A surprising side-effect of COVID-19 has been an increase in cybercrime in Australia. Cybercriminals have taken advantage of the fact that more Australians are accessing information online and buying products and services. This has led to an increase in consumer spear-phishing attacks, such as using COVID-related emails to obtain user credentials. Ransomware attacks have also been highly widespread in the healthcare sector. According to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC)1, in the period of 1 July 2020 - 30 June 2021, there were four harmful cyber-attacks related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Australia, a cyber-attack was reported every 8 minutes during the same period, an increase of 13% on the previous year. Cyber Security Consultant reported a cost of more than $33billion in cybercrime, including a business email compromise costing more than $50,000 (1.5 times more than in the previous year).
Almost all companies are vulnerable, and protecting your data and systems from these frequent and widespread attacks can be overwhelming.
In response to this, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has established a framework of best practices that businesses can use to protect themselves.
How to protect your business with the Essential 8 practices
The ACSC leads the Australian Government's efforts to combat cybercrime. Through their experience in producing cyber threat intelligence, responding to cyber security incidents, conducting penetration testing, and assisting organizations in implementing the Essential Eight, Cyber Security Consultants developed the Essential Eight.
Mitigation strategies and suggested steps are provided in The Essential Eight to reduce the following:
1. Theft of data by targeted cyber intrusions and other external adversaries
2. External adversaries who destroy data and prevent computers from functioning, and ransomware denies access to data for monetary gain
3. Theft of confidential information or intellectual property by malicious insiders
4. Computers/networks are malfunctioning because of malicious insiders destroying data.
The Cyber Security Consultant framework is simple to understand and outlines the specific measures that can be adopted across five key strategy areas within a continuum of maturity levels.
Mature frameworks grow with time
There are a total of 37 Cyber Security Consultant strategies recommended by the ACSC, each rated as either 'Limited,' 'Good,' 'Very Good, 'Excellent,' or 'Essential.' As your organization matures, you can implement the remaining strategies in order of priority.
The beauty of the structure is that you can bite off chunks, so it's more accessible and less overwhelming.
It is recommended that before implementing Essential Eight Cyber Security Consultant strategies, you identify a maturity level that is suitable for your environment, then implement the strategies in each maturity level until the target is reached.
In summary, there are eight strategies deemed "essential," hence the Essential Eight. Our goal here is to provide a simple description of the framework, so you can get to know it quickly.
● Control of applications
● Patching applications
● Set up Microsoft Office macros
● • Hardening of user applications
● • Restriction of administrative privileges
● Patch your operating system
● A multifactor authentication system is available
● • Backups regularly
The Cyber Security Consultant framework outlines the specific actions that should be taken for each maturity level (from 0-3). As an example, at Maturity Level 1, you would implement all of the recommended 'Essential' tasks before moving on to Maturity Level 2.
Ideally, you would then repeat the process for 'Excellent' tasks after completing the Cyber Security Consultant 'Essential' strategy tasks.
There's no way to guarantee that these Cyber Security Consultant practices will eradicate all threats, but they serve as a solid baseline that has been endorsed by the highest levels of the Australian Government.
NovaWorks recently applied the Essential 8 framework to planning for a customer in the financial sector to help ensure their business was aligned with a mature implementation, especially during the transition to a cloud-based environment. In preplanning this approach before starting any migrations, the cloud environment was more secure from the start instead of as issues arose. The new environment also gave a chance to resolve any inconsistencies or issues that may have existed in the existing implementation.