Expert Speak

Security Fatigue is Real: Here’s How to Overcome it

Published

1 year ago

November 24, 2022

Written by Phil Muncaster, the guest writer at ESET

IT security is often regarded as the “Department of No” and sometimes it’s easy to see why. In a world of escalating cyber risk, expanding attack surfaces, and a fast-growing cybercrime economy, security teams are understandably keen to limit the damage their employees could cause. After all, it takes just one misplaced click to unleash a potentially devastating ransomware compromise. But when the burden on employees becomes too high, they may react in unexpected ways, which actually increases cyber risk in the organization.

This is known as “security fatigue” and it in a worst-case scenario it can lead to reckless and impulsive behavior – quite the opposite of what IT teams want. To tackle it, security needs to work more seamlessly, limiting the number of decisions users need to make and rebalancing protection and productivity for a world of hybrid working.

What is security fatigue and how bad is it?
Humans are often thought of as the weakest link in the corporate security chain. That’s why IT security departments are so keen to mitigate the risk from (not just) negligent insiders. On the one hand, they’re right. An estimated 67% of companies experienced between 21 and over 40 insider incidents in 2021, up from 60% in 2020 and costing them an average of over US$15m to remediate.

However, when staff feel bombarded by security warnings, policy rules and procedures at work, and media stories of breaches and threats in their spare time, a state of exhaustion may set in. This security fatigue is characterized by a feeling of helplessness and loss of control. Individuals may find it all so overwhelming that they retreat from corporate policy and go their own way. There may also be a sense of resignation: that breaches are going to happen whatever they do, so they might as well ignore all those stressful security alerts.

It’s more common than you might think. A 2018 study revealed that over half (55%) of EMEA employees are not regularly thinking about cybersecurity, and nearly a fifth (17%) aren’t concerned about it at all. Evidence suggests that younger staff are even more prone to become fatigued by excessive security demands.

What are the top symptoms of security fatigue?
Unfortunately, this could have a seriously destabilizing impact on corporate security. Among the tell-tale signs of security, fatigue is employees who:

Take more risks with phishing emails, perhaps deciding to click through on links or open attachments out of interest.
Practice poor password management, such as reusing weak credentials across multiple accounts. According to one recent study, 43% of employees admit to sharing logins and even avoiding their work altogether to reduce the stress of logging in.
Log-in to corporate networks without a VPN, although this may be restricted in some organizations.
Use unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots when out and about to log in to sensitive corporate accounts.
Fail to update their devices and machines regularly. A new EY study claims Gen Z and Gen Y employees are far more likely than older colleagues to disregard mandatory patches for as long as possible.
Fail to report incidents immediately to superiors or the IT department. The same EY study reveals that nearly a fifth (16%) of employees would try to handle a suspected breach by themselves, rather than notify someone else.
Use work devices for personal use, including risky activities such as internet downloads, gaming and online shopping. One study claims that half of the employees now see their work devices as their personal property.
Circumvent security in other ways: Another report reveals that 31% of office workers aged 18-24 have tried to bypass policy.

How to tackle security fatigue
The rapid shift to mass home working in 2020 triggered a knee-jerk response in many organizations as IT teams sought to limit their risk exposure by placing onerous new rules on their employees. Now the hybrid workplace is beginning to emerge from the ashes of the pandemic, there’s an opportunity to revisit these restrictions, with an eye on reducing the risk of security fatigue.

Consider the following:

Listen to your end-users to better understand how security impacts workflows and disrupts productivity. Try to design policies that better balance the needs of employees with the need to minimize cyber risk.
Limit the number of security decisions users need to make. That could mean automatic software patching, remote security software installation, and management of laptops and devices. And running detection and response services in the background to catch and contain threats when they breach network defenses.
Support enhanced log-in security while minimizing effort, with password managers, biometric-based two-factor authentication, and single sign-on (SSO).
Limit the number of security-related messages you bombard users with. Less is more.
Make security awareness training more fun, via shorter sessions (10-15 minutes) that use real-world simulations and gamification, to change behavior.

For security to work effectively, you need to create a culture where every employee understands the crucial role they play in keeping the organization safe and proactively wants to play their part. That kind of culture can take time to build. But it starts with understanding and tackling the causes of security fatigue.

Expert Speak

Don’t Brush It Off – Plan Your Incident Response Now

Published

3 days ago

December 5, 2023

Edward Frank

In business, impermanence is the only certainty. An example is how organizations addressed the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few weeks, many developed a plan to run their businesses remotely.

