April 10, 2022
With our growing dependency on digitization, cyber-attacks can be assumed as an inevitability. In the last few years, the cases of cyber-attacks have tripled; which is only growing further since the onset of the pandemic.
Here are some real cases of cybercrime and their costs:
- Maersk lost $200 million due to the NotPetya hack.
- $2 million is the average cost of a DDoS attack.
- $13.5 million was lost by an Indian bank after hackers installed malware on its ATM server.
Here are some important stats:
- 53% of companies have over 1,000 sensitivefiles accessible to every employee.
- 38% of all users have a password that never expires.
- 24% of data breaches are caused by human error.
- A cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds.
Despite the risks of a cyber-attack, most businesses do not consider being prepared as a priority. IBM discovered 77% of security and IT personnel do not believe their business has a cybersecurity incident response plan that is applied consistently throughout the company.
We at Oman Data Park understand a data breach is one of the biggest existential threats to a company, regardless of its size. Organizations must understand that these threats are real and they are growing and they cannot just wait for an attack to happen. After all, it is no longer a question of an ‘if’ but a ‘when’.
Every day, several reports of cyberattacks hit the front-page headlines. The cybercrime rate has become one of the most important concerns across the world. When companies are unprepared and fail to manage the response to an attack, their business may suffer more damage than the attack itself. This is why it is critical for companies to protect themselves and their customers.
It is evident that every organization today has a certain degree of cyber exposure. And cyber threats are not going anywhere soon. In fact, newer threats seem to evolve and broaden with each passing day. Cyber-attacks are likely to happen and can cost an organization a lot more than one can imagine. It is important to stay updated on how to appropriately respond to a cyber-incident. There are steps one can take to prepare for hackers and criminals. Begin with a thorough vulnerability assessment.
What is a vulnerability assessment?
A vulnerability assessment is a testing process used to identify, classify, and prioritize security gaps in the IT infrastructure of an organization. The comprehensive assessment helps evaluate whether an IT system is exposed to known vulnerabilities. But, what exactly is a software vulnerability?
Vulnerabilities can be found in applications managed by third-party vendors or internal software. Vulnerable areas when exploited result in a security breach and can simply be defined in two ways:
1. A flaw in software design or bug in code.
2. A gap in security process or in internal controls.
In a given timeframe, the vulnerability assessment aims to assign severity levels to as many security loopholes as possible. The execution of the assessment targets different layers of technology, from host to network, and application layer. The process ensures that flaws are easily fixed once identified by recommending remediation or mitigation steps wherever required. From scanning to prioritization and patching, vulnerability management is a lot of different things. A mix of automated and manual techniques may be involved with varying degrees of rigor and focus on complete coverage. In simple words, true vulnerability management takes various issues into account while protecting your digital space against exploits and breaches. Having an annual vulnerability test, or even after making some changes to the applications or application environments, helps ensure rock-solid security.
Vulnerability Assessment by Oman Data Park
It comes as no surprise, that most data breaches take place through a weak point where a patch is available but not practically applied yet. Oman Data Park’s Vulnerability Assessment is more than just finding problems. It utilizes a variety of advanced tools to detect multiple levels of security risks to your company’s IT infrastructure. The team of experts work towards finding the weak spots and help fix them. This means that Oman Data Park helps you create automated processes to identify the vulnerable areas and work until every weak point has been fixed.
Are the risks really so high? Here are a few alarming statistics:
44% of 9,500 executives in 122 countries indicated their companies do not have an overarching information security strategy. 48% of the same executives said their company does not have an employee security awareness training program. These are examples of companies who have no idea about their weak spots.
In today’s fast paced environment businesses are growing more complex. They employ more ERP systems and bring in continuous developments in the hybrid cloud infrastructure which means these businesses are also having more and more network sprawl. As a result, a number of networks go unchecked as more infrastructure migrates to the cloud.
Objectives of a Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability assessment gives out information about the security weaknesses in your IT environment and helps resolve the issues before they can be exploited. While using a vulnerability assessment, you get a better understanding of your IT infrastructure, security flaws and overall risk. The process greatly improves security standards while reducing the chances of a cyberattack on your organization.
Overall there can be three primary objectives of a vulnerability assessment.
- Identify vulnerabilities ranging from critical design flaws to simple misconfigurations.
- Identify gaps in the security system and analyse the findings.
- Assist developers on how to fix the identified vulnerabilities.
How is the Vulnerability Test Performed
Vulnerability testing can be performed in various ways.
One of the methods is Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). As the name suggests, it is a dynamic analysis testing technique that involves executing a web application. It is performed specifically to identify security defects by providing inputs or other failure conditions to find defects in real-time.
