When I saw former bad actor Hackah Jak speak, this year, he marveled at how easy it was to break into many of his targets because they simply hadn’t updated their systems, often in years. He found applications which had been updated by the manufacturer five years ago, but customers of the application which had never applied the update. If the update is never applied, the application is still wide open to bad actors. I should clarify that the bad actor known as Hackah Jak is no longer doing damage, and that many of his exploits were actually done while working under cover for the FBI, but nevertheless, it’s important to make sure that the applications you are using are updated regularly, to improve your cyber defenses. This is the latest topic in our series: 15 Ways to Prevent Cyber Attacks. See other articles in the series, here.
Think about it for a minute. Imagine you’re a bad actor in Johnsburg, IL. You read the published reports of some vulnerabilities, which tell you how to leverage a vulnerability, so you already know how to get into systems that haven’t been patched. If you find a system that’s not patched, it’s like a door in the neighborhood that’s not locked. All you have to do is write a little script and you can try that “door” on all the systems you can find on the Internet. It costs a bad actor nothing to try, and if the system isn’t patched, the door isn’t locked; they just walk into your systems.
So at CMIT Solutions of Chicago Northwest, we like to ensure we start with a firm foundation–with patching. It’s a foundational component of any cybersecurity strategy. This goes for not just the operating systems, but the applications you use to run your business, too. If it got “installed” somewhere, it will need to be patched, over time.
CMIT uses a small “agent” added to your systems to do several different things in the universe of proactive computer management. It will monitor your disk space usage, because if your local disks fill up, your application, or your Operating System will crash. It’s preventable, if you’re paying attention to such things, and our automated agent pays attention to that. The same agent is used to ensure your software is up-to-date, and may do other things, as well.
The ability to automatically update systems, and on a timely basis is more and more important because many cybersecurity insurance policies will require the insured to be compliant with an immediate or near-immediate update, as patches become available. Failure to patch your systems on a timely basis may invalidate your cybersecurity insurance. So not only is the failure or delay of patching making your systems more vulnerable to cyber attack, it’s making your recovery from any event much more difficult.
But what if a system can’t be patched? Either the developers are out of business, or it would take millions of dollars to replace the system with a more modern version… there can be lots of reasons why a system can’t be, or should not be patched. CMIT knows how to manage those systems as well.
First they have to be taken out of rotation amidst the other systems which are automatically upgraded. Then they need to be isolated, to help ensure they can’t be reached by bad actors–even bad actors who have already taken over some other systems on your network.
Of course there are some systems which need to be updated, but because of their criticality, they need to be updated in a controlled and monitored fashion, to ensure that a bad update (they can happen) doesn’t create an application outage at an unfortunate time. Such systems need a plan and contingencies around the update process, and CMIT knows how to do all that, as well.
Clearly, this is not just a technology problem, or it would be solved reliably for everyone. Having a successful systems and applications update program requires savvy people, good processes, and modern technology. Reach out to us and tell us about your situation. We’d love to engage around what’s going to make sense for your business.
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