as soon as you finalise your company’s name, it is best to come up with a proper domain name and finalise it.

2.    Invest in domain ownership protection

Domain ownership protection is an initiative taking by various domain name providers that help owners retain their domain name registration regardless of transfer attempts and expiration.

3.    Register brand trademark

Since there are legal laws to help registered trademarks against domain squatters, it is best to take up that initiative and register trademarks immediately.

4.    Register possible domain name

Even if you have acquired a .com domain name, it is best to register multiple names if anyone decides to exploit you through any other names.

Parting words

Domain squatting is a rising problem despite having several legal options against it. Since this can be particularly troublesome for businesses, it is best to remain vigilant and practice cyber resilience by recognising problems and following preventive measures.

Cyber breach statistics are rising at an alarming rate, and the numbers alone are nothing less than shocking! In 2017 alone, around 17 million UK residents were victims of cybercrime, and the criminals had stolen £130 billion.

As our lives continue to revolve around using the internet in every aspect, cybercriminals are coming up with detrimental methods to intrude in our personal, daily, and professional lives.

A thorough dive into the dark web reveals just how much of our personal information is exposed online, just sitting there ready for anyone with the right means to exploit it. As our threat intelligence analysts dugout, a lot of personal data is readily available on the Dark web such as:

1. Credit Card details
2. Bank account details
3. Phone numbers
4. Social security numbers
5. ATM pin
6. Driver’s license details
7. Email accounts and passwords
8. Address

This information’s availability is primarily due to the apparent lack of attention individuals have towards personal cybersecurity. There are several types of cyberattacks people fall target to, such as:

Phishing scams

These scams consist of bogus emails, phone calls, or text messages that dupe a person to reveal personal information. Phishing scams are designed to look legitimate, which allows them to find targets quickly. According to the Verizon Data Breach Report, one-third of all data breaches involve a phishing attack.

Credit Card Scams

A credit card scam is when a fraudster uses credit card information to buy unauthorised purchases or take out cash advances. These scams occur through insecure online shopping, specifically through fraudulent sites. The stolen credit card information is then found on sale on the dark web where criminals can buy them.

Identity Theft

Another prevalent kind of cyber attacks, identity theft, is when a fraudster steals someone’s identity based on the personal information available for financial gain. According to statistics, 1 in 15 people become victims of identity theft. This theft is ever more common due to large amounts of personal information made available on the internet and unsecured internet connections.

Victims Through Social Media

Social media platforms are although deemed secure through a plethora of “privacy settings’ ‘however, a recent study from Stratecast states that 22% of their users have fallen victim to security-related incidents. Social media accounts have all types of information on a person. These accounts are often compromised by large-scale attacks such as the twitter hack or criminal exploits of these accounts by stealing authentication credentials.

Healthy ways to cybersecurity

Since using the internet is a core part of our lives, we can’t get up and start abandoning it. Therefore several methods can be used to ensure cybersecurity such as:

1. Strong passwords: As most accounts are breached due to weak passwords, it is best to secure all accounts through strong passwords. These passwords should also be changed after every 2-3 months, and it’s best to not share them with anyone or repeat them.
2. Enable two-factor authentication: Multifactor authentication is another way to showcase privacy. As it features additional authentication through either a biometric method or by receiving a personalised code on text/email, MFA ultimately reduces data theft chances.
3. Use a VPN: Virtual Private Networks are software designed to provide online anonymity and security. A VPN connection anonymises users by changing the IP address and rerouting the data through a remote server that changes location. Along with that, VPNs further carry data into encrypted packets, efficiently hiding all the information from any prying eyes.
4. Learn to spot a phishing attack: Phishing is one of the most popular cyberattacks, and the best way against it is human intelligence. Educate yourself and the people around how to spot a phishing attack and learn to steer clear. Also, as these attacks rely on duping and conveying false information, it is best to stay vigilant and not believe everything you see online unless it is from a reputable source.
5. Share less on social media: Although social accounts can be secured through passwords and various settings, it is still smart not to share too much information. You never know when the whole server database faces a compromise like that with Twitter, and you become a victim, so it’s best to maintain strict privacy online.

Parting Words

Cybersecurity is a grave issue which is requiring immediate attention. Cybercriminals are always on alert to find an unsuspecting victim to exploit, and with the internet having dark places such as the Dark Web, falling victim to cyber-attacks can prove to be a significant loss. Therefore, despite what you use the internet for its best to be vigilant at all times and maintain good cybersecurity hygiene.

The primary purpose of a SOC within an organisation is to employ people, technology, and processes that aim to analyse and improve its cybersecurity posture. The SOC is a centralised function that detects, analyses, responds, and prevents cybersecurity incidents the organisation may come across.

