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4 min read

Protect Your Business Network from Watering Hole Attacks

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In our experience, malicious actors are continually finding creative ways to compromise corporate networks, and the threat doesn't stop at the enterprise level. Small business threats continue to increase as many companies don't have cybersecurity top of mind, despite moving critical operations online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As such, watering hole attacks remain a severe problem in small business vulnerability to cyber-attacks. However, if a business continually educates their employees, including top-level management, properly, hackers and cybercriminals would have a much harder time breaking into their network and wreaking havoc on their business.

To counter the risk of watering hole attacks, it helps to know what they are.

Watering hole attacks explained – know the threat.

It may be tricky for a small-business owner to grasp the definition of a watering hole attack. It's different from phishing attacks that rely on emails with malicious links. The general idea is to infect a website destination for a particular group of people. The website for a tech conference is an excellent example of a domain that hackers would want to exploit. The infected website unwittingly seeds malicious software to the victim's computer. Similar to phishing attacks, login credentials and administrator access are the two most coveted prizes. The malware used in these attacks usually collects the target’s personal information and sends it back to the hacker’s server. In extreme cases, the hacker will actively take control of the infected computer.

Watering hole attacks require that malicious actors hijack and infect a legitimate domain. They don't need to create an entire fake web domain to harvest credentials and personal information. With such highly skilled hackers these days, virtually any website can fall victim to a watering hole attack. Even high-profile websites like Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple have been compromised in the past.

Read: Data Breaches Everywhere - What you Need to Know

Three ways that small businesses can protect themselves from watering-hole attacks.

1 – Keep software up-to-date

Make it a habit to check the software developer’s website for any security patches and install them immediately. The hacker community regularly shares exploits and novel vulnerabilities. There's no end to the threat.

One way to ensure that software is always up-to-date is to hire a managed IT services provider to help you navigate this dangerous landscape. An IT service provider will be well versed, and they make it their job to stay up to date on the current threat landscape. 

Updating critical systems on time is vital to negating the threat but monitoring your systems is also imperative. 

2 – Monitor the network at all times

The good news is that today's network security tools are more successful at identifying watering hole attacks.

Some of our clients have had phenomenal success with intrusion prevention systems to deflect cyber attacks in real-time.

Another method is to deploy bandwidth management software that can flag anomalies in web traffic. This capability works well at detecting exfiltration attempts when hackers try to transfer data or trigger mass downloads.

Our clients have successfully thwarted cyberattacks using both methods.

Read: Embracing the New Remote Work Trend? Here’s How to Prepare Your Network

3 – Use a VPN to protect privacy, even at home

Watering hole attacks rank among the most troublesome cyber threats because they lie in wait for unwitting victims using a typical website.

Using a virtual private network (VPN) is one way to protect a company's sensitive data when employees are online. Even if malicious actors compromise a machine, they'll only be partially successful without any tracking data. In addition, many companies choose to block social media sites from their office network, as these are often used as share points of links to infected sites.

High-quality VPNs now use military-grade encryption and automated intelligence to help businesses surf the web with a more significant privacy level.

Overall, education and diligence are the two best ways to prevent cyberattacks, particularly watering-hole attacks. With many employees working from home, partnering with a highly skilled cybersecurity provider is more important than ever.

If this all sounds like gibberish to you and you don’t have time to become an IT expert, contact us to learn about our solutions. Many IT departments are stretched so thin that they cannot devote enough time to staying on top of the cyber threat landscape, leading to costly consequences. If your in-house IT is too busy dealing with everyday issues, we can help! Check out our co-managed IT services. 

 

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