Our increasingly networked world provides awesome opportunities for productivity and efficiency in organizations. Yet, those same systems are vulnerable to cybercriminals who try to steal data and disrupt organizations. These cybersecurity tools will help you stay secure and fight back.
Firewalls have been around forever. In fact, if there’s one cybersecurity tool you likely have; it’s this one.
The job of a firewall is simple: prevent unauthorized access to your system.
A firewall monitors network traffic and connection attempts through your network. Then, it determines whether or not to allow a packet to pass freely.
Firewalls do have limitations. First of all, they cannot catch malware that entered your system because of a phishing attack.
Newer firewalls, however, are more sophisticated. In addition to intrusion prevention, these new “Next-Generation Firewalls” (NGFW) offer deep packet and application-level inspection.
Still, the migration towards cloud-based applications and integrations is pushing more firewall solutions to the cloud. For example, Barracuda has discontinued it’s NGFW in favor of a cloud-based solution.
A variety of firewalls exist for mid-to-large sized organizations. Some of these include:
Like firewalls, antivirus tools are not new. These tools alert you to a virus or malware infection on any given machine. Antivirus tools scan incoming email attachments and links for infections. If a virus is detected, it is quarantined. If malware is discovered, it is removed.
Antivirus software options abound. Some of the most popular include:
Some hackers are bad. Others are helpful.
The helpful hackers carry out penetration testing on a company’s IT infrastructure with a variety of tools. The goal of this test is to identify vulnerabilities before the bad hackers do.
You may choose to run penetration tests on:
Every cybersecurity arsenal needs penetration testing.
During this phase, test goals are identified. This includes which systems to test and how. For instance, if you’re testing an application, you might decide to target a particular facet.
During this phase, you aim to understand how the target application will respond to various intrusion attempts. You’re looking to exploit flaws in the system. Often, this involves using a mix of off-the-shelf tools and custom code.
A simulated attack is carried out and access is used to steal data, change permissions, intercept traffic, etc. The goal is to understand what is at risk when an attack occurs.
After the completed exploit, the value of the compromise is determined. The aim is to figure out the risk is to the organization.
After the analysis and simulated attack, a report is compiled. This report details priorities for fixes and patches.
A variety of off-the-shelf and proprietary tools exist to carry out penetration tests. Some of the more popular tools for testing include:
You’ve probably seen the little padlock in the top of a browser bar when surfing the net. That “lock” means the connection to the server is encrypted, adding a layer of security that exists through PKI technology.
PKI technology’s public-facing browser bar is familiar to many. However, the technology also encrypts connections on internal networks.
For instance, it can enable multi-factor authentication and access control, encrypt email communication (mitigating phishing attempts), authenticate endpoints in an IoT environment, and more.
While preventative efforts such as user education and use of the tools mentioned above are helpful, they often aren’t enough.
A good SIEM aggregates information from every layer of the security stack. This includes firewalls and system logs to identify discrepancies that may indicate a breach.
A managed SIEM will eliminate false positives and create a game plan for discrepancies in log data.
Your SIEM and SOC team serve as the brain of your cybersecurity operation. They gather information from the system, parsing it, prioritizing it, and then directing action accordingly.
To learn how our SIEM and SOC team can protect your organization from cyber threats, contact us today.