Breach Detection Archives

Stay one step ahead of potential threats by exploring the latest trends, technologies, and methodologies in breach detection.

How Cybersecurity Automation Speeds Up Detection and Response

By: Brittany Holmes, Corporate Communications Manager

Faced with constantly evolving cyber threats, IT teams today must embrace digital transformation. Post pandemic reality has accelerated some of these evolutions, like more cloud users, more cloud providers, and an obscene number of devices passing Internet of Things (IoT) data to the cloud. All are interdependent and interconnected, delivering the scale, speed, and connectivity expected in our daily digital personal and work lives. More importantly, expanding every organization’s attack surface for cybercriminals.

While these advancements offer convenience and efficiency, they also expose organizations to a wider array of cyber risks. This has caused IT teams to look for AI-powered threat detection, investigation and response solutions to mitigate threats across their systems, networks and cloud data.

By understanding the role of automation in protecting against cybercriminals, organizations can strengthen their defense and safeguard their organization. In this blog, we dive into the power of cybersecurity automation and how it ultimately speeds up detection and response.

Cybersecurity Automation Solutions for Organizations

User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)

UEBA is a machine learning cybersecurity process and analytical tool usually included with security operation platforms. It is the process of gathering insight into users’ daily activities. Activity is flagged if any abnormal behavior is detected or if there are deviations from an employee’s normal activity patterns. For example, if a user usually downloads four megabytes of assets weekly, then suddenly downloads 15 gigabytes of data in one day, your team would immediately be alerted because this is abnormal behavior.

The foundation of UEBA can be quite simple. A cybercriminal could easily steal the credentials of one of your employees and gain access, but it is much more difficult for them to convey that employee’s daily behavior in order to go unseen. Without UEBA an organization would not be able to tell if there was an attack since the cybercriminals has the employee’s credentials. Having a dedicated Managed Detection and Response team to alert you can give an organization visibility beyond its boundaries.

Preventative measures are not sufficient. It is better to have the mindset that if a cybercriminal penetrates your system, how will you know or be alerted? Detection is equally as important if there is a foreign intruder.

Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)

SOAR is a form of pure automation that immediately stops a threat even before a security analyst reviews an alert, greatly reducing an organization’s risk. These tools are used for the following operation tasks:

To document and implement processes
To support security incident management
To apply machine-based assistance to human security analysts and operators
To better operationalize the use of threat intelligence

SOAR takes how IT teams respond to alerts to the next level. When teams are tasked with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of alerts daily, there is no room for human error when evaluating which one should be prioritized as high-risk. SOAR automates organizations’ managed detection and response teams’ response and alert processes and systematically orchestrates them. SOAR functions can initiate and disable accounts in machine time to contain the threat and reduce the amount of damage done. This can occur before an analyst even has eyes on it.

Organizations Embracing Cybersecurity Automation

Organizations need to build a cybersecurity infrastructure embracing the power of cybersecurity automation, deep learning, and machine learning to handle the scale of analysis and data. AI has emerged as a required technology for cybersecurity teams, on top of being one of the most used buzzwords in recent years. People can no longer scale to protect the complex attack surfaces of organizations by themselves. So, when evaluating security operations platforms, organizations need to know how AI can help identify, prioritize risk, and help instantly spot intrusions before they start.

Is your Security Defenses Ready?

Cybercriminals don’t work a 9-5 schedule; they work around the clock all year round. Most attacks occur during off hours, either on the weekends or in the late night/early morning, to maximize the probability of a successful attack. One of the main benefits of ensuring AI is incorporated into your cybersecurity products and services is the 24×7 network monitoring, which can respond immediately when any threat is detected.

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Law Firm Vulnerabilities: Why Bad Actors and Data Breaches Strike

May 19, 2022/in Blog Post Brittany Demendi/by Adlumin Staff

The legal system, in many ways, is the town hall of the economy, bringing together investors and businesses, filing IP and trademark applications, assessing compliance for regulatory bodies, interpreting statutes for their clients, and navigating complex legal proceedings. Law firms manage unparalleled access to confidential and valuable information. It’s a one-stop shop for lucrative data that attracts cybercriminals to law firms.

