Advanced Persistent Threat Protection – 4 Ways to Prevent APT attacks

• Information Security Services

Cyber attacks are becoming quite common, regardless of the size of the organization. The number of cyber crimes is increasing at a significant rate every year. In 2020 alone, the cost of a data breach in India amounted to nearly 2 million U.S dollars.

According to sources, the malicious attacks accounted for 55% of the total breach, 25% of technical glitches and 21% of breaches due to human error. In short, data breaches pose a greater risk for companies.

But, there’s even a bigger threat that is taking over the cyber world - Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). According to  Cloud Adoption & Priorities Survey Report, 54% of IT companies see APT as one of the security issues.

What is Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)?

Advanced Persistent Threat is one of the dangerous enemies that infiltrate your organization. It is a long term attack that is meant to locate and exploit high sensitive information.

The hackers get into the system network and spend a lot of time monitoring your activities, keystrokes, data etc. The targets can include small, medium, and large organizations that deal with highly confidential data.

One should know that the hackers may initiate the attacks using advanced and persistent methods. They may use cutting edge technologies and hacking methods like – phishing, man-in-middle attacks and adware to sneak into your organization to achieve their objective.

Must Read - 5 Types of Cyber Attacks That you are Likely to face in 2021

 

Best Practices for Advanced Persistent Threat Protection

Well, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are difficult to detect and involve multiple stages. A combination of warnings signs can help you protect against these attacks. However, it is crucial to partner with expert Cyber Security Company to eliminate and leverage these attacks.

In addition to constant monitoring, you need multiple layers of security working together.

Here are some of the best practices for advanced persistent threat protection –

Traffic monitoring

Monitoring the incoming and outgoing traffic is one of the best practices to prevent the installation of malicious programs. By monitoring the traffic, one can alert the security personnel to any unusual behaviour or malicious program.

A web application deployed on the edge of the network filters the traffic and thereby preventing application-layer attacks like SQL Injections, RFI etc.

Internal traffic monitoring services can help detect the backdoor shells and signal an APT attack.

Firewall installation

Installing a firewall is the first step of defense against APT attacks. There are 3 types of firewalls used – software, hardware and cloud firewalls that can help you prevent advanced persistent threats. When seen from the attacker's point of view, ‘APT’ occurs in multiple stages – 1) malware infects the victim 2) APT downloaded by the victim 3) APT decides how far to spread 4) APT achieve its goal

A DNS firewall can block APT at any one of the above stages. It will also help block many infections by blocking the initial dropper. The DNS does allow for a timely response and ensures that the threat is no longer ‘Persistent’. As mentioned, the DNS helps in reducing the risk of data loss or damage due to APT.

Enabling email protection

Today, more and more businesses rely on the internet for remote working. To prevent APT and other forms of cyberattacks, organizations must enable email protection. With the widespread transition from cloud to the server or vice-versa – hosted email providers have become a target for cyber criminals.

Protect the domain and emails with IP shielding that honours the SMTP sessions. Use SMTP authentication to secure outbound email. Also, one should enable SSL to ensure data privacy for SMTP and HTTP.

Strict Access Control

Well, employees are the vulnerable points in the security perimeter. The hackers often try to turn them into an easy gateway. The best way to protect against malicious attacks is to rely on the Zero Trust Policy that limits access level. You will grant access to limited resources that are required to perform a particular action.

Another measure is the two-factor authentication (2FA) that requires the users to provide a second form of verification – especially when accessing confidential data or high-priority information.

Conclusion

The bottom line is – an effective APT protection strategy requires a combination of different security measures. Remember that the standard security measures cannot effectively help you prevent the APT attack. It requires various defense tactics and collaboration between the security teams. You will need the advice of experts to protect your company from various IT security risks.

Amvion’s APT protection services include – brand protection, surface area monitoring, Defacement monitor for customer-facing web portals, surface attack enumerator, etc.

Get in touch with us to detect and defend against advanced cyber threats.