The second way is called Static Application Security Testing (SAST) which identifies vulnerabilities without running the program. It involves the analysis of an application’s source code or object code.
Both ways handle an application quite differently. Typically, these testing methods are most effective during the software development life cycle (SDLC). These approaches help find vulnerabilities at different phases, for instance, SAST identifies critical vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection earlier in the SDLC. DAST, on the other hand, leverages a penetration testing approach to identify vulnerabilities while web applications are running.
Performing security initiatives earlier in the SDLC proves to be quite effective. And Vulnerability Assessment verifies the same. Let’s understand through an example, a company that trains its developers in the beginning while securing the code or reviewing security architecture regularly will experience fewer vulnerabilities than an organization that does not bother about these activities.
What Does Oman Data Park Offer
Our vulnerability assessment begins with a complete review of your business data structure in order to identify the areas that need to be tested as per your compliance needs. Following the initial brief, we begin to ‘think like hackers.’ Our security experts look for every way into your system. Their goal is to find any vulnerabilities and flag them for review.
The assessment process by ODP involves:
- Prioritization of vulnerabilities: See which vulnerabilities to focus on first with more meaningful risk scores.
- Remediation of vulnerabilities: Provide IT with the information they need to fix issues quickly and efficiently.
The assessment process is not just a one-time operation but an ongoing activity. Regular, clear reports are carefully created to help your business maintain visibility of its network status and security posture.
External Vulnerability Assessment: ODP Security Operation Centre carries out monthly black box vulnerability assessment on the host Public IP address and provides the assessment report with the remediation plan. The reports can be also customized to certain compliance requirements.
Black Box Testing: With Black Box Tests a hacker is provided with minimal internal information about the system or the network. As a result, in most cases, this involves identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in the outward-facing network. As expected, most External Tests, Single-Blind Tests, and Double-Blind Tests fall within this category.
Internal Vulnerability Assessment: ODP Security Operation Centre carries out a monthly internal white hat and grey hat vulnerability assessment on the private IP address and provides the security assessment report with the remediation plan.
Assessment Reports: After the tests have been completed, we produce detailed reports that provide all details about the nature of the test, any vulnerabilities found, and the steps your business can take to protect itself from a malicious attack. Penetration testing is one of the most important first steps towards taking your security to its maximum level and our team of experts can provide you with the right solution to ensure that your business is not left vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Facilities at Oman Data Park
Through the Cyber Security Center, we provided our clients with pioneering and effective smart security solutions to reduce cyber-attacks. Within a very short span of time, our services have grown up to become one of the few specialized cyber security centre in the Sultanate that provides services round the clock seven days a week. In fact, supported by a choice of Preventive, Detective and Threat Intelligence cyber security services to shield customers, the Center is perfectly equipped to deal with the over 8,000 cyber-attacks faced by various institutions in the Sultanate of Oman on a daily basis.
Our performance since the center was established has helped us strengthen our position as a pioneer in cloud computing in the Sultanate. We are the only such institution in the country to have obtained PCI DSS certification. We have also received ISO27001: 2013 ISO20000-1 certifications and have also been accredited by the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology.
Through the Cyber Security Center, our team of highly trained staff continues to offer an even more advanced level of Intelligence, protection, and mitigation to our present and future clients. Our cyber security products and services are also backed by our three TIA 942 Rating 3 certified Data Centers located in KOM, Wattaya, and Duqm, which are monitored by a tech and security team around-the-clock, every day. These data centers can not only satisfy the IT needs of any business or enterprise in the country, but also feature some of the most advanced data security systems and protocols available on the market today. We also continue to invest heavily in our infrastructure to ensure we stay at the top.
Oman Data Park follows five core cyber security principles that govern every aspect of our operation:
- Availability: When your business needs us, we are here for you. 24×7. 365 days a year.
- Confidentiality: We take the confidentiality of our customers and their data very seriously.
- Integrity: We ensure that the integrity of your business is never compromised.
- Accountability: We offer clear, prompt, and efficient solutions and stick to our promised timelines backed by SLAs.
- Assurance: You have our assurance, that your business will remain free from threats and vulnerabilities, always.
In addition, we are continually expanding the range of specialized Preventive, Detective, and Threat Intelligence Services we offer – more on both a little later.
While IT infrastructure of all companies is potentially vulnerable, most of them haven’t even thought of safeguarding it. Get your network environment tested today and strengthen your overall security posture with our vulnerability assessment.
Find out more about our products and services on our website phone at +968 2417 1111 | +968 24171195 or email support@omandatapark.com |sales@omandatapark.com
