Overview

In this exclusive webinar, CyberMaxx CISO Thomas Pioreck will walk you through a real-world breach scenario—highlighting the critical decisions that can either prevent or escalate a cyber crisis.

Key takeaways:

• The full impact of cyber-attacks—beyond financial loss
• How integrated cybersecurity tools can stop threats in their tracks
• Lessons from organizations that successfully defended against attacks

This session is essential for business leaders, IT professionals, and anyone responsible for safeguarding operations.

Featuring:
Lisa Burke, Chief Customer Officer at CyberMaxx| Thomas Pioreck, CISO at CyberMaxx | Lee Crockett, Director of Sales at Advanced Logic

The post On Demand Webinar: Avoiding Your Worst Day – What Every Business Leader Needs to Know About Cybersecurity appeared first on CyberMaxx.

This attack could be a large-scale cybersecurity breach involving sophisticated hacks, malware, or data theft. No matter the size or type of incident, having a well-planned and tested response process is essential to minimizing damage and ensuring business continuity.

A well-designed incident response (IR) plan is essential for minimizing the damage from a data breach. It should be a combination of people, processes, and technology that are documented, tested, and trained for.

An incident response plan is essential for any organization that wants to be prepared for a data security incident. A comprehensive plan will ensure that everyone knows what to do in the event of an incident, from the information security team to the rest of the organization. By having a well-thought-out incident response plan, you can minimize the damage caused by an incident and be back up and running as soon as possible.

Why Incident Response Plans are important?

The aftermath of a security breach can be devastating for any organization. Without a well-defined incident response plan, the consequences can be long-lasting and far-reaching.

From being locked out of systems to loss of customer trust and law enforcement involvement, the fallout from a security event can be severe.

In the event of a potential incident, having a vetted plan in place can mean the difference between winning and losing. An outside party such as an insurer or key technology partner can provide invaluable context specific to your industry vertical and/or technology ecosystem that can help you win the day.

How to Develop and Implement an Incident Response Plan

As the aftermath of a data breach can be devastating to your reputation, it is crucial that you are prepared to control the situation. By taking proactive steps, you can protect your brand in the event of a data breach.

An incident response plan is essential for any business that wants to be prepared in the event of a data breach. By having a plan in place, you can minimize the damage and get your business back up and running as quickly as possible.

Step 1: Identify + Prioritize Assets

Data assets are crucial to an organization’s day-to-day operations and need to be properly protected. Identify where these assets are kept and assess the consequences of theft or damage. Taking measures to prevent loss will help keep your organization running smoothly.

Different organizations will have different priorities when it comes to identifying and protecting their assets. However, it is generally advisable to prioritize assets according to their importance and the level of risk they pose. This will help to justify any security budget and show executives which assets need to be protected and why this is essential.

Step 2: Identify Potential Risks

Determine what risks and attacks are the greatest current threats. The current landscape of risks and attacks is always changing, so it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest threats.

For businesses that operate online, their greatest risk may come from vulnerabilities in their code. For a brick-and-mortar organization that offers WiFi to its customers, the biggest risk may be unsecured Internet access. Other companies might prioritize physical security, while others focus on securing remote access applications.

Examples of possible risks:

• Loss or theft: Stolen or lost laptops/phones that are breached
• External or removable media: executed from removable media (flash drives, external hard drives)
• Attrition: Brute force methods – password cracking
• Web: Site or web-based app execution
• Email security: Open an email message or attachment that contains malware
• Impersonation: SCL injection attacks, rogue wireless access points
• Running a service like vulnerability scanning can be a huge help to see what potential entry points exist (MAXX VRM).

Step 3: Establish Procedures

If your organization doesn’t have established procedures in place, an employee who panics could make security blunders that could be damaging. Having procedures in place can help prevent this from happening.

Included procedures should a data breach happen:

• Activity baseline – This helps to identify breaches and/or pinpoint data needed to help with the breach
• How to identify and contain a breach
• How to record information on the breach
• Communications plan
• What defenses to approach
• Employee training

As your organization grows and changes, so too will your security policies and procedures. It is important to keep employees up-to-date on these changes, through training and communication. That way, everyone understands the importance of security and knows what to do in case of an incident. Depending on the size and needs of an organization, the need to outsource some or all of your security functions may arise (MAXX Response).

No matter what, employee education is key to maintaining a safe and secure workplace.

