This week, an intensive distributed service disruption attack was launched against Lithuanian authorities and private companies. Although last week's biggest attacks are currently no longer active, there is a high probability that destructive data encryption and website content modification attacks may increase in the coming days. Therefore, if you do not already have adequate cyber security in your company, you should do so immediately. Baltic Amadeus Information Security Architect Tomas Stamulis tells how to protect your business and what steps to take if you failed to protect yourself from a cyber attack.

Act smarter - learn from other people's mistakes

One of the first steps in preventing threats is ensuring basic information security hygiene. Proper maintenance of computers, servers, network equipment, information systems, and their elements will ensure that cybercriminals cannot harm the company and its operations.

Act smarter and don't wait until you experience the damage yourself: if you notice information about a vulnerability or a cyber attack carried out at another company, immediately assess whether you have a similar vulnerability or whether you are prepared to protect yourself from such cyber attacks. If the vulnerability is relevant, follow the recommendations provided to remove it and do not wait for criminals to try to exploit it. If the security measures used are insufficient to adequately protect yourself, install additional ones. We often see that employees react to vulnerabilities not when they announce them, but when other companies experience cyberattacks after exploiting such a vulnerability. However, by ignoring the security recommendations, we can waste a lot of time and effort to regain the trust of customers or partners, restore the reputation and restore the company's activities", says Tomas Stamoulis.

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According to an expert, poor software maintenance is a path to permanent vulnerabilities. If the IT team performs its functions properly, then the IT equipment and various applications will not have security holes or criminals will need a lot of effort to carry out a hack. None of us is immune from having our data or operations affected by the inappropriate actions of other third parties. For this reason, it is very important not only to establish obligations or responsibilities in contracts but also to realistically assess whether business partners and contractors adequately protect personal data: and whether the products they develop and sell meet the expectations and security requirements.

How to protect yourself from cyber-attacks?

It is much easier to fool a person than a firewall, antivirus, or another security tool. Often people trust or misjudge email. the information provided by the criminal in the letter or notice and begins to carry out the instructions. Both global and Lithuanian practice shows that there are more and more cases of money transfers when login data was provided, or encrypted information when a malicious file was clicked. Therefore, it is very important to develop employees' awareness of cyber security, and during the period when cyber attacks intensify, the rules of safe behavior should be reminded.

"Simple, yet universal advice to follow: update your organization's software promptly and regularly perform security patches and updates. Conduct penetration testing, risk assessment, access rights review, and security assessment activities periodically, semi-annually, or more frequently. By doing this yourself, you may be surprised to learn the weak points of the systems your company uses. They may simply be overlooked or the risk underestimated. It is best if the risk assessment is carried out by external partners, but not by colleagues from the company's internal IT department. Taking into account the results of the risk assessment, install the necessary security measures needed to protect the company's most important information", says T.Stamulis.

Password hygiene is especially important. It is estimated that one Internet user has about 80 accounts on the Internet, the passwords of which are simply impossible to remember. When creating passwords, users often use simple sequences of numbers, their names, or other easy-to-guess word. Therefore, it is recommended that you come up with different passwords or use tools that help you create and manage different passwords.

"By properly protecting different accounts, we protect ourselves from future inconveniences." If there are more regular Internet users, the work of hackers will become much more difficult," says the security expert.

To reduce the consequences of cyber attacks, it is recommended to ensure adequate backups and protection. In this case, even if the equipment is completely destroyed, with backups, operations can be restored in another infrastructure.

What to do if a cyber attack could not be avoided?

If hackers have implemented a cyber attack, it is especially important to implement an effective action plan to properly control the incident, promptly restore the company's activities and prevent repeated attacks. In this situation, T.Stamulis advises paying attention to the education of employees on the topic of information security.