The wake of the COVID-19 outbreak has brought a tremendous change in the way the world used to operate. The sudden need for enacting social distancing has spread a wave of digitization in every possible industry.
With the increase in the use of digital space, the threat of cyberattacks is equally proliferating, making the network unsecured for the business owners to keep up their business operations moving.
Here the only stakeholders who managed to survive without any risk were the ones who had a well-built IT infrastructure attributed to the proper security and flexible working systems.
The arrival of an unexpected crisis had made many small to large enterprises make mistakes that can put them in the situation of threat.
Security mistakes made by the organization’s with COVID-19 outbreak
● Poorly designed remote working digital infrastructure
As mentioned above, organizations don’t focus much on developing a robust digital infrastructure in their company, in spite of the fact that their all data and business operations are dependent on the secured network within the organization.
As the announcement of lockdown was an unexpected move, such organizations were not prepared with their team to shift to a remote working environment.
In the hassle to get things done, companies missed setting a secure remote working network or a VPN for its employees to ensure the safety of company data.
● Lack of endpoint security management
As everyone in the organization is working remotely, all of them are connected to their respective wifi-networks. Many organizations failed to ensure that their corporate laptops are secured with end-point security controls and are configured for off-LAN activities.
There are many more devices connected with the home network which increases the number of endpoint vulnerabilities forming more gateways for cyberattacks.
The companies were also found to be unaware of the information whether the employees using their personal laptop for work have modernized anti-malware security software installed or not.
● Employees being less aware of cyber threat
Remote working employees tend to spend more time working online than the usual office hours, this increases the chances of cyber threat risk as they tend to spend more time online surfing different things.
Currently, in the panicked situation, the biggest mistake a person tends to make is clicking on the untrusted link to help the attackers gain control over the company data. As the networks they are connected to are not well-secured these threats are hardly detected to help them realize being a part of a cyber attack.
● Absence of security monitoring tools
While working remotely, it’s harder for the risk and security management teams to keep an eye on the activities happening in different networks. Here the team needs to ensure that each of their remote workers has a security monitoring tool installed on their work devices that can protect these employees from any prospective threat.
The absence of such security controls makes the business data vulnerable to a data breach attack, man-in-the-middle attack, or phishing attack. Here, the user might be playing the role of a victim without being aware of the scenario.
This calls for a more secure system to be implemented for the businesses.
What is the intrusion prevention system?
IPS is an application or a technology used for network security and threat prevention. It acts as a layer to monitor network traffic to detect and stop it from entering into the system. The system keeps track of the network flow to detect any malicious input or any action that violates the security of the organization.
IPS is a stand-alone technology that detects a malware, collects info about it, reports, and blocks it to keep the network safe to work. These systems are classified into 4 types based on their working.
4 types of IPS system:
● Network-based IPS
Network-based IPS analyses actions of protocols to detect any suspicious activity in the entire network.
● Wireless IPS
These IPS systems monitor wireless networking protocols to detect any harmful activity in wireless network traffic.
● Behaviour analysis of network
IPS systems that work to detect any unusual flow of traffic in the network which are prone to attacks like DOS attack or any activity that promotes the policy violation.
● Host-based IPS
These IPS systems work specifically on securing a single host. It contains an inbuilt software that scans activities or events happening within that host.
The IPS system is also classified based on the network it works for;
3 forms of IPS technology
- Works for specified hardware and software
- IPS features enabled for remote enterprise NSC
- IPS security for Cloud-based network
Moving further, let’s know-how this IPS security system helps the business workers ensure they are working under a safeguard.
How can IPS help the organization to build a safer working environment?
Looking at the current situation when most of the company employees are working remotely, the company devices are out of the secured enterprise network.
The enterprises are enabling the remote workers to use a VPN to ensure the connected devices are under full control of the admin and the security team of enterprises.
To make this network more secure, a layer of IPS can be installed in this VPN that would track the traffic inflow to detect and prevent any spacious request in the network.
The remote workers also have access and dependency on the cloud-based network as they have to retrieve and process the data as and when needed. With the increase in the cloud storage during the pandemic the raise in the security threat is also seen.
IPS Cloud-based network security solution can help enterprises ensure safety while focusing more on the important aspects of the business. Implementing intrusion prevention on the servers and blocking the unauthorized network attack creates a secure virtual environment for the users.
The IPS system enabled by an enterprise, receives a notification or an alert if suspicious activity is detected in the cloud network to alert the organization about the threat and the intrusion to block such users. Such an IPS system has the capability to provide a secured network to over 100 operating systems and applications.
Final thoughts
Security is an important aspect especially for enterprises that work with a huge number of people and have a vast network infrastructure to run its business operations. IPS system creates a safe gateway for such an enterprise to ensure that the incoming traffic flow from their network is verified and trusted as it has been through the security checks by the IPS system. Implementing such security control in 2020 is essential as most of the businesses are working remotely with managed IT services and are at high risk of a cybersecurity attack.