As cyber threats become more advanced, businesses face growing challenges in protecting their data and systems. Cyber security monitoring services provide a proactive approach to detecting and responding to threats in real time. These services continuously monitor networks, devices, and endpoints to identify vulnerabilities and unusual activities before they lead to serious breaches. In this guide, we’ll dive into the fundamentals of cyber security monitoring, how it works, and why it’s essential for safeguarding your organization against ever-evolving cyber risks.
What is Cyber Security Monitoring?
Cyber security monitoring is the continuous process of analyzing your systems, networks, and devices to detect and respond to potential cyber threats. By employing a cybersecurity monitoring service, businesses can proactively identify vulnerabilities, track unusual activities, and mitigate risks before they escalate. This approach helps organizations stay ahead of attackers and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access or breaches.
How Does Cyber Security Monitoring Work?
Cyber security monitoring works by using advanced tools and techniques to oversee networks, devices, and endpoints in real time. It involves collecting data from various sources, such as firewalls, servers, and user devices, and analyzing it for signs of suspicious activity. Tools like cyber threat monitoring systems can flag unusual patterns, such as unauthorized login attempts, malware installations, or data exfiltration attempts, enabling swift incident responses.
Benefits of Continuous Cyber Security Monitoring
Continuous cyber security monitoring offers businesses several advantages, including early detection of threats, reduced downtime from cyberattacks, and improved regulatory compliance. By monitoring systems 24/7, organizations can address vulnerabilities in real time and prevent potential breaches. This proactive approach not only protects sensitive information but also builds trust with customers and stakeholders.
Endpoint Monitoring as a Cyber Security Monitoring Tool
Endpoint monitoring plays an important role in cyber security monitoring by focusing on individual devices such as laptops, desktops, and mobile phones. It helps detect and block threats like malware or unauthorized access at the device level. By integrating endpoint monitoring into your cybersecurity strategy, you can enhance visibility and safeguard your organization from potential data breaches.
Network Monitoring
Network monitoring is another important aspect of cyber security monitoring, guaranteeing all data flowing through your network is secure and free from threats. This process involves tracking network traffic, identifying anomalies, and addressing vulnerabilities before they are exploited. A strong cybersecurity monitoring service with network monitoring capabilities helps businesses maintain seamless operations while keeping their data and systems secure.
5 Steps to Assess Your Security Network and Detect Threats
Security awareness involves ensuring that each participant understands what risks are at stake, what you expect of them, and what roles they need to play.
1. Identify and Document All Potential Threats
You can’t monitor or prevent what you don’t know, right? So the first step is to conduct a comprehensive network and systems assessment to note the types of vulnerabilities your business faces, plus all the corners and loopholes those attacks can emerge from. This helps in prioritizing the IT security services needed to protect against different threat levels. Also, you can use the data to collaborate with your IT security services provider and create an unbeatable strategy for preventing cyber-attacks.
Conducting an all-inclusive assessment to smoke out potential threats also enables you to consider some information assets that you might be overlooking. Yet, they bear significant vulnerability. A critical point to remember is that cyber threats aren’t restricted to your organization’s walls. Risks reside virtually anywhere, and cybercriminals may attack as your partners or employees access and share business information using their devices and cloud-based technology. So you must think outside your premises.
2. Proactively Assess Your Cyber Risk
Does your business have an internal and external cyber threat intelligence (CTI) plan to detect and mitigate risks rapidly? In case you’re wondering, CTI leverages processes, people, and technology to proactively collect, analyze, and distribute intelligence within and without your business to improve your security posture. The motivation is to eliminate or reduce the likelihood of a cyber risk occurrence in your industry.
Externally, CTI helps organizations and their employees get smart on where, how, when, and why cyber-attacks are happening. Having this information enables you to implement business strategies to seal all the loopholes within your organization before falling prey to hackers and data thieves. Plus, pass the same knowledge among the firms with whom you share data for business purposes.
On the flip side, internal CTI can help you keep track of all data access activities regarding who, when, why, and how. In the long run, this improves the overall security posture. You have firsthand information on what’s happening in your organization in real-time.
3. Prioritize Security Awareness
Is every department within your firm aware of the threats, risks, and challenges you’re looking to overcome through cyber security monitoring services? If the answer is NO, then your priority at this stage should be to change your employees’ security culture and behavior.
Security awareness involves ensuring that each participant understands what risks are at stake, what you expect of them, and what roles they need to play. Most workers have this mindset that cyber threats are IT departments’ problems. Hence, not their concern. Well, change that culture and make them understand that cybersecurity is a people problem. Their input is just as critical as that of the IT security services unit.