According to the American Bar Association (ABA), 25% of law firms were breached last year. Beyond the financial losses, the reputational damage can be fatal, and the trust relationship between client and attorney can be irrevocably harmed. This article will outline why law firms are being targeted and what types of insider threats to look out for going forward.

Why Are Law Firms Targeted?

Law firms are connected to many facets of the economy and are often considered softer targets than their clients. While firms can be small, their clients can be quite large or manage enormous sums of money. In essence, they are viewed as an easy target with an A-list of confidential and potentially damaging data, access to large funds, and a vector into their client’s operations:

DLA Piper suffered a public ransomware attack, resulting in the firm’s IT department putting in more than 15,000 hours of overtime for disaster recovery and shuttering operations across thousands of clients.
Some law firms oversee high-profile cases and names, making them a primary target. In 2020, Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks’, a law firm representing Hollywood A-listers and athletes, data was breached and held for a $21 million ransom. And, of course, there was the data breach that crumbled Mossack Fonseca at the heart of the Panama Papers.
Law firms have access to large amounts of money: trust funds, escrow accounts, etc.

Threats Law Firms Should Know About

Law firms don’t only have to mitigate risk from outside intruders, but they also need to ramp up security for protection against insider threats. In a previous blog post, we discussed how employees could be considered the weakest links. Insider threats can be classified into the following categories:

Employees fall victim to phishing or scams from an external source.
Employees use weak passwords or don’t adequately protect their equipment.
Employees exploit information, leak information to cybercriminals, carry information to a new job, or share data with personal systems.

Finding the perfect balance between protecting your firm’s assets or client information and making your employees feel trusted and valued can be challenging. Therefore, it’s essential to educate employees on cyberthreats to empower them while tightening up your security operations.

Law Firm’s Responsibility to Safeguard

While not directly regulated, a law firm’s obligations stem from three sources: ABA guidelines for attorneys, specific regulators that call out law firms as vendors of regulated entities, or the contractual obligations formed with their clients and their client’s compliance requirements.

The American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct covers attorney obligations to safeguard their clients’ information, uphold contractual agreements and even report specific cybersecurity incidents that could affect the client. These rules obligate managing partners and attorneys to hold themselves responsible for the conduct of the staff and non-licensed employees. When it comes to technology, the ABA requires attorneys to:

Employ competent and reasonable measures to safeguard the confidentiality of information relating to clients.
Communicate with clients about the attorney’s use of technology and obtain informed consent from clients when appropriate.
Supervise subordinate attorneys, law firm staff, and service providers to make sure that they comply with these duties.

Specifically, Formal Opinion 483 Oct 2018: Model Rule 1.4 requires lawyers to keep clients “reasonably informed” about the status of a matter and to explain matters “to the extent reasonably necessary to permit a client to make an informed decision regarding the representation.” And in response to the pandemic, the ABA issued Formal Opinion 498 Mar 10, 2021: The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct permit the virtual practice, which is technologically enabled law practice beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar law firm. When practicing virtually, lawyers must consider ethical duties regarding competence, diligence, and communication, especially when using technology.

Beyond the legal community, regulators extend their coverage to include law firms as vendors. In healthcare, HIPAA considers law firms as business associates with their set of rules for managing healthcare records, and the New York Department of Financial Services covers vendors such as law firms in section 11 of the 23 NYCRR 500 cybersecurity regulations.

Law firms need to equip their employees with the proper knowledge not to jeopardize their law firm or clients’ reputations.

The ABA adopted a resolution encouraging law firms to develop, implement, and maintain proper cybersecurity to comply with ethical and legal obligations. Many firms (big or small) look for external help when tightening up their security. They do not rely on one resource to secure their IT landscape. As an example, the ABA reported that 80% of law firms use third-party consultants/experts, IT staff, and a Chief Information Officer for their security needs.