However, with an increased influx and sophistication of cyber attacks, SOCs today are under pressure. Every second, a considerable level of data is created, leading to new vulnerabilities and attack vectors targeting the system. With this, how can SOCs keep pace with the ever-increasing threat landscape and better understand it to ensure the organisation’s cybersecurity posture remains firm?

Furthermore, a recent survey has revealed that 53% of respondents believe their SOC is proving to be ineffective at collecting evidence, analysing and detecting the source of threat.

Amidst this, integrating threat intelligence within the SOC system can prove to be a fruitful endeavour. Primarily so, threat intelligence allows security analysts a chance to analyse potential intruders and malicious adversaries better, posing to be a potential threat to the organisation’s security, even though most organisations fail to operationalise capable threat intelligence within SOC.

Why Is Threat Intelligence Important For SOC?

Organisations and enterprises are targets due to the high amount of money and information present. Therefore, SOC staff have to deal with many security alerts every day.

Amidst this, cogent analysis, detection, and response to each threat become a hard task to execute, especially without a proper context. Also, manual checking of each threat detection leaves little time for the SOC staff to counter check every alert it comes across.

On the contrary, working exclusively with internal data could provide the staff with minimal insights on enhanced or emerging cyber threats. Therefore integrating well-structured threat intelligence into the SOC could effectively improve its incident response owing to the pre-researched information on various attack sources such as:

1. Ill-Reputational Information

Information provided by threat intelligence teams provides insights to users on spoofed or ill-reputation domains and IP addresses. This ill-reputation often comes with the IP address or domain being nefarious as malicious or hacked and should not be accessed.

2. Information on phishing attacks

This information feed enumerates newly emerged phishing attacks and the targets they have acquired. Additionally, it contains known phishing URLs. With this feed, users can block employee access to web pages and sites that steal login information or other sensitive information. It also allows analysis to teach employees about the latest phishing attack and their attack methods.

3. Command-and-Control Information

This information report contains details on every known domain that are knowingly connected to botnet control panels. With these information systems in the users’ network can avoid becoming a part of any cybercriminal infrastructure often used in distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS).

4. Malicious URL Data

Through this feed, users can identify and track known hosts of malicious files within their traffic logs. With that, they can also include malicious URLs and blacklist them to prevent infections. This feed contains information on every known and emerging malware, allowing SOC teams a better chance of detection, analysis, and response in cases of infection.

5. Botnet and DDoS Attack data

The information feeds on these particular threats provide an insight into the security analysts regarding the working and execution of recently emerging threats. It also detects and identifies bot commands tied to DoS attacks. As these attacks are sneaky, such information prepares the staff for robust threat response.

6. Data on Blended Threats

Blended threats occur using multiple techniques and attack vectors simultaneously to launch an attack on a system. Information on the attack allows the SOC team to timely patch their vulnerabilities and further detect and analyse possible; attack scenarios.

Does Threat Intelligence Improve SOC Incident Response?

Although threat intelligence has proven to be one of the critical infrastructures within the cybersecurity framework, many organisations remain reluctant to implement it. However, contrary to their belief, threat intelligence can remarkably improve incident response and detection capabilities of a SOC and ensure a robust form of cybersecurity within an organisation.

As mentioned above, threat intelligence reports are detailed insights into emerging and enhanced cyber attacks. Such that the SOC staff can effectively make use of this information to verify the nature of any domain, URL, and IP address to see if they are malicious or otherwise compromised.

With that, the team can further cross-check the said domain, URL, or IP address against the organisation’s to see if it is present and needs to be blacklisted. This manual process with specific threat intelligence tools proves to be relatively easy.

The security process can be automated to add up all known malicious URLs identified by the threat intelligence team in a blacklist, protecting employees from landing on a malicious web page or getting caught in a phishing attack or malware campaign.

Additionally, threat intelligence reports are also useful for the SOC team during proactive detection and prevention threats as it is nearly impossible for all security solutions to address emerging threats due to slow updates and reliance on internal threat sources.

However, amidst this threat, intelligence systems offer robust threat detection and prevention as they rely on third party information gathering. With this, threat detection systems often stay ahead of other security solutions.

Apart from that, a well-integrated threat intelligence system can give the SOC team a much-needed space to focus on significant threats. That’s because these well-structured databases cut the need for manual processing and filtering.

Conclusion

SOCs and threat intelligence are undoubtedly the ultimate combination against detection and response. It allows organisations to integrate superb cybersecurity measures and provide the SOC staff to adopt an efficient workflow by streamlining the manual verification process.

However, although integrating threat intelligence seems like the perfect solution, organisations must remember that threat intelligence is sufficient as long as there is comparable pre-existing data.

