Remote-access Guide

list three security vulnerabilities associated with remote access technologies

by Lois Steuber Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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Here’s a breakdown of the most common vulnerabilities associated with remote access:

  1. Lack of established protocols Last year, most IT security teams were forced to rapidly implement ad hoc solutions for...
  2. Unsecured networks

Five Remote Access Security Risks And How To Protect Against Them
  1. Weak remote access policies. ...
  2. A deluge of new devices to protect. ...
  3. Lack of visibility into remote user activity. ...
  4. Users mixing home and business passwords. ...
  5. Opportunistic phishing attempts.
Apr 20, 2020

Full Answer

What are the disadvantages of remote access client devices?

Remote Access Vulnerabilities Remote access client devices generally have weaker protection than standard client devices Many devices not managed by the enterprise No enterprise firewalls, antivirus, etc. Lack of physical security controls Remote access client devices may be used in hostile environments but not configured for them

What are the vulnerabilities of remote workforces?

Read on to learn about three of the most significant vulnerabilities for remote workforces. 1. Remote workforces are more susceptible to phishing scams. Without the proper protections on personal devices, remote workers can face greater threats from phishing attacks. Cyber criminals don’t care if personnel are working from home or in the office.

What are the common types of vulnerabilities in computer systems?

User Vulnerabilities. Users sometimes write their login information on sticky notes and leave them places such as their monitors. Other users are sometimes too careless when they allow others to watch them log onto a system. Obviously their are other sorts of user vulnerabilities such as those gained through social engineering.

Are there security gaps in the remote workplace?

As the world adjusted to working from home, IT teams worked overtime to enable remote access for millions of employees. This transition went smoothly for most organizations, but many security gaps still remain almost a year later.

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What are the vulnerabilities of remote access?

Many remote access security risks abound, but below is a list of the ones that jump out.Lack of information. ... Password sharing. ... Software. ... Personal devices. ... Patching. ... Vulnerable backups. ... Device hygiene. ... Phishing attacks.

What are the 4 main types of security vulnerability?

Security Vulnerability TypesNetwork Vulnerabilities. These are issues with a network's hardware or software that expose it to possible intrusion by an outside party. ... Operating System Vulnerabilities. ... Human Vulnerabilities. ... Process Vulnerabilities.

What are the three 3 types of network service vulnerabilities?

At the broadest level, network vulnerabilities fall into three categories: hardware-based, software-based, and human-based.

What are the 3 threats to information security?

Viruses and worms. Viruses and worms are malicious software programs (malware) aimed at destroying an organization's systems, data and network. ... Botnets. ... Drive-by download attacks. ... Phishing attacks. ... Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. ... Ransomware. ... Exploit kits. ... Advanced persistent threat attacks.More items...

What are the types of vulnerabilities?

In that list, they categorize three main types of security vulnerabilities based their more extrinsic weaknesses: Porous defenses. Risky resource management. Insecure interaction between components.

What are the examples of vulnerability?

Examples of VulnerabilityTaking chances that might lead to rejection.Talking about mistakes you have made.Sharing personal information that you normally keep private.Feeling difficult emotions such as shame, grief, or fear.Reconnecting with someone you have fallen out with.More items...•

What are the vulnerabilities in network security?

Network vulnerabilities come in many forms but the most common types are: Malware, short for malicious software, such as Trojans, viruses, and worms that are installed on a user's machine or a host server. Social engineering attacks that fool users into giving up personal information such as a username or password.

What are some of the most common vulnerabilities that exist in a network?

7 Most Common Network Vulnerabilities for BusinessesThere are several types of malware, including: ... Outdated or Unpatched Software Applications. ... Weak Passwords. ... Single Factor Authentication. ... Poor Firewall Configuration. ... Mobile Device Vulnerabilities. ... Lack of Data Backup. ... Unsecure Email.

What are vulnerabilities in computer?

A flaw or weakness in a computer system, its security procedures, internal controls, or design and implementation, which could be exploited to violate the system security policy.

What are the 5 threats to cyber security?

Here are the current top five cyber threats that you should be aware of.Ransomware. ... Phishing. ... Data leakage. ... Hacking. ... Insider threat. ... businessadviceservice.com. ... businessadviceservice.com.

What is the biggest vulnerability to computer information security?

Failing to update software One of the biggest causes of cyber and information security vulnerabilities is that systems and software are not regularly updated.

What are the 5 types of cyber security?

