Technology

How To Protect Your Organization From Advance Persistent Threat


Advanced persistent threat refers to an extremely dangerous threat that affects your enterprise or network targeted by unauthorized access for a long time with undetected while most advanced persistent threat does not cause any considerable damage to the enterprise’s local machines network or systems it is a means to steal sensitive data making it a tool for data theft.

Why Do These Attacks Happen?

When you are a successful organization, it means you have valuable information regarding a business and clients such organizations are usually targeted by an attack is sponsored by competitors’ attackers, foreign government agencies, attacker use vectors such as internet, email, physical and deception, the attackers pursue their objective to steal information for an extended period.

Organization

How does an APT attack work?

Attackers executing APT take the following sequential approach to gain and maintain ongoing access to a target:

  • APT groups can gain access by targeting systems through the internet. Normally, through phishing emails or by inserting malicious software into the target machine.
  • After gaining access, they start to begin exploiting the malware they have installed to create backdoors that they can use to move around without being noticed.
  • Once inside the targeted network, the APT group may use methods such as password cracking to gain administrative rights.
  • They start to move laterally once threat actors have breached their target systems, including gaining administrator rights, they can then move around the enterprise network. Additionally, they start to attempt to access the other servers, as well as other sensitive and secure areas of the network.
  • The attackers take the data and then start to transfer it to their own system.
  • Remain until they are detected: The attackers can repeat this process for extended periods without being detected, they also create a backdoor by which they can access the system again in the future easily.

How Should One Defend Against APT

  • Building and maintaining an infrastructure that is protected by layers of defenses such as IPS, IDS, External and Internal security system layers.
  • There is no single tool that can defend you against APT attacks, an effective defense requires controlling every aspect of your enterprise network through various up-to-date tools including anti-virus, NextGen firewalls, authentication, and endpoint protection.
  • Regular monitoring of each successful and failed login attempt by which anomalies can be spotted and identified quickly.
  • Awareness and education for your employees, because these days phishing e-mails and social engineering are more often used to trap the people. Employees should be trained on what to look for and what actions should be taken if they are uncertain about an attachment and link came by such e-mails or relevant medium over the internet.

Zindagi technologies has an experienced security analyst team providing you the best protection for your enterprise network assuring you to prevent various threats that can harm your infrastructure, we are just one call away at +91-9773973971 or you can contact us via email.

Author
Sameer Vats
Associate Consultant

Author

Team ZT