4 Key Things Enterprises Need to Know About Cyber Espionage

4 Key
Things Enterprises Need to Know About Cyber Espionage

Written by
Cheng Lai Ki, CyberOps Consultant, Horangi Cyber Security

When we talk
about espionage, most thoughts would be of spies from old cold war flicks,
infiltrating top secret government facilities to retrieve sensitive information
capable of gaining an edge over each other. These traditional espionage
techniques still exist and are employed all state intelligence agencies.
However, advancements in information technology alongside an international
progression towards getting all our data digitized, we are seeing an emergence
of a new typology of espionage. Cyber Espionage.

Advancements
in information technology currently excels in capturing and storing large
quantities of data. This directly contributes towards expediting the most
laborious step within the intelligence process, collection. As more
organizations in both the government and private sector are digitizing their
data, espionage operations can be executed without moving a single step out of
an office building.

As technology
continues to advance, hyperconnectivity, big-data and advanced machine learning
has come to revolutionize how organizations operate. The same benefits can be
seen in the intelligence community and with espionage operations. Moving
forward, what are the four key things enterprises need to know about
cyber espionage?

Know Your Adversary

The first
thing enterprises need to know is about their adversary, as knowing thy enemy
is the primary step towards securing your organizational operations. However,
when discussing cyber-espionage is its constant association to state level
threat actors. This classification may soon be obsolete.

With the
recent number high-level data leaks containing sensitive information and digital
toolkits once used by state intelligence agencies, many malicious groups or
actors are rapidly upgrading their arsenal and strategies.

As a result, advanced cyber espionage is no longer reserved for traditional state level threat
actors, operating on behalf of a government objective, organizations are also
increasingly exposed to cyber-espionage conducted by hacktivists, patriotic
hacker groups, and other criminal entities. There are even ‘hackers for hire’,
where anyone can enlist the services of a professional hacker for a small
monetary fee.

As more of
society continues to familiarize themselves with technology, one should only
expect malicious groups to adjust to the times and update their tactics. Whilst
most enterprises focus on integrating new technologies and operational
procedures, a similar amount of effort should be devoted towards learning about
their own vulnerabilities.

Dissect the Threat

The second
thing enterprises need to understand is about the nature of cyber espionage as
a threat towards their overall cyber security. A key misconception about
cyber-espionage is the over emphasis on the ‘cyber’ portion, and the lack of a
holistic understanding about the threat itself.

Espionage will
always be a human challenge, and whilst technology plays a critical role in the
cyber-espionage process, most incidents are usually enabled through social-engineering campaigns that focus on exploiting
human complacency. This problem however is not exclusive to cyber-espionage but
is reflected across how cyber security is primarily understood by the general
public.

To dissect the
threat, enterprises need to understand that cyber-espionage is a complex
process requiring expertise in multiple areas ranging from understanding
human-behaviour to being capable of repurposing malicious software to achieve
certain objectives. When seeking protection from cyber espionage, enterprises
need to empower both the technological and human elements within their
organization.

Securing your Foundation

The third
thing enterprises need to know, is the need to secure the people and
technologies, such as routers, that form the foundations of
an enterprise’s structure.

In
cyber-espionage operations, attackers might consider targeting the weakest
links in an enterprise. As executives are broadly targeted, they might also
have resilient security procedures or tools in place to ensure their
survivability. Therefore, attackers might conduct social engineering campaigns
on base-level employees, leveraging off their potential lack of cyber security
awareness to gain an initial foothold into an organization’s network. When
seeking to secure an enterprise from a cyber-attack, the organization framework
is that of an inverted triangle and that you only need a singular employee –
regardless of rank – to be compromised.

When securing
your organization, enterprises need to secure both the technologies and the
staff at the foundational level. This means ensuring that all levels of staff
members are equipped with a secure mindset, and that pan-organizational
tools/equipment are regularly maintained with updated security protocols.

Outside the Office

The final
thing enterprises need to know about cyber espionage is that the campaign is
not restricted to the organization’s human or technological network. Like
conventional espionage operations, everything and everyone is fair game. What
does this mean?

Attackers will
do research on their intended targets, and when they fail to compromise their
targets, they can always target their associates. Protection from
cyber-espionage is not the sole responsibility of an individual or an
organization, but of an entire community. Total security from cyber espionage
is a joint effort across an entire community. Remember, just because your
organization is secure does not mean ‘you’ are secure. Attackers might target
partner enterprises or known clients with weaker security systems and utilise
them as a trojan into your operational networks.

To ensure pan
industry protection from social engineering, enterprises are encouraged to
raise awareness among internal employees and close partners. Whilst
technological assets can be protected with consistent patches and regular
security checks, the only way to strengthen the human element is to raise
awareness collectively.

What’s next?

Moving
forward, the next step can be summarised into one phrase, be aware.
Organizations can achieve this either through reviewing your organization’s
security strategy to ensure that the four key areas are addressed, or to
outsource key areas to professional cyber security organizations capable of
providing a holistic security package of tools and services to address your
vulnerabilities.

— end —

About Horangi Cyber Security

Horangi Cyber Security offers mid-sized businesses best-in-class,
proprietary cyber security products that help a company retain integrity as it
grows, along with expert advisors that give advice regarding cyber security
threats, in a manner that states the business relevance of the finding.
Interpreting threats in context of the business objective is challenging.
Horangi supports mid-sized businesses with a ready team of the world’s best
cyber security experts to discover and interpret threats to the business, offering
advice that is applicable and relevant to the businesses’ objectives. Horangi’s
products put best-practice to work at the mid-market stage, in a manner that
makes it easy for the business to scale and not lose the integrity of their
cyber security defences. For more information, please visit https://horangi.com/.

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