Cybersecurity is quickly becoming one of the top concerns for businesses across the world, and for good reason. The risk of cyber-attacks has never been higher. 50% of businesses say they’ve recently fallen victim to a cyber threat, while 64% expect an attack in the future.
The key to protecting your business and reducing the likelihood of a costly attack is understanding and protecting your attack surface.
An attack surface refers to all the possible entry points for a hacker to gain unauthorised access to your systems and data. The logic here is simple: the bigger your surface, the more vulnerable you are to an attack.
In this blog post, we will provide a clear introduction to the concept of an attack surface, explaining its key components and offering practical guidance on how to protect your organisation from potential threats.
What is the Attack Surface?
The attack surface is the sum of all the ways an unauthorised user can attempt to enter a system or network to steal data, disrupt operations, or cause harm.
To better understand this concept, let’s imagine a castle. Its possible entry points aren’t just the main gate. It includes the walls, towers and hidden passages – and even the guards! In the same vein, your cybersecurity attack surface isn’t just a firewall or a single server, it’s all possible entry points.
Key Areas of the Attack Surface
Security experts often split the attack surface into two distinct categories: physical and digital. Let’s explore what is included in each!
Physical Attack Surface
The physical attack surface refers to tangible, real-world points of entry. It’s often easier for attackers to access data using physical means as in-person security is often neglected, especially in small and medium-sized businesses.
Key elements of the physical attack surface include:
- Premises and Facilities: Physical access to buildings, offices and server forms. Weaknesses here include unlocked doors, bad locks, broken windows, or lack of proper access control systems, such as keycard entry.
- Hardware and Devices: Physical devices such as servers, workstations, laptops, mobile devices, network equipment and removable storage. A key risk here is device theft, but also includes the use of unattended devices, weak BIOS/UEFI passwords, USB port access and potential hardware tampering.
- Human error and insider threats: Unintentional mistakes and malicious actions by employees or insiders that can compromise physical security.
Protecting the physical attack surface involves implementing measures such as access control, surveillance systems and strong security policies such as zero trust. We’ll explore that later on!
Digital Attack Surface
Intuitively, the digital attack surface includes all the ways an attacker can gain access to your systems and data through digital means. Here are some common digital attack surface vulnerabilities:
- Weak passwords and identity management: Bad passwords, shared accounts, and a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) can make it easy for attackers to strike. In fact, weak passwords are responsible for 3 in 4 of all network intrusions.
- Software vulnerabilities: Attackers can exploit flaws in software to gain unauthorised access. A common attack vector here is a misconfigured API, allowing hackers to inject malicious code into your systems.
- Outdated IT and applications: Older software and hardware could contain vulnerabilities that have not been patched – and an outdated OS will no longer receive security updates. If you’re still on Windows 7, for instance, you’ve not been getting patches since 2020!
Best Practices for Protecting and Reducing Your Attack Surface
Now that you understand the basics, let’s explore some practical steps you can take to reduce your attack surface and avoid costly breaches.
Eliminating Entry Points
The most intuitive way to reduce your attack surface is to reduce the number of possible entry points. It’s one of those “easier said than done” principles, but with a bit of security hygiene, you can quickly get the hang of it.
Here are some easy steps you can take to get started:
- Deactivate the user accounts of employees who have left and ensure that access privileges are up-to-date.
- Uninstall unused applications to reduce the number of potential app vulnerabilities. We recommend regularly performing software audits across all your teams to understand what people are actually using.
- Close unused network ports and disable unnecessary services.
Implement Zero Trust
At its very core, zero trust is simple: “Never trust, always verify.” This framework requires all users to be authenticated, authorised, and validated throughout their session within your IT systems.
If they don’t prove why they deserve the trust of your network, they will not have access to any data. No device or user should be inherently trusted.
There are four core principles of Zero Trust:
- Least privilege access: Users and devices should only be granted the minimum level of access required.
- Verification should be continuous: User identity should be verified not only upon login, but also during sessions.
- Microsegmentation: Security perimeters should be divided into small, manageable segments. Attackers should not be able to laterally move within a network.
- Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): No one factor of authentication is sufficient for access.
Vulnerability Scanning
Regular vulnerability scanning is essential for proactively identifying and addressing security weaknesses. We recommend automated tools such as Microsoft Defender to scan systems, networks, and applications for known vulnerabilities.
Here are some key tips:
- Carrying out scans of your IT infrastructure regularly to catch threats early.
- Simulating real-world attacks to find vulnerabilities that automated scans might miss.
- Prioritising the fixing of critical vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to the organisation.
Reduce your attack surface and protect your business with us!
By understanding your attack surface, both physical and digital, and implementing the best practices outlined above, you can significantly bolster your defences against cyber threats.
Ready to take control of your attack surface and enhance your cybersecurity posture? Get in touch with us today and see how we can help!