You can’t turn on the tv or radio without hearing something related to the Colonial Pipeline hack or its effects right now. We get it. It’s scary and you feel vulnerable. Did you dot all your I’s and cross all of your t’s when it comes to safeguarding your business? In this article, we’re going to take you through the Techneaux perspective on what could have been done to protect the Colonial Pipeline and what you can do to make sure you’re not the next to be targeted.
WHY COLONIAL?
They’re big. They control an oil and gas infrastructure that covers a great deal of the United States. And, well, they were lazy – to a hacker that’s like striking cyber-gold. Imagine discovering that a significant player with a great deal of money didn’t have the proper endpoint protection or proper backups? Bingo.
Without having the proper backups makes you compromised for an attack. The hackers now have the information they need to inject malware into their systems. If this happened to you – would you pay – would you sacrifice everything you put into your business, or is this the wake-up call to be prepared?
HOW TO HAVE PROTECTED COLONIAL
Encryption, Encryption, Encryption. Not only on prim but the cloud as well. Having MDR (Managed Detection and Response) would have given them 24-hour security to protect their systems. It takes logs from all of the different systems and goes to one centralized location. If something seems out of place or looks unusual, it is addressed. If you have an early indicator that something is wrong, it puts you in a much better position to avoid having to pay ransomware. Think of it like the old analogy – canaries in the coal mine, where canaries at one point were sent down into coal mines to test for gas leaks. If the canary didn’t return or if it did and was ailing, there’s a presence of dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. In IT Security, we consider MDR our canary, warning of something dangerous.
Another critical thing to note is that having ongoing monitoring, endpoint protections and daily if not hourly backups is a robust process to have in place. Many people are not aware if they have this in place or the devices they are using are out of date or near the end of life. This, too, puts many people at high risk. In addition, many companies have firewalls set up, but with so many people working remotely these days with their work laptops on their home networks, creating significant risks for companies.
Since the Colonial Pipeline hack, many customers are reaching out to Techneaux for the number of services we provide. From top to bottom inside and out, we truly get to know and understand your business and how to safeguard it from these types of threats. We do Dark Web Breach Scans to find any information out there for sale to want to be hackers. In fact, this practice has become more common and is something we do monthly for our customers. We believe it should be standard practice for everyone.
Making sure your business is protected from cyber threats is more real than ever. Many people believe that because they have a firewall, they are protected and if something happens, their business will only be down for a short time. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Making sure you’re protected is very serious. The average downtime for a company that is entirely down is 15 days. Most companies can’t survive that amount of time. Even if they do, many of their clients will stop doing business and they will not be able to attract new business because you appear unstable.
Now that we know the number of cyber threats happening, it’s safe for most businesses to assume that they have been breached. We can help you better understand where your business stands by providing a free cybersecurity risk assessment and making sure that you’re not the next Colonial Pipeline. Ready to secure your business? Give us a call at 800-3376-5313