A Free Solution to Protect Your Business from 6 Biggest Cyber Threats in 2022

For the last few years, the cybersecurity threat landscape has
gotten progressively more complex and dangerous. The online world
is now rife with data thieves, extortionists, and even state actors
looking to exploit vulnerabilities in businesses’ digital
defenses.

And unfortunately — the bad guys have the upper hand at the
moment. Part of the reason for that is the fallout from the rapid
digitization made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to research on the subject, more than half of businesses^[1] have yet to mitigate the
risks created by that digitization. And when you add a persistent
shortage of cybersecurity workers to that fact, you have the
makings of a scary situation.

But businesses aren’t helpless. There are plenty of things they
can do to augment their defenses as they look to mitigate cyber
risks. And best of all, some of those options won’t cost them a
thing.

A great example of that is the open-source security platform
Wazuh^[2]. It offers businesses a
free solution to the following top six cyber threats — and then
some.

Ransomware and Malware

Of all of the digital threats businesses now face, there’s one
that most experts agree is the most pressing. It’s the threat of
ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malware designed to hold
business systems and data hostage using sophisticated encryption
technology.

Once it gets into a business network, it will encrypt valuable
data and demand payment to return access to that data to the
business.

The trouble is — there’s never any guarantee that a payment will
result in the data getting released. And 80% of businesses that do
pay to get their data back end up getting retargeted for a second
attack. So, the only surefire way to deal with ransomware is to
avoid it in the first place. And that’s the first thing Wazuh can
help with.

There are a few ways that Wazuh accomplishes this on the
machines it’s running on. First, it uses a “Scanless Vulnerability
Detection” module that works with a CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures) database to search for vulnerabilities in the software
and hardware. Then, it looks for misconfigurations that could allow
malicious software to propagate. And finally, it conducts file
system surveillance using the “File integrity monitoring^[3]” feature to look for the
telltale signs of a ransomware attack in real-time.

Network-Based Intrusions

One of the reasons that threats like ransomware, backdoor and
malware are so dangerous is their ability to spread within a
compromised business network. That means a security flaw on a
single machine could end up leading to a company-wide cyber attack.
And the only way to spot something like that is to monitor network
traffic to look for unusual activity.

Wazuh does this by integrating with another industry-leading
open-source solution called Suricata^[4]. It’s a sophisticated
intrusion detection, prevention, and network security monitoring
platform that can detect cyber-attacks and halt them in their
tracks. And with the addition of another free component — OwlH^[5]
— network managers can see a complete visualization of network
utilization to spot potential threats before they can do real
damage.

Vulnerable and Outdated Software

Believe it or not, the majority of cyber-attacks exploit
vulnerabilities that software vendors are already aware of. The
reason they can do that is the fact that computer users — and
particularly business users — don’t do a very good job of keeping
their software up to date. And just by doing that, businesses can
gain an instant upgrade to their cyber defenses.

Wazuh helps them with that by performing network-wide
vulnerability scans that can identify known security flaws. And
through a single interface, it identifies missing security patches
that will fix the problems when available. That makes it easier for
administrators to patch known vulnerabilities and keep track of
those for which patches aren’t yet available.

DDoS Attacks

Another common cyber threat involves the use of internet traffic
to paralyze a targeted system or network.

It’s known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and
while not typically destructive, it can lead to hours of downtime
for a target. Cybercriminals carry out such attacks by harnessing
the power of thousands of compromised computers and devices to
direct a wave of meaningless internet traffic toward their
target.

Eventually, the affected system runs out of resources to deal
with it and is effectively knocked offline.

There are built-in out-of-the-box rules in Wazuh that can
identify brute-force and DDoS attacks by correlating multiple
authentication failure events. In this way, the platform can help
network administrators to short-circuit ongoing DDoS attacks and
stop brute-force hack attempts aimed at open SSH and RDP ports.

Data Leaks

One of the biggest cyber threats businesses have to deal with
every day is the chance that their proprietary or other sensitive
data will fall into the wrong hands.

Sometimes, it happens when an unauthorized user gains access to
a protected system and exfiltrates data. And other times it happens
through the carelessness — or malice — of an employee or other
insider.

In order to protect against the former, Wazuh has a range of
real-time monitoring features that can detect unauthorized access
via custom rules, alerting managers when malicious commands are
executed. And to guard against the latter, it can monitor
employees’ use of external storage devices like USB drives and the
like to help administrators enforce the business’s data security
policy. It can even run audits of any command-line use by
authorized users, to look for attempts at bypassing GUI-based
restrictions on data access.

Regulatory Compliance

Cybercriminals aren’t the only digital threat that businesses
have to deal with. They may also face repercussions from failing to
abide by regulatory standards they’re subject to. And as the number
of those standards continues to grow, so too does the burden
businesses face in guaranteeing their compliance.

The good news is that Wazuh is built with compliance in mind.
Its built-in detection and logging rules are mapped to various
major compliance requirements. That means it can automatically
attach compliance information to the alerts it generates.

The regulatory frameworks it supports out of the box
include:

• Trust Services Criteria (TSC SOC2)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
• NIST Special Publication 800-53 (NIST 800-53)
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Good Practice Guide 13 (GPG13)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  (HIPAA)

Those features aid administrators in the complex task of
compliance and in fulfilling their reporting requirements as
necessary.

The Bottom Line

The cyber threat landscape is continuing to evolve and presents
an ever greater security challenge to businesses. And for that
reason, they must use all of the tools at their disposal to defend
themselves.

Fortunately, Wazuh offers businesses a sophisticated security
platform without the need for massive technology investment. And
given its versatility — it should be a go-to solution for any
business racing to meet the challenge of modern cybersecurity.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. Wazuh is a fully
open-source solution that is free to download and easy to use.
There is also extensive documentation describing its features,
capabilities and usage.