9.5: Recommendations for Avoidance

These cyberattacks are becoming very common and inevitable in this modern era where digitization encompasses almost all the aspects of the life. However, many of these attacks can be avoided if the companies/individuals follow the following recommendations:

9.5.1 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

The authentication is a process which ensures whether the individual is who he/she claims to be not an imposter. The typical way to perform authentication is knowledge-based authentication where the legitimate individuals are provided with the username and password and they will be authenticated using the provided credentials if they want to access resources. However, with the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the password cracking tools have become much more powerful than before and also new sophisticated phishing attack models can lead to disclosure of the credentials. So, beside using Knowledge- based authentication, some other factors such as biometrics, IP address, tokens/security codes or actions can also be assimilated with the existing single factor authentication to avoid password cracking attacks.

​​​​​​​9.5.2 Security Analysis/Penetration testing

The penetration testing is an authorized (legal) cyberattack to test the organization’s computer networks/systems robustness against real-world cyberattacks. While doing the Penetration Testing, the security analyst first finds the vulnerabilities (pitfalls) of the networks and web applications then creates an exploit (venom) to demonstrate how these vulnerabilities can compromise the organization’s assets. Finally, most of the security analysts provides recommendations as well to avoid the highlighted attacks. The security audit and Penetration testing can avoid many of the forthcoming threats to the organization.​​​​​​​

9.5.3 Educate Users

The Users/people are the weakest link of any organization. The organizations should offer basic security trainings to educate their employee about the recent developments in security fields and familiarize them regarding Social Engineering techniques. The security trainings should involve following topics:

• Phishing and Pharming
• Ransomware attacks
• Basic Ethics of using Computational systems
• Password Management Software
• Organizational Security Policies and AUPs

9.5.4 Anti-malware

As discussed in section 9.3.2, there are different types of malware and some of them can arrive at victim’s computer only by visiting the malicious website or just by downloading applications (with underlying malware). The surfing over internet without having an updated anti-malware could be dangerous and can turn your computer into a Zombie computer. Therefore, an updated anti-malware must be installed on individual’s computer and organizational systems to avoid most of the pre-existing malware.

9.5.5 Firewall and Network Security Devices

The firewall inspects all incoming and outgoing traffic and then allows/denies packets based on the defined rules. In addition to anti-malware, the firewall also plays an important role to prevent the adversaries from gaining unauthorized access and stealing data from the individual(s) and organizational computers. The firewall can be software (e.g. the one which comes with windows computer) or it can be hardware (e.g. Palo Alto and Cisco NGFW etc.). To ensure the optimal security, an organization should include some other network security devices/software e.g. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) in their security fleet. Beside the runtime security, these network security systems provide enormous data for security analysis which is eventually helpful to combat against zero day attacks.