More than three-quarters of organizations worldwide don’t have an IT incident response plan in place because most believe they have little risk of becoming a cyberattack statistic. Unfortunately, that’s still likely to happen.

According to africanews, in the past year, Kenya has experienced a concerning rise in cyberattacks, with a remarkable 860 million incidents documented in 2022.

As wisely expressed by Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.” Let’s explore a strategic incident response plan for your organization.

Create a Backup
Business networks are complex and large, and oftentimes, a network outage results in financial and reputational repercussions, including disgruntled clients. It’s imperative to create a backup of critical data and systems that you can’t run your business without, and store it in a safe location. When the inevitable breach occurs, your business will be able to recover as quickly as possible.

Never Say Never
While a workforce continuity plan might seem unimportant and nonurgent, the pandemic prompted IT departments worldwide to quickly realize the importance of being able to rapidly change the way their organizations conducted business.

Here are a few steps to help you draft a business continuity plan to address the next disruption:

Form a team with representatives from each department and understand their workflow.
Identify critical business functions and find a way to prioritize them.
Assess the risks for every process in your organization and record them.
Develop a risk mitigation strategy to protect your critical business functions from those risks.
Document the entire procedure and keep it up to date.

Train Your Employees
A common hurdle with an incident response plan is ensuring that employees take the plan seriously. To deter the mindset that the plan is “less urgent,” educate employees about its importance and the repercussions that can result from cyber threats and cyber incidents. It’s vital to conduct regular training sessions to address hardware failures, software glitches, network outages, and security breaches so that you efficiently mitigate a cybersecurity incident.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
Understand the points of failure in your previous incidents and find a way to rectify them. Single points of failure should be addressed by establishing a backup, not just in terms of network and systems but also in terms of staff allocation. Relying on a single person, especially when it comes to a critical network, is not a great idea. Delegate a second person to reach out and provide assistance in case of an incident.

While incident response might seem insignificant in the larger scheme of things, when a disaster hits, it could potentially devastate your business. Take some time to prioritize incident management and make it part of your organization’s culture by creating a backup, training your employees, drafting a workplace continuity plan, and learning from your past incidents. Learn more about IT incident management for your business.

Cyber Security

Cybersecurity on a Budget: Affordable Cybersecurity Strategies for Small Businesses

Published

1 week ago

November 29, 2023

Edward Frank

According to a survey by Statista, typically, global enterprises dedicate a minimum of 12% of their IT expenditure to information security measures. While larger companies can afford to spend a lot on building a robust cybersecurity strategy, smaller businesses cannot. So, let’s explore some affordable cybersecurity strategies for small businesses that may cost less but have a greater impact.

Train your employees
An article from Forbes found that, annually, 34% of businesses worldwide encounter incidents involving insider attacks. Whether intentional or unintentional, employees tend to be the reason for most data breaches. Per the same article, phishing emails account for 67% of accidental insider attacks.

Phishing attacks mostly instil a sense of urgency in the victim, making it harder for them to think clearly before making a decision. For example, employees may click an email announcement about a bonus that actually came from a malicious outsider impersonating your company’s CEO.

To avoid such mistakes, it’s imperative to train employees on the types of phishing attacks and the ways to identify them. Even going as far as sending a mock phishing email occasionally to test their instincts and educate them can go a long way.

Assess your vulnerabilities
One of the most important cybersecurity strategies is to assess all your risk points by periodically reviewing all your business processes. Pay more attention to teams that deal with a lot of customer data. For instance, sales and marketing teams may handle customer data on a day-to-day basis, so they are at high risk of leaking or mishandling data. Assess their daily activities, create a record of all the risk points, and find ways to mitigate them.

Encrypt your data
Encrypting your data can be an effective method to protect it in case of data leaks. Let’s say a hacker gets hold of your company’s data, but it’s encrypted. Unless the hacker gets the encryption key from you, they cannot access your company’s data. This adds another layer of protection in addition to the everyday cybersecurity best practices that you should be following in your company. So make it a point to encrypt all your data, especially sensitive and critical data.

Limit access to critical data
Not everyone requires access to all data. Try to limit access to critical and sensitive data to fewer employees by basing access on work duties or requiring approval for access, making it a multi-step process to access it. Additionally, periodically review who has access to what data to ensure there aren’t any misallocations of access.

Secure your Wi-Fi
A secure network will reduce the chances of a hack or unauthorized access to your sensitive data. So switch your Wi-Fi to WPA2 or later, as it offers more security. Your business might already be using it, but it’s best to be sure. Additionally, change the name of your SSID and have a strong pre-shared key to keep your Wi-Fi safe from hackers.