Some of the tactics to get every participant onboard include:
- Partner with a top cyber security services company in Los Angeles. Develop and provide security awareness training programs.
- Make a sincere effort to explain the security challenges your organization faces.
- Develop and implement strict security rules and best practices in line with the compliance standards.
- Approach security awareness in a more interactive and ongoing manner to engage your IT security services partners and employees. This makes threats seem more concrete.
4. Prepare for the Inevitable
Strange as it may sound, the only way to overcome a cyber threat is to treat it as an eventuality and not a possibility. It’s not the IF that matters, but the WHEN! Embracing that fact helps your organization develop an actionable plan of how you’ll react to put everything under control should the inevitable attack happen.
Below are a few questions you should seek answers for as part of your cyber security monitoring services to prepare for attacks.
- Do you have a cyber security services company you can consult during and after an attack?
- Which third parties and stakeholders do you need to contact and engage?
- Which external users and clients do you need to alert? What should you tell them, and how?
- How about engaging the compliance regulators?
- How quickly can you respond to a security breach and restore normal operations within your organization?
Seeking answers to these questions helps your business craft a clear-cut road map for bouncing back should the worst happen. However, that’s just half the task. The next and, perhaps most critical, part is testing your preparedness based on the answers provided. That’s where cyber simulations come in handy. Simply put, these are interactive techniques that put participants under simulated attacks to gauge their response to cyber threats.
5. Make Cyber Security Monitoring a Continuous Process
You may have the most airtight cyber security management program, but without continuous monitoring, everything cancels out. Cybercriminals are becoming more innovative and expanding their scope by the day, and so should you. As we mentioned in step 2, you should continually leverage CTI to collect and analyze security events across your industry, IT security infrastructure, network, systems, and applications.
Ongoing management helps unmask new tactics that cybercriminals use and proactively develop counteractive means for eliminating the threats. But here’s the catch; you need to dig through thousands of events and analyze countless raw log files to stay updated with the cyber security goings-on in your industry.
That’s a lot of work and takes valuable time and resources that you need to channel elsewhere to achieve your business goals. As such, partnering with a top-rated IT security services firm is your best bet to getting your network infrastructure monitored 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of doing it internally.
Common Cyber Security Threats Facing Businesses and How to Prevent Them
Expose all your new employees to thorough security awareness training to learn all the tricks and bait traps used by cybercriminals to carry out attacks.
Like we stated previously, that cyber risk might occur at your business is not a possibility (if), but an eventuality (when). The big question is, will you have implemented the cyber security best practices discussed above when data thieves and hackers come knocking? Do you even understand the cyber threats your business may be susceptible to in the first place? Let’s discover the top five cyber security threats facing businesses today.
Malware and How to Protect Against It
Malware, or malicious software, is exactly what it sounds like—software designed by cybercriminals to infiltrate your computer network and wreak havoc. This can involve stealing sensitive information, spying on your online activities, or even hacking into other systems. Attackers typically trick their targets into downloading malware by sending malicious links, attachments, or software programs. Once downloaded, the malware gains control of the system.
Some common types of malware include:
- Virus: A malicious program that replicates itself across multiple folders, spreading rapidly to steal data, send spam, or disable systems.
- Spyware: Installed by cybercriminals to monitor your online activities and gather sensitive data, like passwords and credit card numbers.
- Ransomware: Encrypts your sensitive data and blocks access until you pay a ransom, with no guarantee of data recovery even if the ransom is paid.
To combat malware effectively, cyber security monitoring is important. Start by investing in high-quality antivirus software tailored to your business systems. Train employees to avoid downloading suspicious files or clicking on unverified links and establish clear rules against non-work-related downloads. Finally, consider partnering with a managed IT security provider like Frontline, who can monitor your systems 24/7 and respond to threats before they escalate.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
BEC is the latest email hacking technique used by cybercriminals to steal sensitive data by duping company employees and executives. In a BEC attack, the perpetrator hacks into your corporate email account and impersonates you to defraud your company, partners, customers, colleagues, or suppliers by asking them to transfer funds or sensitive information into their (the perpetrators’) accounts.
The attacker primarily targets an influential figure of the company – say, the COO, CEO, Founder, or CFO. After accessing their email accounts fraudulently, they proceed to the inbox settings and alter the “reply-to” button, so the victim won’t receive any alerts when the scam gets executed.