Cloud computing-based systems necessarily act as an organisation’s confidante by storing every bit of sensitive information within them. Therefore, with this shift, the question of why access control is essential for cloud security becomes somewhat apparent.

As cloud computing servers receive constant updates on the company’s financial or professional information, these servers become highly vulnerable to cyber risks.

On the contrary, while most organisations take up protective measures by placing these servers behind firewalls, unfortunately, it doesn’t truly secure the cloud. Therefore, it is somewhat crucial that access to cloud computing servers should not just be secured but also restricted in various ways.

Cloud access control provides that very control to organisations and cloud computing hosts, monitoring who has access to what data. This comes with several benefits adding up to the cloud setup’s security, integrity, and efficiency.

Importance of Cloud Access Control

Cloud computing provides organisations with a secure way of sharing information due to its remote access. With that, cloud computing provides an eased workflow along with enhanced productivity.

It generally kills the need for confining within offices to operate a business. However, these very advantages serve to be a fatal flaw within the system. Since most of the sensitive information is present within one cloud space, it makes this data vulnerable in cases of a hack attack.

Especially with the high influx of social engineering attack and insider leaks incidents, it is, therefore, crucial to strictly monitor cloud access.

Although most cloud platforms provide security options, for additional security, it is better to opt for third-party cloud access control setups.

Third-party cloud access control setups come with identification, authentication, authorisation, audit, and access approval. These safety measures help enhance the data security over cloud-based applications making cloud access control one of the critical elements to cloud security.

Why Does An Organization Need Cloud Access Control?

There are several other ways cloud access control can benefit an organisation. Here are the top reasons why an organisation needs a cloud-based access control system:

1. Flexibility

Cloud-based access control allows organisations to operate offices over multiple sites with ease. As it requires only one point of access control, access to every location and every employee will be managed from that platform.

With cloud-based access control, companies no longer have to set up separate servers for each building which in turn saves time and money spent on installing new hardware and systems.

Centrally managed and monitored access control incorporates flexibility within an organisation, providing an undue advantage over the competition. It further allows companies to create a fair business model inclined to better usage of the target group.

Apart from that, cloud servers allow users to designate different control levels to various people present within an organisation. Companies can use this to introduce ease, flexibility, and better control within the system.

2. Ease Of Access

Cloud-based access control systems are effective and allow users to act fast, specifically in guest permission cases. Since the setup is remote, it allows users to grant permissions anytime anywhere.

These setups allow Ad hoc access rights to third party providers. Such that, users can remotely provide on-site access to service technicians without physically being present there.

Additionally, cloud-based access control systems provide ultimate transparency. The access log present within the system allows authorised users to overview who accessed and unlocked which door and at what time.

Ultimately, Cloud-based access provides robust security and comfort. In cases of coming across any anomalies in access activity, it reduces time and effort to take precautionary action.

3. Robust Security

With cloud computing, most of its data is stored on a secure remote server in the cloud, which is remotely accessible to cloud owners. However, this makes the data somewhat vulnerable to hack attacks, social engineering attacks, and insider data breaches.

Amidst this cloud access control proves to be the ultimate security measure for organisations. With having a strict check over who has access to the cloud server and at what time, it is easy to detect and trace any anomalies that occur in the system and act accordingly.

Along with an improved toolset, cloud-based systems offer a complete suite of access control with specific security features that allow users to impose access restrictions. Integration of features like IP restriction, time restriction device restriction, session timeout, and a lot more ensure no room for unauthorised access.

4. Professional management

Cloud-based access control has slowly grown in popularity, and companies can use this to their advantage to attract more customers. Therefore integrating cloud-based access control would allow organisations to expand their business further.

Along with this, as mentioned above, cloud-based access control is time effective and secure. It also helps an organisation cut down costs for large data storage hardware and dedicated IT staff required to manage it.

Moreover, as cloud access control ensures that an organisation’s data remains secure while providing an edge of modernisation to it, integrating access control within the systems helps maintain the company’s integrity.

5. Customisation Opportunity

Cloud-based access control opens up new doors for customisation. By connecting to several services, organisations can optimise processes best suited for their use.

Also, in terms of security, organisations can control the level of access each employee has and what they have access to. In addition to all this, cloud access control is a remote setup, and organisations can monitor their business from anywhere.

Conclusion

Albeit cloud-based access control systems seem to be complicated, they provide a robust and secure outlook for data sharing and storage to organisations. Along with that, these systems additionally prove to be useful in expanding and controlling an organisation’s business.

There is no denying that privacy and security are some of the biggest concerns for cloud computing. Despite the initiatives cloud computing offers organisations, there remain cybersecurity challenges organisations need to face, cloud is not the end of cybersecurity as some may believe.

