Cybersecurity is a constant battle that can often feel heavily favored towards the attacker. Unfortunately, with the rise of threat commoditization and widespread AI use, the feeling is true much of the time.

Defenders, however, can learn from their wicked counterparts to improve their defense layers. By understanding common attack trends, organizations can shore up their cybersecurity program and prevent threats from becoming breaches.

Let’s begin with some of the most common sources of cyberattacks, as identified by KnowBe4.

The Top Ten Root Causes of an Attack

"Think red, act blue” is a common mantra in cybersecurity, espousing the need to think like an attacker to adequately defend against them. Keeping this in mind, here are the root causes behind many of today’s top exploits:

• Social Engineering
• Programming Bugs
• Authentication Attacks
• Malicious Instruction/Scripting
• Data Malformation
• Human Error or Misconfiguration
• Eavesdropping or Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
• Side-channel Attacks
• Brute-force or Computational Attacks
• Insider Attacks

Tackling the Top Ten through an Attacker’s Mindset

Looking through the list, a few trends surface. Donning our “think red, act blue” hats, we can uncover ways to combat these common exploits.  

Employee Training

End users represent the first line of defense against many of these exploits. It’s undeniable that, these days, everyone is responsible for cybersecurity, regardless of their role. Unfortunately, not everyone recognizes that need.

It’s imperative that organizations adopt a security-first mindset across every employee. A great way to start is by requiring security awareness training organization wide. Doing so spreads the “think red, act blue” mindset throughout every business interaction.

When end users are trained (and re-trained at regular intervals) to recognize attacker techniques, they are less likely to immediately click on potentially phony emails, links, or suspicious attachments. In many cases, just a few seconds of consideration can mean the difference between falling for a ruse and preventing a cyberattack.

Security-first mindsets are also critical in other aspects of the business. Baking security into code development, work travel, and even social media posting help employees be more cognizant of the security ramifications of their actions. This culture of awareness then promotes a drive to protect company assets and prevent threat actors from exploiting low-hanging fruits.

Least Privilege

Expanding on a security-first culture, the principle of least privilege serves as an excellent guiding light for establishing secure business processes. Least privilege is based on the concept that no one should be granted access to anything outside the immediate needs of their roles. This applies to both digital and physical assets.

Least privilege directly confronts the attacker’s mindset of exploiting as much as possible with something like a set of stolen credentials. When an employee has limited access to anything outside of their direct responsibilities, their credentials instantly carry lesser weight in the hands of an attacker. And, in the case of insider threats, a malicious employee might simply be unable to elevate their privileges to affect critical systems or data.

Least privilege directly supports a zero trust security approach of trusting nothing and verifying everything. With zero trust, every digital interaction holds the potential to involve a threat. So, by acting early and often, organizations can proactively bar threat actors from successfully exploiting many of these common root causes.

Defense-in-Depth

Inevitably, despite best efforts, attackers will find a way to trick employees or otherwise penetrate an organization’s initial defenses. As such, the “think red, act blue” mindset must pervade through the entire cybersecurity program. Defense-in-depth exemplifies this effort.

Defense-in-depth relies on layers of defenses, established at any and every part of an IT organization. These layers meet attackers head on, even as they attempt to exploit deeper past initial access. In general, attackers tend to take the path of least resistance. Defense-in-depth directly counters this by adding resistance to every avenue, increasing resource demands on attackers and making their end goal seem less and less appealing.

In general, adding defense layers means adding more tools to the cybersecurity stack across the web, email, file, network and data domains. Leveraging a comprehensive cybersecurity platform, however, allows organizations to implement multiple lines of defense through a singular solution. The result is a tighter security approach with less maintenance and overhead.

Learn More

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that cyberattacks aren’t going away any time soon. And, on top of that, there are no silver bullets in security. That said, organizations can reframe their mindset, understanding attacker techniques and the keen importance of security, to take actionable steps to defend themselves.

A key part of that journey is arming yourself with the right technology to accomplish your security goals. Learn what technologies you can use to set yourself up for success; read our eBook.

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