Step 4: Response Team Creation

In the event of a data breach, you will need to quickly organize an incident response team in order to minimize the damage and restore operations as soon as possible. This team will be responsible for coordinating your organization’s actions and resources during the security incident.

Team roles and responsibilities (This can vary depending on the size of the organization):

• Team lead
• Lead investigator
• Communications lead
• C-suite representative
• IT director
• Public relations
• Documentations and timeline lead
• HR lead
• Legal representative
• Breach response experts

Be sure to have a well-rounded response team that is composed of individuals with different skill sets. This way, you can be confident that all aspects of your organization are covered in the event of a crisis. Furthermore, make sure that everyone on the team understands their role in the plan.

Step 5: Training Staff

An incident response plan is only the first step. To be prepared for a data breach, employees need to be properly trained on the plan and know what to do afterward.

Employees play an important role in keeping company security (Remember: The Human Error factor is one of the greatest threats to any organization). They should be vigilant for attempts to steal information, such as phishing emails, spear phishing attacks, and social engineering scams. By being aware of these dangers, employees can help protect their company from data breaches.

Tabletop exercises are a great way to test your employees’ responses to a potential data breach. By simulating a real-world scenario, led by a facilitator, these exercises help to familiarize your staff with their incident response roles. Not only do tabletop exercises require time and money, but they play a vital role in preparing your employees for an actual data breach.

After testing employees, gaps in their knowledge can be identified and addressed so that the organization’s incident response plan can be improved. By doing this, areas to be improved can be identified in real time so team members can get the feedback they need, without any actual risk to the organization’s assets.

In Conclusion

At CyberMaxx we like to stress that it’s not a matter of if but when an organization will become a target of a cyber-attack.

Proactive measures should always be taken as the first line of defense:

• Network IDS/IPS
• Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR)
• Vulnerability Risk Management (VRM)
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Should an attack be successfully launched and a breach occurs, taking the time to create an incident response plan and train employees on what to do and how to carry out the plan is a great tool to help mitigate the damage of a breach.

The post What is an Incident Response Plan and How to Create One? appeared first on CyberMaxx.

In recent years, we have seen a number of high-profile data breaches affecting small and large businesses. As a result, data security has been a top priority for regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

On May 24, 2022, The FTC released a new publication that provides guidance to financial institutions and their service providers about the FTC’s revised Safeguards Rule under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

Why Should You Care?

Well, it’s a law and if an organization is found not to have complied with these requirements, impending fines and sanctions will be imposed.

That’s not even the bad part. Taking the initiative and making sure that these guidelines are implemented within an organization can drastically reduce the probability of falling into a data breach. One that could result in a loss of trust, an embarrassment in the public, and ransomware fees in excess of $4M to $10M.

Give Me the Cliff Notes

Let’s cut to the chase, here are the highlighted actions all financial institutions that fall under Federal Trade Commission (FTC) law (That’s a majority of financial services organizations conducting business in the US) must comply with by December, 9th, 2022:

• Base your information security program on a risk assessment
• Implementing and periodically reviewing access controls
• Implement policies, procedures, and controls designed to monitor and log the activity
• Continuous monitoring or periodic penetration testing and vulnerability assessments
• Annual penetration testing of your information systems determined each given year
• Vulnerability assessments at least every six months
• Utilizing qualified information security personnel employed by you or an affiliate or service provider (Teaser: CyberMaxx is your friend)
• Establish a written incident response plan designed to promptly respond to, and recover from, any security event materially affecting the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of customer information in your control

What’s the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act?

As businesses continue to collect and store more data, it is becoming increasingly important for them to have strong data security measures in place. This is especially true for financial institutions subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which regulates how these institutions must protect customer information.

Under the GLBA, companies that offer consumers products and services like loans, financial advice, or insurance must explain their information-sharing practices to customers and take measures to keep sensitive data secure.

FTC Safeguards Rule: What Your Business Needs to Know

“FTC Safeguards Rule: What Your Business Needs to Know” is a new publication from the Federal Trade Commission that outlines their continued interest in regulating data security for businesses subject to GLBA. This is something that all businesses under FTC jurisdiction should be aware of, as they may now be more likely to face regulatory action.

In order to protect customer information, financial institutions and their service providers must maintain certain safeguards. These safeguards are outlined in detail in the FTC’s Safeguards Rule.