Specifically, an organisation implements a cloud security strategy for efficient and secure storage and sharing of data. Though more secure than traditional on-site storage, the multiple entry points for an attacker can lead to a cloud security breach and a severe reputational and financial loss. Therefore, an organisation must implement robust cloud security controls to maintain its integrity.

Risks Cloud Service Models Can Come Across

While implementing cloud security, it is crucial to understand the shared responsibility model that it works upon, meaning that the cloud provider’s data security is a joint responsibility of both the organisations.

Cloud security is a complex interaction of processes, technologies, controls, and policies that will be tailor-made for the organisation’s specifications. Therefore, while opting for cloud services, organisations should remain aware of their risks and put in place several security measures. The risks associated with each cloud service models are as follows:

1. IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)

IaaS is designed to deliver on-demand compute, storage resources, and network over cyberspace through a pay-per-usage model. Using IaaS, organisations can run applications or any operating system on rented servers while effectively cutting down server management expenses.

However, IaaS cloud models can suffer data breaches primarily due to a lack of proper awareness and education or in-house IT teams’ misconfigurations. These data breaches can cause large-scale data compliance issues throughout an organisation.

These issues can further lead to legal actions against the company of significant non-compliant fees if left unchecked and unresolved.

2.  SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)

The SaaS cloud service model works to implement cloud security controls for their platforms while simultaneously providing application and infrastructure security. Services providing SaaS models don’t own customer data and don’t take responsibility for how their customers use their application.

In the SaaS model, organisations implementing the model are responsible for deploying appropriate cloud security controls for robust risk mitigation.

However, despite the flexibility, SaaS models offer organisations, these models are most susceptible to data leakage.

For most providers, the apparent lack of transparency is a primary concern when working with SaaS. In addition to that SaaS, users don’t have much control over stored data, which leads to obvious trust issues.

3.  PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)

The PaaS model allows organisations to develop, run, and manage applications without relying on specific infrastructure. PaaS vendors hold themselves responsible for hosting hardware and software and storage, network, server, and data infrastructure over their infrastructure.

Additionally, PaaS service providers use app development tools, middleware, and data management. With that, these service providers also provide business intelligence software, and services developers require to build tier applications.

Despite the ease PaaS models provide, the multi-tenancy environment of these solutions often concerns compliance teams. The model relies on shared memory, and disk space with unknown parties located off-premise, leading to several data leakage issues.

Critical Cloud Security Controls For Organisations

For organisations to ensure robust cloud computing security, the following cloud security controls should be considered. Implementing such measures would allow organisations to capitalise their DevOps agility without compromising security fully or compliance cloud computing requires;

1.  Identity and Access Management

Organisations must have a comprehensive identification and authorisation infrastructure. It is one of the crucial security frameworks, often referred to as the infamous 3S’s of Security- Authentication, Authorisation, and Access Control.

Identity and access management plays a robust role in breaches involving web applications and stolen or lost credentials as it monitors the control access to user information. Most cloud providers often integrate IAM within their systems as a means of providing security.

The Identity and Access Management system, combined with multi-factor authentication and user access policies, helps users control their data access and use.

2.  Micro-Segmentation

Micro-segmentation divides a cloud deployment into distinct security segments going as far as the individual workload level. The successful isolation of individual workloads allows organisations to apply flexible security policies, effectively minimising the impact of a data breach.

This granulated model of storing data allows companies to secure cloud information separately with better security measures. By far, micro-segmentation is one of the most popular cloud security methods employed by cloud computing users.

Micro-segmentation gives companies better control over increasing communications amidst cloud servers while simultaneously bypassing perimeter-based security tools. In cases of a data breach, this micro-segmentation limits the access of information to hackers.

3.  Risk Management

Appropriate risk management is one of the most important factors for cloud security as it allows organisations to understand weaknesses within their cloud computing network. A robust risk assessment system within cloud security compromise of vulnerability scans, static and dynamic security testing and several other risk assessment tools

Amidst this, there should be proper integration of threat intelligence, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), and an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). IDS tools and threat intelligence provide the functionality required to identify current and future threats to the cloud system.

Moreover, the IPS tools help implement appropriate functionality required to mitigate an attack on the cloud computing network. It additionally alerts users of an impending attack allowing a timely response to it.

4.  Encryption

Cloud technology involves sending and sharing to a cloud provider platform and further storing it within the cloud infrastructure. Amidst this sharing of information to off-site third parties, encryption provides a much-needed cloud security protection layer.

While sharing information on cloud platforms, it is best to encode it with secure encryption protocols while it is at rest or is in transit. This ensures the proper protection of data as it becomes impossible to decipher without its specific decryption key.