Law firms should consistently evaluate their security posture to avoid insider slip-ups to determine where their gaps lie. The regulations that the ABA issues and compliance regulations provide a minimum standard for the industry. All parties should do their due diligence and strive for more robust protection as a matter of healthy client service.

More Money, More Problems: The Most Expensive Data Breaches in History

May 5, 2022/in Blog Post Brittany Demendi/by Adlumin Staff

Data breaches are more expensive and detrimental than you expect. Why? Companies are not just paying for the immediate repair of the breach but the aftermath that comes with it. The follow-on effects include not just financial consequences such as lost productivity and revenue but reputational damage and employee attrition. Additionally, these effects can play out over the best part of two years.

A company’s size can also contribute to whether there is a chance of recovery. For example, “60% of small businesses fold within six months of a cyber-attack,” according to Inc. This statistic makes sense when considering that the margin for error is negligible in many businesses that live month to month in terms of solvency. Consider Mossack Fonseca, a little-known law firm in Central America but remembered (if at all) as the epicenter of the Panama Papers scandal. In the wake of a cyberattack, “reputational deterioration” led to the demise of the firm.

Large or small, it is clear that no one company is safe from breaches. Even with many companies folding after an attack, some high-profile companies have worked their way back up after almost business-fatal breaches. Let’s dive into some of the most expensive data breaches to date.

$190 Million – Capital One

What happened?

A hacker broke into a server at Capitol One and gained access to over 100 million customers’ accounts and credit card applications. In addition to 140,000 Social Security numbers. Capital One agreed to pay $190 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.

Year: 2019
Location: Seattle, Washington

$1.4 Billion – Equifax

What happened?

In 2017, the personal information of over 147 million people was exposed and stolen from Equifax, a credit reporting agency. Equifax faced a lot of backlash and was criticized for its lack of security and response to the breach. Due to failure in patch management, they were hacked through a compliant web portal. Their internal process lacked entirely, and now they suffer from a substantial financial hit.

Year: 2017
Location: Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia

$4 Billion – Epsilon

What happened?

After years of recovery, Epsilon, an international marketing company of Alliance Data Systems Corp, comes in first place for the most expensive data breach. The breach affected 75 companies, including Target, Chase, JP Morgan, and Best Buy. Epsilon houses 40 billion emails annually and 2,200+ brands internationally, so you can imagine the impact this had on customers. It is estimated that only 3% of email addresses were exposed, resulting in them losing $45 million worth of business.

Year: 2011
Location: Headquartered in Irving, TX

Additional Notable Breaches:

Travelex was hit by ransomware, lied about the attack for months (called it a maintenance issue), and finally folded.
Starwood Marriott had information of over 500 million guests stolen. Marriott inherited the cost of the breach two years after they acquired Starwood—M&A means assets plus liabilities.
Yahoo lost billions in value post-hack during the acquisition by Verizon.
US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) experienced over 21.5 million individuals’ background investigation records stolen. In addition, the personal data of 4.2 million former and current Federal government employees was stolen.

Solutions: How to Protect Your Organization

The cost of a data breach is not the only misconception harbored by business leaders. The notion that these attacks are impossible to stop is another. This second fallacy is more damaging because it creates a sense of impunity or fatalistic surrender. It admonishes the company from taking any responsibility in the wake of a data breach. In other words, you can protect your business from sophisticated cyberattacks, and you must defend. Regulators, court decisions, and denied insurance claims are finally beginning to counterbalance this skewed narrative.

As an organization, you may not have control over whether a cybercriminal will go after your data or not, but you do have control over the steps to take to mitigate the risk. Typically, it is best to invest in a managed security services platform that does the heavy lifting for your IT team. These platforms are built to discover threats, malfunctions, and IT operation failures in real-time. You can also receive updates that go directly to your phone and email about what is going on within your IT environment. The managed security platform you choose should be built on the following three components:

Network Health and Compliance

This feature will keep your organization’s compliance up to date while actively searching for violations in real-time and keeping you informed.

Detection and Artificial Intelligence

A platform that gives you AI and machine learning in the form of User & Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to automatically write (and re-write) your SIEM rules dynamically as your network traffic changes.

