Information Security Threats And Vulnerabilities – A security vulnerability refers to an undesirable characteristic of a computing component that multiplies the likelihood of an adverse event.

A security vulnerability is defined as an unintended feature of a computing component or system configuration that increases the risk of an adverse event or loss resulting from accidental exposure, intentional attack, or conflict with a new system component. This article explains the definition and types of security vulnerabilities and shares some best practices for 2021.

Information Security Threats And Vulnerabilities

A security vulnerability is an unintended feature of a computing component or system configuration that increases the risk of an adverse event or loss resulting from accidental exposure, deliberate attack, or conflict with a new system component.

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By definition, unlike security, vulnerabilities can be corrected through software patches, reconfigurations, user training, firmware updates, or hardware replacement.

It may be inevitable. As digital systems evolve, new vulnerabilities also emerge. It is important not to take the security and health of your systems for granted. This can expose your business to potential cyber threats.

Most importantly, it is important for companies to take ownership of vulnerabilities, even when unintentional or unavoidable. This reassures your users and customers that you take the security and privacy of their data seriously.

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There are a variety of ways security vulnerabilities can enter a system, either through internal negligence or external oversight. These include:

Code vulnerabilities arise suddenly at the time of software development. There may be logic errors that lead to security flaws. For example, creating a lifecycle of access rights that an attacker can seize. Software can accidentally transmit sensitive data without encryption, and even if you use random encryption strings, they are not random enough. Sometimes, a software development life cycle can be too long, with multiple developers working on the project, leaving certain features unfinished.

Ideally, all of these vulnerabilities should be found and patched during testing/QA, but they can infiltrate the supply chain and impact the enterprise.

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Incorrect configuration is another common error when setting up enterprise IT systems. For example, at the most basic level, an administrator may forget to switch from the default configuration of the software, leaving the system vulnerable.

Misconfigured cloud systems, incorrect network configurations, hasty Wi-Fi setup, and failure to limit non-work device use can increase your risk exposure exponentially. Fortunately, these vulnerabilities are relatively easy to fix. This is typically caused by an overburdened IT team, often requiring the involvement of additional personnel, such as a managed services provider.

Configuring trust means allowing data exchange with software and hardware systems. For example, mounted hard drives can allow computing clients to read sensitive data without requiring additional permissions. A trust relationship can exist between Active Directory and account records, ensuring uninterrupted data flow between sources that are not continuously monitored.

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Once an attacker gains access to an affected system, he or she could exploit this trust configuration vulnerability to spread the infection from the original system and bring down the entire IT environment.

This has been shown to be one of the most common causes of vulnerabilities in both consumer and enterprise systems. Users tend to stick with easy and comfortable credentialing methods, prioritizing ease of use over security.

For example, it’s now common (despite expert recommendation) to store passwords and account credentials in password managers built into browsers. Weak passwords that use common alphanumeric strings (123456, passw0rd, etc.) and passwords that reuse personal data such as names are potential weaknesses.

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These security vulnerabilities can be suppressed at two levels through forced authentication processes such as user recognition and password expiration.

Unencrypted data streams are a huge risk and can lead to serious data breaches. Data encryption ensures that your information cannot be decrypted or understood by anyone with malicious intent, even if the underlying storage platform falls into the wrong hands.

Unfortunately, encryption still lags behind the pace of digital innovation and the resulting document digitization. The study Opens a new window found that although mobile data storage is now a major focus for encryption, organizations have yet to address these vulnerabilities in USB sticks, laptops and portable hard drives. Ideally, data should be properly encrypted both in motion and at rest.

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Vulnerabilities arising from insider threats are difficult to detect and even more difficult to prevent. This is especially true in a remote work environment. According to Forrester, one in three security breaches in 2021 will result from insider threats, an 8 percentage point increase from the previous year.

There are a variety of reasons why employees may be vulnerable to insider threat-related vulnerabilities, from poorly considered hiring practices and background checks to organizational malice and geopolitical forces. With most employees working from home, it can be difficult to detect unusual behavior that could indicate an internal threat within your organization.

Psychological vulnerabilities are also human-generated, but unlike insider threats, they are not intentional and everyone is vulnerable. As humans, we are driven by core psychological impulses such as the need for self-preservation, the need to store/acquire exclusive benefits, and the fear of risk.

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Hackers typically exploit these vulnerabilities through social engineering. They persuade consumers that they need to take action to enjoy a benefit or avoid a bad situation. A simple example is the psychological vulnerability that causes many users to click on emails falsifying promotional discounts and download malware onto their systems.

Authentication vulnerabilities arise when there are not enough checks and balances to reset passwords and credentials. This means that hackers can exploit the “forgot password” option on any login system to take over accounts and find backdoors to launch account takeover (ATO) attacks.

Confirmation questions can be too easy to guess. For example, your date of birth is publicly available through social media. Or, the system may not follow multi-factor authentication procedures, which means an intrusion from a single device cannot affect account security.

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Misconfigured web applications can be vulnerable to injection flaws. When an application receives user input through an online form and feeds it into a backend database, command, or operating system call, that application is exposed to injection attacks such as SQL, XML, or LDAP injection.

Basically, this vulnerability allows hackers to insert a backdoor into a web app’s data stream and even inject malicious code that redirects user data or causes the app to read, update, or delete user data without the user’s permission. Injection vulnerabilities are commonly the cause of data breaches.

Exposure of sensitive data can occur in a variety of ways. Simple human carelessness can result in data being uploaded to public websites or commonly accessed databases. Inadequate access controls can result in employees taking control of large databases containing sensitive information.

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Unlike data breaches, there is not always malicious intent behind these scenarios. Human error or system misconfiguration can result in sensitive data (intellectual property, user credentials, personally identifiable information, payment details, etc.) being placed in the wrong location where it can be easily exploited.

Regular log analysis and detailed log recording are essential to suppress security vulnerabilities. Otherwise, unauthorized entities could enter your computing environment without anyone knowing before it is too late.

Typically, hackers or malicious bots leave their wake in the form of strange system signals that are visible through log analysis. Performing irregular monitoring or scheduled analysis only at specific times of the day/week/month leaves the system vulnerable to attacks when there is no supervisor to watch for suspicious behavior.

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Lastly, the downside of joint tenancy is an unavoidable reality in the cloud era. Public cloud solutions operate in a multi-tenant model where a set of shared resources are leased to different organizations at different times depending on the scale of their resource requirements.

If one tenant is compromised, the attack has the potential to spread to other organizations in the cloud by exploiting shared tenancy vulnerabilities. That’s why organizations that handle sensitive information, such as banks, schools, and hospitals, choose to divide their workload between public and private tenants to keep their most sensitive data separate.

Identifying vulnerabilities in a timely manner before criminals can exploit them can save your organization significant savings in terms of penalties, customer trust, and corporate reputation. Considering the average data breach costs $3.86 million, it’s a smarter idea to proactively identify security vulnerabilities.

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A network audit uncovers the hardware, software, and services running on your network and determines if any undocumented or unauthorized entities are in the workplace. Especially after a transformative event such as a merger, acquisition, or business expansion, it is a good idea to conduct an audit and review inherited technical debt, new industry standards, and broader network assets for non-compliance. .

The computing environment generates real-time and historical logs that provide visibility into the health and performance of your IT stack. Real-time log analysis uncovers abnormal objects, hidden vulnerabilities in source code, and signs of system malfunction due to misconfiguration. You can associate log data across the computing elements you want to track.

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