Prevent physical theft
Through April 2023, there were 3,785 robberies in London, and 1,765 were of mobile phones. This highlights how important it is to secure your physical assets, as they might contain critical and sensitive information about your organization.

Here are some ways to protect your physical assets, such as PCs, laptops, scanners, and printers:

Restrict unauthorized access to assets.
Install a physical tracker on all devices to track down lost items.
Enable remote wiping of data to erase information if a device is lost.

Cybersecurity strategies are seldom drafted with affordability in mind. However, it is crucial to consider them from a financial perspective, as small businesses are also increasingly susceptible to cyberattacks. These tips can help you take the first step toward creating a secure IT environment. Learn more about cybersecurity solutions for your business.

Cyber Security

Managed Security Service: Right Choice for Your Company?

Published

2 weeks ago

November 22, 2023

Edward Frank

Written by Lev Matveev, SearchInform Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors

75% of information security experts consider insider threats more dangerous than hacker attacks. This is proven by the SearchInform survey conducted annually. Insider threats include data loss, fraud, theft, kickbacks, business on the side, etc. These are serious risks for any business, resulting in major financial losses, reputational damage and fines from law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, many companies still do not ensure reliable protection against insider threats.

The reasons are the following:

Hardware and software for data protection are costly
The market lacks data security experts
SMEs cannot compete with large enterprises to engage professionals.

According to our 2022 survey, one-third of companies recognize an acute shortage of information security experts and cannot ensure protection in-house. Therefore, in 2019 we decided to launch a managed security service based on our protection solutions, which gives the opportunity to use them without hiring security specialists.

The SearchInform service provides protection against data breaches, internal fraud, document forgery and other violations by employees. It solves the tasks of monitoring employee working hours, compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, and many more.

We take on all tasks that are usually handled by in-house security staff. Our experts install and maintain security software, customize security policies for effective control, constantly monitor the situation in the company, detect incidents and investigate them. The client receives detailed and visual reports, as well as emergency alerts if it is required to take urgent measures and prevent an incident.

Availing the service, the client does not need to hire a security expert and therefore does not need to spend on social benefits, vacations or sick leaves. The client’s business remains protected if a security employee resigns or takes an unpaid leave. At the same time, our analyst has diverse work experience, knows the solutions well and has all the necessary competencies to work with them. Since we are unacquainted with the client’s employees, our expert will be impartial and will not take anyone’s side. All this allows the clients to save time and money.

When do companies really need MSS?
According to our observations, the service is the best choice for companies with 30-500 employees and without an in-house IS department. When the staff number increases, top managers can no longer control everything and face a high risk of incidents.

Here are a few common situations when you should choose managed security service.

A company does not have internal security officers or lacks the budget to form a security department. Our service was originated to make data security more affordable. It significantly reduces the company’s costs, as there is no need to purchase software licenses, hardware, or hire a full-time information security officer.
Full-scale protection is required immediately. Companies often turn to managed security services after an incident has already occurred. It becomes clear that to prevent this in future, it is necessary to implement special security software, purchase additional equipment, and hire a data security officer. These steps will take a lot of time. The service will start protecting your business within 1-2 days.
A company is not sure that the purchase of security systems will pay off eventually. Our service is an opportunity to test them in real conditions and assess whether they are worth purchasing in each specific case. One first month of the service is free.
A company wants to conduct a security audit and get a complete picture of the corporate security. The service allows you to quickly find out what data is stored, where exactly it is stored and whether there are access rights violations. As far as the first month, our expert detects cases of corporate fraud, document forgery and other violations, as well as cases of idleness, business on the side or work for competitors.
For compliance with regulatory requirements. More and more regulations are being adopted or waiting to be adopted. SAMA, GDPR, and DCC incentivize companies to take measures to ensure data security. Some regulations, such as the UAE Information Security Regulation issued by the United Arab Emirates Telecommunications and Digital Technology Authority, even stipulate the use of DLP as a means of preventing data loss. To avoid the risk of hefty fines or lawsuits for non-compliance, you can use our managed security service.

I believe that outsourced data security should soon become as widespread as outsourced accounting or IT services. It is just a matter of time.

SearchInform offers a free trial version for one month!

During this month, clients can assess whether the service really meets their needs. According to our experience, 100% of companies discover some kind of problems during the trial, ranging from the idleness of their employees to corporate fraud and confidential data leakage. 70% of companies that request a free trial continue to work with us.

Request a free trial of the service for one month!

Contact us for more information:
Email: uae@searchinform.com
Office Address: 10C-15, I-Rise Tower, Hessa Street, Barsha Heights, Dubai, UAE.

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