Enterprises Need To Plan For The Worst

Nishchal Bhalla, Founder, SecurityByte talks to Biztech2.com about importance of cyber crime reporting, and the vulnerability of operating systems to cyber threats.

Enterprises not reporting cyber crime is a major issue, and instances where its reported there is a huge time lag between the incident happening and its reporting. What are the reasons for this?

Unfortunately this is a common situation not only in India, but globally. Companies and employees alike are often unaware of an attack on their system until some unknown activity happens and someone dedicatedly reviews the systems.

The challenge in a corporate environment is not only external threat but also insider threat. Attacks and attackers have become more sophisticated. Victims are lured through traditional methods- friendly emails like “look at this picture” to more complicated and targeted attacks against a list of customers by sending phishing emails. Hence, once an attacker compromises the system, the victim typically doesn’t learn about it for an extended period of time, unless it’s traced by the Information security team from inside the corporate environment.

It is interesting to see that most organisations around the world have very few awareness programs around what to do if an incident occurs. It would be of great value if all people in an organisation knew what exactly to do, and not do if they suspect their system has been compromised. This, of course, adds to the cost for organisations but it ensures an additional layer of defence.

Is there also a fear factor that acts as a deterrent to the reporting of such incidents?

Many security officers fear loss of a job, and thus don’t publically disclose a compromise. It should be understood by organisations and boards that no system is protected from intruders. It is next to impossible to protect a system from intruders. The only thing a security officer can do is hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Is it true that most of the cyber attacks in India are from a specific destination, like China or Russia?

I would tend to disagree that China and Russia are targeting India alone. Yes, publically we have seen that some attackers are based out of Pakistan who attack our systems and try to gain fame. These attacks can be easily avoided if we have more secure infrastructure.

How do you view security from the perspective of smaller businesses?

For small vendors and home run businesses to an extent, realistically there is no need to upgrade to the next version of Windows or the respective software. They can run their businesses with older versions, but are forced to buy the advanced versions because of lack of support from the vendors. The older versions of software are less likely to be attacked as they are relatively more secure and have less vulnerabilities than the advanced version, which along with more features also opens many loopholes.

Do you agree that Microsoft’s Windows OS is not secure?

It is a common fallacy that Microsoft’s Windows system is an insecure system. I think all the latest versions of operating systems are equally secure or insecure if they are not configured properly. Yes, if you look at early 2000, maybe then one could have said that one operating system might be more secure than the other. But, today I would say most systems are equally secure.