Incident reporting is part of many organizations' security program, providing them with a structured way of documenting, responding to, and learning from cyberattacks.
A seemingly minor security incident can quickly snowball into a serious threat with far-reaching effects, including bringing down your organization. Hence, it’s crucial to understand the importance of security incident reporting, security incident types, and how to prevent them.
What Is a Security Incident?
A security incident refers to any attempted or actual unauthorized access, destruction, or disclosure of sensitive personal data or confidential information. This includes any security breach, actual or potential, that could undermine the confidentiality and availability of data.
Why Should You Report Security Incidents?
Security incident reports typically provide specific information about the incident, like its magnitude, time of occurrence, and impact on individuals or systems. Below are the top reasons to report security incidents.
1. Facilitates Clarity of Responsibilities in Handling Security Incidents
Incident reporting prompts organizations to establish efficient processes to mitigate and remedy security incidents.
Upon detecting an incident, it’s crucial to promptly initiate incident response plans that outline the reporting process. This should include implementing an incident reporting infrastructure that supports automated workflows to alert the right personnel for efficient escalation and mitigation.
It’s also essential for organizations to establish data loss prevention policies that serve as a guide for insiders. These policies should give insiders a clear roadmap outlining their roles and responsibilities when handling company data.
2. Promotes a Culture of Timely Incident Response
Many incidents require immediate detection and prompt action. Organizations that don’t report security incidents risk exposing the entire ecosystem, including third parties, to cyberattacks.
Educating employees about the impacts of potential cybersecurity incidents, like data breaches, and removing barriers to reporting incidents, can transform them into proactive allies in the fight against cyberattacks.
Increased incident reporting raises awareness and encourages individuals to improve their cybersecurity strategies. Moreover, incident reports serve as a blueprint for organizations to extract valuable insights and improve their risk mitigation practices.
3. Ensures Adherence to Regulations
Heavily-regulated sectors, including healthcare and finance, require cyber incidents to be reported, and non-compliance typically results in costly penalties. Critical infrastructure companies are also bound by regulatory laws, such as theCyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA)and GDPR, which require them to report incidents within 72hrs.
4. Protects the Reputation of an Organization
To effectively respond to and recover from security incidents, response plans need to include all stakeholders and keep them updated about the progress. Stakeholders and customers tend to trust organizations that report incidents. This is because such reporting is perceived as evidence of the organization’s competence, commitment to security, and proactive efforts in addressing incidents.
4 Types of Security Incidents and How to Prevent Them
Knowing the various types of security incidents is key to minimizing their harm and strengthening an organization’s resilience against their impact. Here are the common types of security incidents and how to prevent them.
1. Insider Threat
Insider threat refers to accidental or intentional threats to a firm’s security and data. It’s often associated with former or current employees and third parties, including customers, suppliers, and contractors.
To counter insider threats, provide security awareness training to employees and contractors as a prerequisite for accessing the organization’s network. Also, establish and adhere to stringent data backup and archiving routines, and always scan your systems usinganti-spyware software like Norton or Bitdefender.
In addition, implement log monitoring for all systems and devices. Identify and track privileged user accounts for everything, including servers, websites, and apps. If you notice an account with unusual behavior, it could mean someone’s using it to infiltrate the organization’s network.
2. Phishing Attack
Phishing is a type of cyber attack where a perpetrator posing as a reputable person or organization, tricks a victim into sharing sensitive data. To achieve this, the malicious actor sends the target an email or message containing malicious links, which, once clicked, can steal their confidential data, including login credentials and credit card details.
As a general guideline, when uncertain about the authenticity of an email, it’s best to directly contact the legit person or company, refraining from clicking on the links provided in the email.
Organizations can mitigate phishing attacks by strengthening email security. This can be achieved by implementingemail security protocols, specifically by incorporatinganti-spoofing controls like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM for your domains.
3. Man-in-the-Middle Attack
A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack occurs when a malicious actor secretly intercepts, modifies, or deletes data that’s being exchanged between two parties who believe they’re communicating directly with each other.
MITM attacks primarily target e-commerce stores, online banking sites, and open public Wi-Fi hotspots. These attacks can be prevented bychecking the security of the websiteyou’re about to visit and avoiding public Wi-Fi networks (if possible) or using a VPN to protect your public Wi-Fi connections.
Using a VPN encrypts your internet connection, protecting the private data you share, including passwords and credit card details while using public Wi-Fi.
You can also mitigate risks by implementingendpoint security best practices, like installing ESET Endpoint Securityto filter unsolicited email messages. ESET can be configured to automatically scan suspicious emails and websites to defend your devices and networks against cyberattacks and malware.
4. Denial-of-Service Attack
In denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, cybercriminals target machines or networks, preventing legitimate users from accessing them. The main aim of this cyberattack is to make services inaccessible. This is usually achieved by overwhelming the target system or service with traffic until it becomes unresponsive or crashes.
A DoS attack typically uses a small number of attacking machines, possibly one computer, to overwhelm its target. When multiple computers or related devices are used to carry out the attack, it becomes a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
DoS attacks can be successfully launched against various systems, including industrial control systems that support critical processes. Though the risk of these attacks can’t be fully eliminated,knowing the DoS attack typesthat can compromise your systems and machines and having a response plan can make a difference.
While a simple server-crashing DoS attack can be fixed with a system reboot, resolving more intricate attacks may require extra effort. For instance, you can strengthen the security of web servers by configuring them to defend against HTTP and SYN flood requests.
To further enhance defenses, use trusted security software and DoS attack tools that can analyze incoming data packets, classify them as regular or dangerous, and block data that might harm your website.
Also, update your routers and firewalls with the latest security patches to block illegitimate traffic, and consider working with your ISP during an attack to block the attacker’s IP addresses.
Make Incident Reporting the Norm to Combat Cyberattacks
In today’s digital world, organizations should include security incident reporting as part of their standard procedures. The reason behind this is the prevalence of security incidents, like phishing emails, insider threats, and MITM attacks, that can compromise an organization’s systems or data.
Taking proactive measures to prevent an attack is way better than trying to fix the damage caused by one. But first, organizations need to identify potential risks to proactively address them and prevent the recurrence of similar incidents in the future.
