Source: Dark Reading Author: Erich Kron URL: https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/top-10-most-probable-ways-company-can-be-hacked
ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
A data-driven cybersecurity strategy prioritizes addressing root causes of attacks rather than symptoms, ensuring proactive defense against evolving cyber threats.
MAIN POINTS:
- A data-driven cybersecurity strategy relies on real data, not intuition, to protect critical assets.
- Understanding attack root causes prevents vulnerabilities rather than just mitigating attack symptoms.
- Social engineering is the primary attack method, exploiting human behavior through phishing, vishing, and other deceptive techniques.
- Programming bugs create exploitable security weaknesses, often due to coding errors or outdated software.
- Authentication attacks exploit credential vulnerabilities using brute force, MFA bypass, and credential stuffing.
- Malicious scripting abuses legitimate programming tools like PowerShell to execute harmful actions.
- Human errors and misconfigurations, such as overly permissive permissions, frequently lead to security breaches.
- Eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks intercept and manipulate sensitive communications.
- Brute-force attacks leverage computing power to crack weak passwords and encryption keys.
- Insider threats pose significant risks as they originate from trusted individuals with legitimate access.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Prioritize addressing root causes like social engineering and unpatched software over reacting to attack symptoms.
- Focus cybersecurity efforts on protecting the most critical assets and identifying likely attack vectors.
- Human error and misconfigurations remain major security risks that require training and strict access controls.
- Security teams must avoid distraction from news-driven threats and instead rely on their own risk assessments.
- Preventing future attacks demands continuous evaluation of vulnerabilities rather than just responding to incidents.