5.  Automated security

The influx of phishing and social engineering attacks have made humans a weak link in the chain of security. While organisations are focused on creating skilled DevOps teams, human error or mere mismanagement can often expose an organisation to various vulnerabilities.

One way to mitigate this risk is to automate security functions. This organisation can opt for the use of plugins designed to provide administrators with more visibility in the multi-vendor ecosystem while simplifying management and enabling automation.

Separately from that, IT teams can create custom security configuration scripts to best suit their privacy requirements or download a script from security providers to help automate security.

Conclusion

Cloud security controls are the one downside to cloud computing technology, which has been holding it back. However, good awareness on the matter and integration of intelligent security systems can help overcome cloud security risks allowing organisations to move forward with this robust technology. 

However, despite its advantages, its interconnectedness, along with the scope and availability of data, makes it a target of various cyber threats. Specifically, as cloud computing services is an online architecture, it can easily fall prey to any threat actor with the right credentials.

Its popularity within organisations entails the availability of enterprise data, attracting hackers who attempt hack attacks by studying the system and launching target attacks. This false sense of security most organisations have with cloud services makes the information present all the more vulnerable to exploitation.

Nonetheless, one of the main problems associated with assessing security risks within cloud computing is understanding the risks associated with these cyber attacks. This article, therefore, outlines some of the top cloud computing threats most organisations should be aware of.

What Are The Main Cloud Computing Threats?

The latest threats to cloud computing go way beyond the traditional focus on malicious issues and are more focused on configuration and authentication based vulnerabilities. Some common risks an organisation will encounter when consuming cloud computing  are as follows:

1.  Data breaches

One of the most common types of cyber threats, a data breach as a broadened term, is any cybersecurity attack involving unauthorised individuals viewing or stealing confidential information. As cloud computing networks are set up for interchangeable flows and storage of information, most cloud cyberattacks result in data breaches.

Date branches tend to have somewhat of a lasting impact on the organisation and often lead to grave issues such as damaging the reputation of a company. A damaged reputation fosters mistrust from clients and partners and could also impact a company’s brand bringing down its market value.

Along with that, data breaches also creates a significant impact on the release of any new product as it leads to the loss of intellectual property to competitors. With that arise various contractual and legal liabilities.

Therefore, a data breach can inadvertently lead to bankruptcy for an organisation. If an organisation manages to avoid this, the financial expenses during incident response and forensics are often too high to handle.

2.  Data Loss

Data loss is a considerably harmful cloud computing threat any organisation can come across. Data losses are tough to predict, and most organisations fail to handle them effectively.

Data losses surprisingly occur quite frequently and often happen due to man-induced errors or physical destruction within servers or human error. In short, data loss is the tempering of classified information stored in a cloud database.

Apart from data alteration, accidental erasure of information from the system with no backups is also one reason why an organisation might experience data loss.

There could be other somewhat generic reasons behind data losses, such as problems with the cloud provider’s servers. If not that, often, employees may misplace or forget credentials and encrypted keys, leading to insufferable amounts of data loss.

Although this threat is commonly inferred to be an error within the company’s employees, it is often a result of a targeted attack through a mole.

3.  Hacked Accounts

Hacked accounts are perhaps one of the most significant threats companies with cloud computing technology encounter. Should a threat actor gain access to an organisation’s cloud computing platform through a hacked account, it could serve as a carved path to all the information present on the servers.

Additionally, the compromised account would serve as an adequate cover allowing the crime to go unnoticed by the authorities within.

Hacked account incidents are difficult to muster as they require cybercriminals to carry out target attacks. They mostly occur through phishing emails, social engineering tactics, password cracking, or malware infections.

Albeit these attacks are devious, organisations can take up safety measures to ensure they don’t suffer damage through a hacked account.

4.  Denial Of Service Attacks

Another quite damaging cloud computing threat is the Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS). This denial of service attack works by shutting down an organisation’s cloud services, making them unavailable to whoever they are shared with, including owners, customers, partners, and employees.

To carry out these attacks, criminals often flood the system with massive and extensive traffic that makes it hard for servers to buffer. Threat actors often break down an organisation’s cloud computing server by exploiting bugs or vulnerabilities.

As scalability is one of the primary reasons for using cloud computing services, DDoS attacks target that very feature. These DDoS attacks are designed to intervene in the service-level agreement (SLA) between the company and its customers.

Disrupting this agreement often impacts the credibility of the company. A DDoS attack skillfully ruptures this agreement by causing speed and stability issues across the overall system. Companies who fall prey to this attack often struggle to identify and disarm the source of disruption.

5.  Cryptojacking

The cryptocurrency frenzy going around the world has added crypto-jacking to the list of cloud security threats. A typical crypto-jacking attack involves a hacker exploiting an organisation’s computing resources to process cryptocurrency transactions.