This Rule broadly defines what counts as a financial institution, including non-banking businesses such as check-cashing services, payday lenders, mortgage brokers, nonbank lenders, personal property or real estate appraisers, professional tax preparers, courier services, and credit reporting agencies.

In December 2021, in response to feedback from financial services companies and their third-party service providers, the FTC amended its Safeguards Rule. This new version of the Rule provides more concrete guidance on what information security safeguards financial institutions must implement as part of their overall program. Unlike previous versions of this Rule and other similar regulations promulgated by federal financial regulators, this new Rule includes specific criteria that must be met in order for a company’s security measures to be considered adequate.

What Can You do to Start Complying?

Your organization may be subject to the Safeguards Rule (most likely it is), so it’s important to take steps to ensure compliance.

1. Identify Your Organization’s “Qualified Individual”

The FTC’s amendments to the rule include designating someone within your organization to be the “Qualified Individual.” This person is responsible for ensuring that your organization complies with the rule and overseeing the development and execution of the organization’s security program. They will also be required to report to the company’s board of directors.

Even if a decision to outsource data privacy and security support to an MDR/XDR provider like CyberMaxx, the organization will still need to designate an internal Qualified Individual.

2. Needed: Encryption Services

Safeguards Rule requires that all sensitive customer data be encrypted at rest and in motion. Data can move in many ways and for a variety of reasons, so this is a broad requirement.

3. Access Controls – Does Your Organization Have Them?

Periodic reevaluation over who in the organization has access to what information, and for how long is a requirement under the new guidelines. One way to reduce the likelihood of data breaches is to restrict access to information on a need-to-know basis. By not permitting all employees to view all data at all times, you make it more difficult for hackers to access sensitive information.

4. Review Applications and Partners

Organizations should take a close look at their in-house applications and third-party partners to make sure they are meeting all of the requirements laid out in FTC’s Safeguards Rule. Despite best intentions, data breaches happen. And when they do, the consequences can be severe – especially when customer data is involved

How Can CyberMaxx Help?

How can CyberMaxx help you with these updated guidelines under the Safeguards Rule?

The real question is what can’t we help you with?

CyberMaxx offers all the services that are required under the Safeguards Rule:

• Penetration Testing
• Vulnerability Services
• Network IDS/IPS Services
• Risk Assessments
• Incident Response Plans and Playbooks

More and more organizations just like yours have been making the switch to our managed security services.

99%, 72, and 1,000+ are the magic numbers security professionals like yourself are seeing to make the change to CyberMaxx.

CyberMaxx has:

• A 99% customer retention rate
• An NPS of 72
• and that’s all while protecting over a thousand locations

Matched with our mature SOC that has over 20+ years of experience, our free trials are showing these organizations the difference we bring while keeping their current protection in place.”

Let’s talk. Time is running out and we want to make sure you aren’t caught by the FTC or a bad actor.

The post FTC Releases Guidance on New Safeguards Rules…Why You Should Care. Ready? appeared first on CyberMaxx.

Effective incident response is not solely the ability to detect threats, but the process, capability, and capacity to prepare for, respond to, mitigate, and recover from cyber-attacks.

With customized solutions and a variety of support services, CyberMaxx is ready because it’s not if, but when protection like this is needed.

Video Transcript

Attackers are always finding new ways to infiltrate and destroy your business from the inside.

Whether an unmitigated vulnerability or a sophisticated cyber actor, cybersecurity incidents can have a significant negative impact on any organization.

• 83% of organizations have had more than one data breach.
• 60% of organizations’ breaches led to increases in prices passed on to customers.
• And the average total cost of a data breach is over $4 million dollars.

With MAXX Response from CyberMaxx, organizations can take precautions to be better prepared should a data breach happen… because it’s not when, but how often.

CyberMaxx DFIR services include:

• Tabletop Exercises
• Incident Response Retainers
• Incident Response Playbook Development
• Incident Response Plan Review
• Threat Hunting
• General Security Consulting

Effective incident response is not solely the ability to detect threats, but the process, capability, and capacity to prepare for, respond to, mitigate, and recover from cyber-attacks.

Our MAXX Response service provides a dedicated team of on-call experts, 24/7/365, to offer the Incident Response resources and expertise needed when it matters most.

CyberMaxx, be as prepared as possible for a critical compromise to your network with a team of incident response experts. It’s a Win-Win.

