The Solar Winds Rabbit Hole: What’s happened and what’s next?

The Solar Winds Rabbit Hole: What’s happened and what’s next?

In most situations where a massive hack or breach has occurred, trying to get a handle on what has been compromised or even what is still compromised can be a challenge.

It’s unfortunately been our experience that in most cases things almost end up being worse than they initially look. Hackers are smart and if they can remain in your systems for a long time, they can get more to either use against you in a ransomware attempt or even leave breadcrumb behind to get back in your systems and hit you again.

This is why we will always say prevention is key, but sometimes despite your very best efforts a breach occurs. We think this is certainly what has happened in the case of the massive Solar Winds breach that is still being unraveled weeks later.

CyberSecurity NewsEven detection's put in place by the NSA failed to detect this hack in time, and as of this week Microsoft was even included in it as it’s been exposed that some of their source code was revealed in the breach.

Hackers grow more and more sophisticated by the day and it requires a full-scale team effort to prevent your business from either an attack aimed at it specifically, or as the case has been with Microsoft, being looped into a breach that’s occurring to a vendor you may use.

Attacks from foreign bodies aren’t even very rare, international hacker networks are taking a growing lead in cyberwarfare. While most of these attacks are acts of espionage, if the payoff is lucrative enough hackers will strike anywhere.

It’s unknown what the real damage from the Solar Winds hack will end up being, or what if anything will come from the exposure of Microsoft source code, but we think this should serve as a wakeup call to anyone who doesn’t take the topic of cybersecurity seriously.

Here are some things you can begin to do to make your business more secure in 2021.

  1. Have a Hardware Firewall like SonicWall. A hardware firewall makes it easier to have universal rules for your whole network versus having to configure rules for each device.
  2. Enable Core Isolation and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on your Windows 10 Devices. These protocols will work in tandem to help stop malware and ransomware on your Windows 10 Devices.
  3. Also Enable Group Policy Settings with the Group Policy Editor. With group policy settings you can stop employees from doing things like opening attachments or random .exe files. You can also use group policy to prevent unknown USB devices from being used on work devices. Basically, group policy can prevent a lot of the activities that lead to ransomware or malware in the first place.
  4. Use Next Level Multi-Factor Authentication with a Hardware Key. We believe strongly in Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and the next step to that could be introducing the use of hardware keys to your business, a hardware key is a token that won’t allow you to unlock a device without it. Most hardware keys will also work in conjunction with software MFA like LastPass.
  5. You should Vet your Vendors, Even the “Bigger” Ones. As this Solar Winds breach has shown us, big or small a breach can happen to anyone. While you’re working on handling cybersecurity on your end you should also question the vendors you use as to what their cybersecurity policies are and what their plan is if a breach were to occur.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but like we usually say, starting is a great first step. If you’d like an information packet of the Cyber Security services Valley Techlogic can provide, reach out to us today! Our comprehensive Cyber Security plan addresses all these topics and many more.

Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.

This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/valleytechlogic.

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