For this, once the threat actor gains access to the cloud computing servers, it installs crypto mining scripts that mines cryptocurrency for him. This causes an increased CPU load, which inadvertently slows down the cloud computing system(s).

As cryptojacking attacks require large amounts of computing, which can mine more cryptocurrency in less time, organisational servers become a target to such attacks.

6.  Insecure APIs

The system within a cloud infrastructure relies primarily upon Application User Interface or API. This process is used equally by the company’s internal employees and external customers through mobile App’s or web applications.

The outer side of this process that is exposed to consumers is crucial, considering it contains all data transmissions that enable the service, which results in providing all sorts of analytics.

The use of API within this process makes it a significant threat to cloud security. More so, APIs are responsible for collecting information from edge computing devices. Amidst this, organisations should opt for authentication and encryption to have a regulated and safe system.

APIs often pose a risk to security when their configurations are flawed and don’t meet the company’s requirements. Some common issues include access without authentication, clear-text authentication, lack of access monitoring along with opting for previously used token and passwords can also compromise the integrity of an API.

7.  Insider Threats

Along with external cloud computing threats, organisations must pay complete heed to any internal threats they might face to their system. An organisation’s employee can be its most significant vulnerability or the biggest strength; it depends on the training provided.

At any point, employees can cause data breaches or privacy violations within the organisation, which can often result from human error or merely due to malicious behaviour.

Besides that, employees can also fall victim to social engineering attacks and serve as a gateway for any malware to error.

Therefore, for an organisation to ensure its cloud security is safe from insider threats, it must train its staff along with having secure passwords. Additionally, to ensure there are no occurrences of malicious behaviour within the team, it is better to monitor employees closely.

8.  Advanced Persistent Threats (APT)

Advanced persistent threats are prolonged cybersecurity threats designed explicitly to minority activity and steal information from within a network. These attacks mainly target organisations dealing with high-value information.

Some of the most common victims of APT attacks are the financial industry, national defence, manufacturing (IIoT), and intellectual property, such as governmental information.

These attacks are mainly carried out against targeted victims or with a specific goal where threat actors spend time and resources to find vulnerabilities within a system they later exploit to gain access or design a concealed cyber attack further.

Custom malware is one standard tool used to carry out APT attacks. Traditionally APT attacks were associated with nation-state actors working to steal governmental or industrial secrets. Therefore financial gain or political espionage is considered as one main motive of carrying out these attacks.

However, APT attacks have grown in popularity amongst cybercriminals aiming to steal data or intellectual property that they can later sell or monetise.

Conclusion

Although cloud computing surely is a game-changer for organisations and businesses alike, however, it is crucial to realise that its true potential is only apparent when the cloud threats are dealt with entirely. Online security is gradually maturing, but the number of cyber-attacks is increasing, it is best to secure your organisation with threat intelligence coupled with a cybersecurity partner to ensure its safety and integrity.

A targeted cyberattack on the legal sector can prove to be damaging not only for the legal firm but its supply chain and their clients. This issue is emphasised with the upgrade in many firms to Cloud-based technology, posing new risks and a new approach to cyber security which organisations need to invest in.

Risk Assessment To A Cyber Attack

A cyberattack on the legal sector poses a significant risk to the industry, supply chain, employees and their clients. Most of the organised cybercriminals perform these attacks with financial gain as their primary motive. They may launch a ransomware attack and encrypt data and will only release when a ransom paid. But this, of course, leaves them open to future attacks. In addition to ransomware, a cyberattack, such as a phishing scam, can be used to drain a company of its finances, leaving it bankrupt

Once cybercriminals have gained access to data, such as national insurance numbers, home addresses, family history, phone numbers, and bank information (PII) they often sell it to the highest bidder on the dark web to support future criminal activities.

However, as well as financial gain, cybercriminals will use the data to exploit them further to blackmail for further information on a client or to carry out new illegal activities to gain a competitive edge.

Should a legal firm or practice be breached, they would need to consider the reputational damage. Who would want to use the services or entrust their most confidential and sensitive data with an entity that has been breached? The reputational damage would be almost irreversible and would lead to the loss of clients and in some cases, bankruptcy.

It is, therefore, crucial to have a ‘cyber-secure’ environment, specifically as client confidentiality and secrecy remains to be and will continue to be, the backbone of the industry.

Cyber Threats To The Legal Sector

Some common threats specifically target the legal sector that is as follows:

1.   Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are cyberattacks designed to gather personal information through legitimate-looking emails or websites. These scams mostly fish out usernames, credit card information, passwords and bank account information.