Data Research and Log Management

With one quick step, all user and account activity can be correlated. A security analytics platform allows you to quickly scope out a potential breach using advanced research tools that help visualize access for every account and system on your network.

In addition, for complete visibility into your enterprise network, there are 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) services available. This service can provide you and your IT team with 24/7 monitoring of every system and account on your network. There is a light at the end of the dark tunnel for options for protecting your customers, employees, and organization. The great news is that these options are available as all-in-one solutions and are cost-effective.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in learning more about data breaches, check out Data Breaches: Uncovering the Unknown. Or, if you are looking to enhance your organization’s security, request a demo with one of our experts.

Data Breaches: Uncovering the Known and the Unknown

April 7, 2021/in Blog Post Adlumin/by Adlumin Staff

Imagine trusting a company enough to give them access to your personal information, only to find out it was compromised during a data breach. Do you know where your information goes once it has been breached? Are you educated on how to protect yourself or your organization from cybercriminals? If the answer is no, you’re reading the right article.

We know that data breaches are dangerous, but just how harmful or expensive can they be? Simply put, data breaches have the power to take down an entire organization and its surrounding community. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average total cost of a data breach in the United States in 2020 was $8.64 million. As a result, this means that not only is your sensitive information at stake, but capital, company investments, and budgets are vulnerable as well.

In this article, we will uncover the reality behind data breaches. We will gain a deeper understanding of what happens after a breach occurs, prevention, and the vital role cybersecurity plays in all of this.

The Ripple Effects of a Breach

When a company is breached, it can result in fines, lawsuits, and brand reputation loss with customers, partners, and employees. In 2019, an estimated 15 billion personal records were lost, and by the beginning of Q4 of 2020, an estimated 36 billion were compromised. These breaches include information like first/last name, address, phone number, usernames, passwords, etc. Even answers to many knowledge-based authentication (KBA) questions have been compromised. (e.g., what was the make and model of your first car?). Because so many different companies rely on this type of data to identify their customers, a single breach can have widespread ramifications for companies that were not breached.

While criminals can use this data to perpetrate a variety of crimes at other companies, two of the fastest-growing are account takeover (ATO) and synthetic identity fraud. Because many people use the same password for multiple accounts or recycle passwords, criminals can use stolen usernames and passwords to takeover numerous accounts. Alternately, they can use stolen KBA questions/answers to pose as a consumer, reset their password, and takeover the account. It is estimated that ATO has risen 650% in Q1 alone. While this number may be troubling, criminals are limited by the number of real accounts.

To circumvent the limitations of account takeover, criminals have begun making an account for entirely factious people to commit crimes. Synthetic identity fraud occurs when criminals combine fictitious and factual information to create new identities. They can then use these identities to steal a variety of goods and services. If the identity is ever flagged as fraudulent, the criminal simply abandons it and makes another. As long as breaches continue to occur, synthetic identity fraud is the crime without limit.

Cybersecurity is the Solution

The truth is that data breaches impact both consumers and businesses; however, businesses play the most critical role in prevention. In today’s market, organizations have an increased demand for cybersecurity solutions to reduce IT teams’ capacity concerns and add firmer security layers, making it harder for cybercriminals to breach networks successfully.

A Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform is the best possible cybersecurity solution. As the number of data breaches continues to grow, SIEM platforms are evolving to prevent and expose vulnerabilities, attacks, criminals, and other cybersecurity threats. If your business is looking to invest in a cybersecurity solution, this section will provide a deeper understanding of key Next-Gen SIEM features:

User & Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA): The platform should consist of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, which analyze account-based threats and write your SIEM rules.
Privilege Abuse and Account Takeover Prevention: The platform should use artificial intelligence to detect both known and unknown threats. Make sure it can explicitly look for and determine insider threats, account takeovers, and privilege abuse or misuse.
One-Touch Compliance Reporting: The platform should give you the ability to download compliance reports in seconds or schedule and deliver them to your inbox on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
Managed Compliance, Detection, and Response (MCDR): Look for a SIEM that includes a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) service. It should offer a managed service for your SIEM platform to quickly enhance your organization’s threat detection and response times.
24/7 Search for Compromised/Leaked Accounts on the Deep and Dark Web: The platform should allow you to extend your defensive capabilities beyond firewalls, endpoints, and security devices into Russian ID theft forums and the criminal underground.
No Data Limits: An ideal SIEM should allow you to ingest as much data as needed and at no extra cost.
Easy Deployment: Getting your platform up and running should be a fast and seamless process. Consider platforms that can deploy in 90 minutes or less.

