How businesses owners can outsmart most sophisticated hackers in a post-pandemic world
The pandemic has led to organisations deploying heightened security into their infrastructures, elevating the need for a generation of cybersecurity experts with adaptable technical skill
Technology has advanced at an accelerated rate, beyond our imagination — but so have cyber threats. As organisations transition to cloud computing and work from home processes continue to flourish in the post-pandemic “new normal”, these threats are becoming increasingly dangerous and deviously strategic.
From Amazon Web Services (AWS) experiencing its largest ever DDos attack a few months ago, to Eatigo and Lazada’s RedMart reporting massive data breaches very recently, it is evident that attackers are exploiting security gaps of Singapore’s rapid digital transformation. Just one tap of the phone button or a click of the mouse could blow up into massive network disruptions and website defacements.
This has led to organisations deploying heightened security into their infrastructures, elevating the need for a generation of cybersecurity experts with adaptable technical skills, who are able to respond to mitigate even the most critical threats. This means more specialised training is first required to mould these experts.
These talents must not only be skilled in tackling all forms of attacks but have a thorough knowledge of the evolution of cybersecurity threats affecting digital systems around the world, on top of real-world experience in mitigating cyber threats.
These cybersecurity professionals must also be able to make independent security assessments of their individual systems, thereby proactively taking measures to prevent an attack instead of responding only when an attack has occurred.
The evolution of cybersecurity threats
Gone are the days where self-replicating programs such as creeper worms copied themselves onto remote systems with the intention of damaging data centres across the world, while showcasing messages from threat actors. Today, data is considered to be an organisation’s asset.
This has led to the emergence of global data privacy laws like Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), among others. Due to this, attackers have become stealthier and quieter, as attacks today involve stealing data from unsuspecting users inside organisations.
Often, these users would have unwittingly opened a seemingly harmless email leading to catastrophic data breaches. By the time the threat has been assessed and addressed, organisations would have lost sensitive data amounting to millions, sometimes billions of dollars in damage costs.
To make matters worse, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, one of the most common types of threats currently plaguing the global market, surged by 528 per cent since the COVID-19 pandemic began. I believe the reason for this is due to the heavy use and reliance of online services amid the pandemic.
To match the expansion of our digital footprint, attackers employ advanced DDoS attacks to overwhelm internet service providers, thus disrupting operations in industries such as online banking and e-commerce.
Training a new generation of cybersecurity professionals
To respond to these deviously strategic and increasingly stealthy threats, I believe that it is important to first ensure that students have access to trainers who are seasoned professionals and industry experts, capable of sharing knowledge based on local and global experience.
Trainers like those at Nexusguard Academy have years of experience in understanding the security gaps faced by organisations and it is through transferring this applied knowledge that a new generation of talents will be created.
As most of these trainers typically conduct joint certified courses with universities in Singapore and other APAC countries, students will also have the added advantage of leveraging a larger network of organisations at home and abroad, thus increasing their competitiveness within the global market.
Secondly, it is crucial that students, especially those aiming to become managers within the cybersecurity field, have a firm understanding of international information security standards like ISO27001, STRIDE, OWASP Top 10, among others. This will ultimately lead to them being able to independently assess the level of security within their organisations, thus creating more robust protection systems.
Beyond that, it is important to conduct a combination of lectures and hands-on exercises when training cybersecurity talents in order to expose them to real-life scenarios. These scenarios should consist of intense training done under the supervision of qualified trainers within workplace settings.
This practice will train students to react and adapt quickly to working environments while giving them the opportunity to build their portfolios aggressively. In turn, this brings added value to business owners and organisations as these talents will then be able to apply what they have learnt effectively having already experienced a myriad of real-world crisis scenarios.
Thriving in a digital economy
As our migration to the digital space accelerates more rapidly businesses are now very much reliant on processes like digital marketing, tools like online platforms to promote their product and services, and web applications that integrate social media platforms and other data sources to provide better experiences to their customers.
Data as we know it becomes larger and too complex to monitor and manage by the traditional IT practices implemented. Without the experience of battle-ready cybersecurity professionals, defending our online assets will be overwhelming. Most of the time, responding to a security incident is like finding a needle in a haystack, and organisations are often hindered by techniques, tactics and procedures that threat actors are transforming and adapting to the new age.
Therefore, I am confident that in leveraging these experienced cybersecurity professionals, business owners will be able to fast track their risk mitigation strategies so they can sleep better at night and focus on the daily business operations.
Ultimately, staying one step ahead of cyber attackers means that businesses should focus on their risk management strategies, with a particular focus on their talent pool and their technological approach. At the end of the day, business owners simply need technology that works in mitigating attacks, skilled people to operate the technology and a process that simplifies the problem when managing threat incidents.
To do this, they will require experienced cybersecurity professionals mentored by seasoned practitioners so they can easily adapt to cyber attacks in the front lines.
Source: e27
