The unprecedented rise of digital platforms and increased dependence on shared technology have increased our exposure to cyber-attacks. According to Cyber Signals, a Microsoft Threat Intelligence Report, basic cybersecurity hygiene can go as far as protecting against 98% of attacks.
Here are six quick tips from Microsoft Security on how security teams can protect their organizations from cyber-attacks:
- Accelerate safeguards through zero-trust practices: As ransomware thrives on default or compromised credentials, reduce risk by implementing zero-trust practices like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and passwordless upgrades on all user accounts and prioritizing configurations and other privileged roles.
- Monitor and act on anomalies: Though early logins, file movement, and other behaviors that introduce ransomware can seem nondescript, teams need to identify how to spot telltale anomalies in time to act on them swiftly.
- Manage alerts and move fast on mitigation: Strengthen weak security configurations that allow the ransomware attack to succeed and manage security configurations so alerts and detections are being responded to properly.
- Visualize and practice full restorations: Have a ransomware response plan and conduct recovery exercises to understand how full restorations will look.
- Audit access privileges: Practice frequent audits of access privileges, using the principle of least-privilege granted to enable employees to get jobs done.
- Verify the authenticity of users and activities: Thoroughly review all tenant administrator users or accounts tied to delegated administrative privileges to verify their authenticity and disable or remove any unused delegated administrative privileges.