Criminals launch a phishing scam using realistic-looking emails or web application forms that fool the client into revealing personal information. These forms or emails are tailored explicitly, so the victim believes he is providing the data to a legitimate source.

These scams are specifically designed to target specific victims which makes them one of the most successful cyber attacks. Although they most likely occur through emails and websites, text messages, phone calls, or social media are also popular vectors of carrying out these attacks.

2. Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware is malicious software that is designed to hold information or computer systems captive unless a ransom amount is paid. Hackers either deny users access to their systems altogether or encrypt information making it inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key.

However, despite what it may seem, paying the ransom rarely ever guarantees that the victim may get access to the stolen data. More so, it only gives the attacker a go-sign that the victim is open to paying ransom in the future.

Ransomware attacks occur through malvertising, drive-by downloads and malicious email attachments. Attacker target and exploit vulnerabilities within a system to successfully launch a ransomware attack. These attacks are sneaky and are designed to hide while causing havoc within the system.

3. Data Breaches

Data breaches usually refer to the loss of critical information, and in the case of the legal sector, data breaches typically result in the loss of confidential client information. These data breaches are often the result of hack attacks.

These threat actors intrude into the system by exploiting vulnerabilities within it. Although hack attacks are one of the most common forms of data breaches, loss of information can also often be a mere human error.

Despite cybersecurity being a grave matter, most people remain in the dark about it. With this lack of education, these people often become the weakest chain in security, allowing hackers to manipulate and exploit them. A simple human error could mean downloading a malicious email or clicking on a malicious link that may give way to a data breach.

4. Friday Afternoon Fraud

One of the most common cybercrimes in the legal sector is the Friday Afternoon Fraud, which revolves around hacking into conveyancing transactions to divert client funds ultimately. Quite like what its name suggests, this type of cyber-attack occurs on Friday’s as this is the day most purchases are made.

Launching the attack on a Friday also gives the threat actor the weekend to blend in and avoid detection. This fraud impacts buyers and often leads to victims losing their savings and any properties they intended to buy.

Mitigating Threat Risks

With cyberattacks, prevention and maintaining a robust cybersecurity posture is one of the critical methods of remaining secure from a cyberattack.

The following precautionary steps are needed to ensure a robust cybersecurity posture:

1.  Educate employees

Employees are a crucial part of any sector. As most threat actors and cyber criminals exploit vulnerabilities within employees, it is best to make sure that they are made aware of the threats they might encounter.

Employees within the sector should know an underlying protocol to follow in case of cyber-attack detection. Apart from that, these employees should also be made aware of how to detect phishing scams and hack attacks to ensure security.

2.  Breach Detection

Data breaches are devious, and in most cases often go unnoticed, which is why it is crucial to have an established breach detection service in place. The breach detection service monitors the external environment and provides the users with a unique outlook of their online presence.

Cyber Security professionals monitor the surface along with the deep and dark web to fish out information that is handled regarding the particular company or sector.

With this, the legal sector can maintain security and further alleviate potential threats to their system while cordially managing their resources. When breach detection services are combined with human reconnaissance and a Security Operations Centre (SOC) it will provide proactive intelligent security.

3.  Partner

Ransomware and malware attacks, along with hack attacks, are one of the most havoc-wreaking cyber attacks any industry could encounter. They are devious and are hard to detect precisely when left to human detection only.

Although the legal sector tends to have an in-house IT team to monitor for threats, the evolution of cyber-attacks has made it harder to detect them. It is, therefore, crucial to partner with cybersecurity specialists that provide the latest intelligent security tools and guarantee maximum protection and security.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity within the legal sector is crucial to maintain the integrity and reputation of the industry, along with client confidentiality. The risks associated with cyber-attacks are far too high to gamble with, which is why smart cyber solutions are the key to safety and security.

It is also important to partner with a cybersecurity specialist that provides the latest advancements in global threat detection and security solutions for all industries and continually invests in its staff.

CEO’s, Directors and business owners must take up a smart initiative to cyber-secure their companies from potential cyber-attacks internally and externally and protect their customers’ privacy and integrity.

Organisations operating in the new ways of working must consider how they monitor critical assets, defend against insider and external threat actors, particularly in light of the increase in the agile workforce, remote working and cloud adoption.

Below we provide the reasons why organisations need to operate a fully managed Security Operations Centre (SOC as a Service) to help reduce risk.

What is a SOC and how does it work?

A Security Operation Center (SOC) is a Security as a Service solution to support Information Security teams that monitor an organisation’s security infrastructure by routinely tracking and analysing the security posture. Additionally, the SOC is responsible for monitoring and analysing activities on distributed networks, databases, servers, websites, endpoints, and applications in search of cyber events that potentially indicate a compromise or security incident.