Below are the common examples of BEC attacks:
- The fake boss scam. It occurs when the attacker impersonating the boss asks employees to transfer money urgently to their fraudulent accounts. They usually ride on the fact that a subordinate can’t doubt, let alone question their boss.
- The fraudulent invoice scam. Here, the cybercriminal uses an employee’s (e.g., the company’s accountant) email account, asking customers or suppliers to wire funds to their fraudulent accounts.
- The fake attorney scam. It happens when the attacker hacks into a lawyer’s email account and asks their clients to deliver payments immediately to keep matters confidential.
How to Protect Against Business Email Compromise
There are several preventive measures you can take to avoid BEC attacks. These include:
- Enable multi-factor authentication, which prevents unauthorized email access. Attackers will need more than just the password to hack into accounts.
- Take employees through security awareness training. This equips them with skills for identifying and handling fraudulent emails.
- Encourage employees to always verify urgent money transfer requests by calling or checking in person, especially from C-level executives.
- Add a banner to emails coming from without your organization.
- Prohibit employees from automatically forwarding emails to external addresses.
- Check the email address lettering for slight changes, i.e., I instead of 1 or u instead of v.
Past and Present Employees
Believe it or not, your employees – past or present alike – also pose an inside security threat to your business. Some of them have or used to have direct access to your sensitive data. For instance, if by the time of letting them go, you weren’t on good terms with your former employees, they can decide to seek revenge by trying to hack into your system.
On the flip side, greenhorn employees may also expose your data to external threats through unintentional activities. Perhaps they may be too naive to not click on a pop-up message that says they’ve won $1000 worth of a brand-new iPhone, not knowing that falling into the trap installs malware to their computer.
How to Protect Against Inside Security Breaches
The most straightforward step is to expose all your new employees to thorough security awareness training to learn all the tricks and bait traps used by cybercriminals to carry out attacks. The other measure is to minimize the amount of work that employees perform on their personal devices. You also want to prohibit employees from connecting their non-work devices to the office Wi-Fi.
Dealing with vengeful ex-employees shouldn’t be tough. By altering all communal passwords and revoking their access to all work accounts as soon as they leave, you shall have prevented them from causing chaos.
Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks
As the title suggests, a DoS attack occurs when the attacker shuts down your machines or network, denying you service. This happens when the hacker floods your system with countless requests until it can’t process normal traffic, making it inaccessible for some time.
However, you may think that the DoS attacker’s primary mission is to steal sensitive data, but it’s not! Their goal is just to slow or take down your website, maybe for competition purposes or just disturbance.
Preventing a DoS Attack
The first critical step to preventing a DoS attack is to develop an incident response plan, i.e., ensure your teams are ready for their responsibilities and your data center is fortified. You also want to secure your network infrastructure by acquiring and installing threat management systems, advanced intrusion detectors, firewalls, anti-spam content filters, and most importantly, partner with a reliable managed IT security services company for round-the-clock monitoring.
Other DoS preventive measures to take include:
- Outsourcing DoS prevention to cloud-based solutions providers
- Maintaining a rock-solid network infrastructure by spreading out servers to make it difficult for attackers to launch targeted attacks
- Practicing basic network security, e.g., using complex passwords (changing them regularly), securing firewalls, implementing anti-phishing techniques, etc.
Conclusion
Cyber security monitoring services play a vital role in protecting businesses from cyber threats. With continuous oversight of networks, endpoints, and systems, these services detect vulnerabilities, flag unusual activities, and respond to incidents before they escalate.
Implementing a cybersecurity monitoring solution helps safeguard sensitive data and ensures your organization can operate securely and confidently. Proactive monitoring is a smart step toward building a secure and resilient digital environment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is monitoring in cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity monitoring involves continuously tracking and analyzing networks, systems, and devices to identify suspicious activities or potential threats. It helps detect vulnerabilities and respond to risks before they lead to serious breaches.
What are the 5 stages of cybersecurity?
The 5 stages of cybersecurity are: Identify (understand your assets and risks), Protect (implement safeguards), Detect (monitor for threats), Respond (take action against incidents), and Recover (restore systems and prevent future attacks).
Who monitors cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is monitored by IT security teams, managed security service providers (MSSPs), and automated tools that analyze data and flag suspicious behavior for review and action.
How to monitor cybersecurity risk?
You can monitor cybersecurity risk by using tools like intrusion detection systems, endpoint monitoring software, and vulnerability scanners. Regular risk assessments and monitoring for unusual activity help reduce exposure to threats.