Cybersecurity can be categorized into five distinct types:Critical infrastructure security.Application security.Network security.Cloud security.Internet of Things (IoT) security.

What is the most common vulnerability?

OWASP Top 10 VulnerabilitiesSensitive Data Exposure. ... XML External Entities. ... Broken Access Control. ... Security Misconfiguration. ... Cross-Site Scripting. ... Insecure Deserialization. ... Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. ... Insufficient Logging and Monitoring.More items...

What is considered a security vulnerability?

A Security Vulnerability is a weakness, flaw, or error found within a security system that has the potential to be leveraged by a threat agent in order to compromise a secure network.

What are potential security vulnerabilities?

The Top 10 security vulnerabilities as per OWASP Top 10 are: Insecure Direct Object References. Cross Site Request Forgery. Security Misconfiguration. Insecure Cryptographic Storage.

Can you give me an example of common security vulnerabilities?

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Why are unprotected remote organizations more susceptible to email scams?

Unprotected remote organizations are more susceptible due to the increased complexity of the network environment because many organizations still don’t use multi-factor authentication. In total, Americans lose $3.1 billion to email scams each year.

What are flash vulnerabilities?

These vulnerabilities include personal mobile devices that are used for business communications. According to a Duo report, approximately 60 percent of enterprise devices were found to be running on older, vulnerable versions of flash. These exploits allow hackers to download software that assesses a device’s flash version and installs malware, should the right version (s) be identified. From there, attackers have full access to each infected machine.

How many employees did hackers give out login details?

In one notable attack, staff members accidentally gave out login details for five employees. The end result: the exposure of sensitive data for 80 million customers. Ironically, hackers used the media attention to send more rounds of phishing emails.

What are opportunistic hackers?

Opportunistic hackers typically aim for well-known vulnerabilities. They’re particularly interested in known exploits for older, out of-date-devices. An organization which allows remote workers to use outdated personal devices puts their critical business information at great risk to cyber criminals.

Is remote work the future?

Remote employment is clearly the future of work. It’s especially apparent now given the organizational challenges of working during COVID-19, but there’s no doubt that demand will only grow in the foreseeable future. All that’s needed to keep hackers at bay is a diligent focus on training, and device and network security.

Is working from home a security risk?

Working from home opens organizations up to increased security risk , however, through their workforce’s frequent use of unsecured WiFi, personal device usage and the ensuing growth of complexity in network environments.

Can hackers hack remote workers?

Without the proper protections on personal devices, remote workers can face greater threats from phishing attacks. Cyber criminals don’t care if personnel are working from home or in the office. Either way, they can trick workers into giving up login credentials—or completing a financial transaction—by posing as a message from a reputable company.

What should security teams do if on-premises network and email security mechanisms are no longer available?

Recommendation: If some on-premises network and email security mechanisms are no longer available, security teams should double down on educating users to identify phishing attempts and to choose strong, unique passwords, encouraging the use of a password manager. They should also implement client certificates and multi-factor authentication in order to prevent attackers from gaining access through unsecured devices.

What are the risks of using a VPN?

Here are five top security risks that teams must deal with, as well as technology and user education best practices to keep users and data safe: 1. Weak remote access policies. Once attackers get access to a virtual private network (VPN), they can often penetrate the rest of the network like a hot knife through butter.

What is Wildfire malware analysis?

Resources: Learn how the cloud-delivered WildFire® malware analysis service – which is built into Cortex XDR and many other Palo Alto Networks products – aggregates data and threat intelligence from the industry’s largest global community to automatically identify and stop threats. Additionally, URL Filtering blocks access to malicious sites to help prevent phishing attacks.

Why is it important to enforce access based on user identity?

Recommendation: It’s critical that companies enforce access based on user identity, allowing specific groups access to only what they need to get their jobs done, and expanding access from there on an as-needed basis.

Why do companies use VPNs?

Historically, many companies deployed VPNs primarily for technical people needing access to critical technology assets. Not so much the case anymore – VPNs are often encouraged for all users as a more secure connection than home or public networks.

Top-3 Fraud Vulnerabilities Associated with Remote Work

This post was written by Cristina Hazelwood & Chris Grippa from Village Sponsor, Aprio.

The bottom line

Your company’s transition to remote work may have felt sudden and temporary at the start, but chances are it’s here to stay, at least partially, – and so are the new risks for fraud. If you’re ready to stop waiting for the pandemic to end and want to create a modern strategy against fraud, Aprio is here to help.