To combat potential threats, demanding these features out of your cybersecurity solution should be non-negotiable. Cybercriminals are becoming more creative with their attack methods, which means organizations, big and small, need to ensure their security posture is in the best possible shape.

Prevention is the Answer

The key to building a better cybersecurity experience is rooted in the relationship between a Next-Gen platform and its users. As a consumer, when it comes to data breaches, the first thing that should come to mind is prevention. Here are a few recommendations for protecting yourself from cybercriminals who have mastered the art of bypassing the top network defenses:

Use Multi-Factor Authentication: This will provide extra layers of security (e.g., security code texts, security questions, security puzzles, and more).
Don’t Trust Unknown Emails, Links, Images, and Attachments: These create the perfect opportunities for intruders to gain entry and execute their plan of attack. The bottom line is, do not open or click on anything unfamiliar. Phishing emails are a common type of cyberattack used to gain access to your personal information.
Avoid Weak Password Reuse: A weak password is the perfect entry point for cybercriminals. At a minimum, a strong password should contain 8-12 characters long and include numbers, letters, and special characters. Avoid using the same password for all of your accounts to reduce your chances of being breached by malicious intruders.
Monitor Your Accounts Closely: Staying on top of your account activity is essential because you are more likely to catch any suspicious behavior head-on.
Avoid Using Public Wi-Fi: You should only sign-in to your accounts when connected to trusted, private networks only. This will decrease hackers’ chances of gaining access to your personal information/login information.
Combine usability with security: New authentication methods like biometric capture can make authentication as simple as scanning your finger or taking a selfie. Unlike KBA, it is much more difficult for criminals to phish and reuse biometrics. Companies should also exercise caution and work with experienced partners when deploying biometrics since biometrics cannot be reset if they are stolen.

The truth is that businesses and consumers are responsible for protecting their networks, servers, and personal and professional information. By following these few steps and tips, you can help prevent cybercriminals from accessing your personal information and your organization’s network.

Building a Secure Cyberworld Together

The takeaway here is that businesses need consumer cooperation to uphold their cybersecurity posture, and consumers need businesses to ensure their security policies, protocols, and platforms will defend their information. Cultivating a trustworthy relationship is the best way to prevent data breaches. Breaches in data come with extra baggage, which can take business years to unpack. Consequently, there are tremendous potential consequences of a breach involving sensitive personal information, like biometrics, used for identity authentication and account access. It is essential to maintain robust risk-management practices that balance data protection and network defenses with usability.

There is a more substantial chance of combatting data breaches if everyone does their part. Finding the perfect prevention formula is based upon your organization’s prioritization of cybersecurity and improving its posture.

About Adlumin

Adlumin Inc. is the latest advanced security and compliance automation platform built for corporate organizations that demand innovative cybersecurity solutions and easy-to-use, comprehensive reporting tools. The Adlumin team has a passion for technology and solving the most challenging problems through the targeted application of data science and compliance integration. Our mission is to “add luminosity” or visibility to every customer’s enterprise network through real-time threat detection, analysis, and response to ensure sensitive data remains secure.

About Trust Stamp

Trust Stamp is a global provider of AI-powered identity services for use in multiple sectors including banking and finance, regulatory compliance, government, real estate, communications, and humanitarian services. Its technology empowers organisations with biometric identity solutions that reduce fraud, protect personal data privacy, increase operational efficiency and reach a broader base of users worldwide through its unique data transformation and comparison capabilities.