Widening attack surfaces call for increased enterprise security

Technological innovation has been increasing dramatically in recent years, and it seems like every month brings the introduction of a new device or program that has to be implemented immediately. Businesses struggle to keep up with this rapid change more than individual users, as every new technology has to be multiplied by however many employees they have. With so many endpoints connected to the same enterprise network, it can become a cybersecurity nightmare.

A new report by the Information Security Forum revealed that businesses are finding it difficult to adapt to such a high speed of technological change and are using legacy systems and methods to combat increasingly sophisticated cyber​ threats.

“Technology in my opinion has become something of a threat enabler,” said Steve Durbin, managing director of the Information Security Forum. “All of them potentially have opportunities for crime gangs to exploit. All of them have the opportunity to go wrong, and when they go wrong they will go wrong quickly and we will have to respond to that. I don’t think we’re prepared for that yet.”

A separate report conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group found that the majority of employees feel their company’s use of new technology is making it harder to secure enterprise networks. Cloud computing and mobile devices caused the most concern among survey participants, with 69 percent and 62 percent respectively saying they made security operations and management either much more difficult or somewhat more difficult.

Enterprise security efforts have to expand to include new endpoints
Part of what is making the rapid implementation of new technologies so harmful for enterprise security is that they are causing companies’ attack surfaces to grow without the increased defense to match. Instead of simply setting up a perimeter firewall or putting malware protection on the office desktops, businesses have to expand the entirety of their external and internal IT infrastructure. As Network World contributor Jon Olstik pointed out, organizations need to asses cyber​ threats across their complete attack surface and plan risk mitigation policies that include central management and security controls that cover all endpoints.

With cyberattacks becoming an increasingly serious issue for businesses, companies need to look into deploying a security solution that is able to protect networks from every entry point. One of the most reliable methods is implementing Deep Freeze from Faronics. With a simple reboot, the system removes all the unwanted changes or malware and returns the configuration to the way they were before a security intrusion took place or malware found its way onto a network.

The Faronics system restore software i.e. Deep Freeze Enterprise freezes the configuration of the system. This enables organizations to reboot to the predetermined settings and preserve the integrity of workstations while removing harmful programs or software. Utilizing such a program allows companies to greatly decrease the amount of information that can be lost due to a security breach and money lost while mitigating the effects of such an event.