What are user vulnerabilities?

User Vulnerabilities. Users sometimes write their login information on sticky notes and leave them places such as their monitors. Other users are sometimes too careless when they allow others to watch them log onto a system. Obviously their are other sorts of user vulnerabilities such as those gained through social engineering.

What are the most pervasive things that admins fail to do?

Administrator Vulnerabilities. One of the most pervasive things that admins fail to do is educate themselves about known vulnerabilities and fixes. They might also fail to keep up to date with patches.

What is the most common mode of attack?

One fairly typical mode of attack is for a hacker to sniff on a public network, such a the Internet. The hacker looks for packets that come from a source that is able to get through, is trusted by, a particular firewall. Once the hacker discovers such a transmission source they might be able to construct their own packets and send them through this same firewall.

Why is remote work so attractive?

The remote work environment is particularly appealing for attackers for several reasons. First, the home-network environment is not professionally managed. Most critically, this means that many more systems on home networks are not patched regularly, and a number of them are out of date with respect to vulnerability mitigation. Some may even be treated by their manufacturers as end-of-life (EOL) products, and will never receive mitigations even when serious vulnerabilities are found.

What is remote work?

Remote Work: Vulnerabilities and Threats to the Enterprise. For many organizations, COVID-19 dramatically changed the risk calculation for remote work. In January 2020, many enterprises viewed remote work with skepticism; by March, the choice for many was to become a remote-first enterprise or to shut down.

What is a VPN client?

The system running the VPN client becomes, effectively, an extension of the enterprise network, existing inside that network's perimeter with access to resources generally equivalent to any other system on the enterprise network. VPNs defend against attack via authenticated access control and isolation.

What is persistence on an enterprise network?

To persist on an enterprise network, an attacker who has exploited a system must avoid detection and resist remediation. Here too, the home network is friendlier to the attacker; threat detection is typically nearly absent, and remediation incidental, such as when a PC is reinstalled or retired because it is running slowly.

What is enterprise network?

Enterprise networks were traditionally accessed only on enterprise-provided equipment. This arrangement has permitted enterprises unrestricted access to monitor and configure the device precisely according to their risk profiles and mitigation strategies. It also has required the enterprise to purchase and maintain equipment. This has sometimes frustrated end users when the enterprise was unwilling to buy newer equipment, a problem that became particularly pronounced when smartphones and tablet devices entered the market.

What is zero trust architecture?

In fact, the foundation of zero-trust architecture, an emerging trend in enterprise and distributed networking, is the idea that one's network should be assumed hostile. The key to securing the remote work environment is to extend these zero-trust assumptions further. It isn't just the network that should be assumed hostile, but everything that is not under the enterprise's control. Interestingly, this may extend even to the endpoints that are used to access enterprise resources.

Is remote work a threat?

Attackers have been aware of remote work as a threat vector for some time. Mandiant reported a 2015 trend of attackers hijacking VPN connections, even those protected with multi-factor authentication (MFA). Unsurprisingly, in 2020 attackers moved early to capitalize on the rapid shift to work from home at numerous organizations, including federal agencies, such as NASA.

What is a rogue access point?

A rogue access point is a wireless access point that is illicitly placed within, or on the edges of, a Wi-Fi network. Within the enterprise, rogue access points are commonly referred to as insider threats, and they have typically been encountered among employees who wish to have Wi-Fi access within organizations that do not have Wi-Fi available. This is done by connecting a wireless access point to an Ethernet connection within the network, thereby providing an unauthorized avenue into network resources. This is often accomplished within networks that do not have a well-thought-out port security policy in place.

When was Wi-Fi encrypted?

Encryption Looney Tunes. In early 2007, researchers were able to crack the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) in less than one minute. In 2008, the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) protocol was partially cracked by researchers in Germany.

Is SSID a security vulnerability?

Now, knowledge of a network’s SSID does not in and of itself represent a security vulnerability, but why concede any information at all to possible hackers? There's no reason to do so, so obscure as much about your organization’s network as possible, and force hackers to do a little more work.

Is diligence the key to securing your network?

As always, diligence is the key to securing your network as no encryption standard, hardware device, or intrusion detection system can truly substitute for a wary security administrator.

Can a rogue access point intercept traffic?

That said, even without a robust Wi-Fi security policy in place, a rogue access point may not be able to intercept traffic, but it could still consume large amounts of network resources and cause a significant amount of network congestion.

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