The SOC identifies potential threats, both internal and external, by learning the mechanics of the attack along with deducing what part of IT infrastructure would fall victim to it. Organisations’ with an efficient SOC will have a better chance of avoiding unfortunate security incidents by detecting flaws in their IT systems before they happen.

SOC teams have set goals of detection, analysis, and response to cybersecurity incidents by fusing technology solutions with a robust set of processes. Typically a SOC team consists of an Operation or Security manager(s) managing a team of security analysts and engineers. The appointed SOC team work closely with the organisation’s Incident Response team to ensure security alerts are dealt with and adhere to strict SLA’s.

Why is SOC Important?

With the advent of “smart machines,” one might think the need for a human-made security response team as somewhat outdated. However, with the evident rise of phishing and social engineering attacks, humans have slowly become the weakest link in this chain of security.

Organisations are now shifting their focus on human impact rather than technology impact in efforts to lower threats. It is, therefore, crucial to have a SOC team to strictly monitor and analyse known and existing threats along with studying emerging risks.

Albeit technology systems such as firewalls, VPNs, and antimalware software put up a great initiative in protecting from basic attacks, a human analysis can, however, can help protect from significant incidents.

A SOC team is, therefore, crucial as it builds up a combination of techniques such as threat detection and human analysis, which gives way to improving an organisation’s defence mechanism.

The SOC collects all the information from within the organisation. Further, it correlates with external data that may provide insights into potential threat incidents to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats. This external information usually consists of the following information:

1. Threat briefs
2. Vulnerability alerts
3. Newsfeeds
4. Incidents reports
5. Threat Intelligence
6. Threat Hunting

In short, SOC is crucial as it helps an organisation stay ahead of threat incidents, ensuring a sound security infrastructure, and protecting the organisation from future cyberattacks and losses.

At CyberQ Group, the SOC team continually feed threat intelligence data into tools that help keep processes updated, allowing the SOC to discriminate between real threats and non-threats effectively. Ultimately, this method helps ensure the SOC team is always ahead of security incidents.

Moreover, the use of security automation and threat intelligence makes SOCs more effective and efficient. A SOC based on the use of highly skilled security experts working alongside security automation allows organisations to enhance security measures and build a better defence against security breaches and cyber-attacks.

Advantages of a SOC

Within the rapidly evolving cyber threat space, there is no denying that a SOC is crucial for organisations that want to stay protected and improve response times to cyber attacks.

A SOC gives organisations a better insight on their security structure along with providing skills for timely response against cyber attacks. As cyber-attacks continue to increase in consistency, organisations need to refocus their security effort into prevention and detection.

Advantages to an organisation having a SOC:

• Appropriate Maintenance of Regulatory Compliance
  The SOC is explicitly designed to the requirements of your organisation and sector to enhance the security of your infrastructure and prevent future security breaches and compromises, along with strict SLA’s to respond to security incidents. The SOC supports organisations to meet with their regulatory requirements based on security monitoring, incident response function, and vulnerability management.

• Reduces Costs
  A significant benefit of a SOC is it protects an organisation from financial losses. The purpose of a SOC is to help prevent data losses, help maintain the integrity of sensitive information and improve customer retention. A SOC is a crucial factor in gaining customer’s trust, which in turn leads to great financial rewards. Thus, a SOC allows organisations to improve their reputation, increase and retain customers and increase revenues.

• Centralised Presentation of Assets
  A SOC provides a holistic view of critical assets, and with the correct people, processes and technology in place, the SOC will proactively detect problems efficiently and effectively. Therefore, even dispersed organisations, with a SOC will be able to centralise monitoring and ensure the efficient running of security operations within an organisation.

• Enhanced Threat Management
  Organisations continually invest in technologies designed to prevent and detect threats. However, to ensure these technologies work to maximum efficiency, they must be centralised, correlated, and carefully monitored by a capable SOC team.

Conclusion

Organisations must adopt new ways of working, and such changes can be the success or failure of an organisation. With the ever-increasing focus on Cloud, Hybrid, and remote working technologies, protecting and monitoring of critical assets are essential to grow and thrive.     

Cyber-attacks are costly for all shapes and sizes of organisations. Therefore, to ensure an organisation is safeguarded against attacks, they need to ensure their IT infrastructure and critical assets are well protected.

In conclusion, the SOC is critical as it provides a much needed, more profound insight into an organisation’s security infrastructure. A SOC’s purpose is to monitor, analyse, and fix the security posture to ensure that an organisation has a robust IT infrastructure. Therefore, it is crucial to have a SOC service in place that proactively monitors and detects incidents ensuring security within the origination.

To ensure your organisation is not just another cyber statistic – monitor, protect and defend.

Contact CyberQ Group To Make Your Business Resilient.