The post MAXX Response – Effective DFIR Services [VIDEO] appeared first on CyberMaxx.

With cybersecurity attacks and costly data breaches on the rise, and a wide range of industries being targeted, companies of all sizes should be preparing for the worst. Just as we prepare for a natural disaster, companies should prepare for a cybersecurity disaster, and in both instances, proper planning, preparation, and practicing potential scenarios is key.

When it comes to cybersecurity, tabletop exercises are a powerful tool to help your organization perform better during real-world cybersecurity attacks. A tabletop exercise can be defined as an activity in which key personnel gathers to discuss a simulated crisis situation and their potential response. It is important to understand that a table exercise is not an active simulation, exercise, or drill, it’s an exercise that aids preparation.

As you prepare to tackle your first exercise? Consider these 6 questions to ask before you begin your tabletop exercise:

Question 1: What are my Exercise Goals?

The goal of a tabletop exercise is not to produce a comprehensive cybersecurity attack incident response plan, instead, it should be a planning activity where you discuss and identify deficiencies, along with corresponding corrective actions, that leads to a comprehensive plan. The most common goals we see in practice today are:

• To achieve compliance with a regulation, policy, or standard
• To validate the effectiveness of cybersecurity attack incident response plans
• To evaluate the need for external cyber support resources
• To enhance cybersecurity attack awareness and readiness

Question 2: What is the context of the Cybersecurity Attack?

Before beginning, you’ll need to create a fictional scenario for your team to use as the basis of discussion. Scenarios can be taken from news headlines or created for your specific business needs. Above all, we recommend they be realistic, relevant, and engaging, as well as applicable to your business model.

Question 3: Who are the Exercise Participants?

To ensure a successful tabletop exercise to prepare you for cybersecurity attacks, it’s important to designate key roles:

• The Facilitator: This person leads and guides participants through the exercise. This person can “make or break” the exercise, so choose carefully. Ideally, he or she will have some experience with cybersecurity attack response.
• The Players: Those who will go through the exercise, offering their thoughts and input on how the organization would respond to the cybersecurity attack in this scenario. The participants should be pulled from various departments across the organization.
• The Observers: Those whose primary function will be to take detailed notes of the exercise.

Question 4: Where will the cybersecurity attack exercise take place?

Depending on the size of the group, we suggest scheduling at least 90 minutes and no more than 4 hours for the session, and participants should be invited three weeks in advance. Other factors to consider:

• Do you have a comfortable location and proper room size?
• Will you be serving food and beverages?
• Do you have the equipment you will need such as dry erase boards, microphones, projectors, teleconference/web meeting technology, etc.?

Question 5: How will I conduct the cybersecurity exercise?

We recommend the Facilitator use a PowerPoint presentation to walk the Players through the exercise while following the recommended session flow:

1. The Facilitator presents the scenario.
2. The Facilitator walks the Players through the exercise, asking questions to facilitate a discussion, drilling down into certain areas of responses when applicable.
3. After the discussion, the Facilitator will summarize and re-state the events that have occurred thus far in the fictional cybersecurity attack.
4. Once the discussion has been restated, or checkpoint one, the Facilitator should introduce a scenario injection or poke holes in the initial approach. This is designed to stimulate the unforeseen occurrences that invariably occur during a real-world incident response.
5. It’s good to then have a second checkpoint where the findings from the meeting are restated before moving on to the debriefing to ensure all points have been made.

Question 6: How should I Debrief & Report back?

The initial debriefing should be done verbally with all participants before the exercise is concluded. This is the ideal opportunity to get feedback from the participants while the information is fresh on their minds. During the debriefing, ask three simple questions:

1. “What worked well?”
2. “What did not work well?”
3. “Which areas require improvement?”

The result of the debrief will serve as the basis of the findings, observations, and recommendations for the written report. The final cybersecurity attack report should be distributed to the appropriate stakeholders, ensuring that someone is accountable for tracking the corrective actions that will help your organization be prepared.

The Outcome: An Incident Response Plan

The findings of your tabletop exercise should lead to an incident response plan which will detail how a cybersecurity attack should be handled. While the contents may vary from organization to organization, most consist of standard operating procedures, processes, and communication plans. The benefit of working with an incident response service provider is knowing what is best to include in the plan.

The post 6 Questions To Ask When Creating Your Incident Response Strategy appeared first on CyberMaxx.