Organizations must consider every aspect of their digital infrastructure when assessing cybersecurity risks. Here are the critical areas to evaluate:
Phishing emails may trick employees or customers into giving up credentials for accessing sensitive data, while malware scams deceive recipients into introducing malicious software into your systems. Also, threat actors may intercept and alter email content to trick people into transferring funds or sharing sensitive information.
Address the risks: Protect emails with an email signing certificate, which provides an additional layer of security through an authentication protocol. The hashing process shows if an email is altered or tampered with to ensure data integrity.
2. Internet of Things (IoT) device risks
IoT devices substantially increase an organization's attack surface, allowing hackers many opportunities to infiltrate a network or exfiltrate data. Unfortunately, many aren't equipped with sufficient security measures (e.g., access control and frequent firmware updates) to prevent unauthorized access.
Address the risks: Take inventory of all your IoT devices and identify potential vulnerabilities. Implement an IoT security and identity management solution to support device authentication and ensure secure data transmission.
3. Network device risks
Organizations must ensure users and devices accessing their network are who they say they are. Plus, validating the identity of every machine with network access is essential for a zero-trust architecture. However, traditional authentication methods like passwords are easily compromised and may not offer sufficient protection.
Address the risks: Automate the management of human and machine identities with managed public key infrastructure (PKI) services to strengthen digital identity verification and ensure secure connections beyond firewalled network architecture.
4. Web server risks
Cybercriminals may exploit vulnerabilities to access sensitive information in your systems or intercept data exchange between web browsers and your server. These attacks may disrupt your network, inject malicious content into your website, seize access privileges, or gain direct access to databases that contain valuable information.
Address the risks: SSL/TLS certificates enable the implementation of encryption protocols to protect communication between browsers and web servers. Choose the right certificates and automate the certificate lifecycle management process to ensure uninterrupted security. You may also use Sectigo SiteLock to augment website protection.
5. Application development risks
Threat actors may modify software code after an application is released and before its installation. For example, they could inject malicious code into an application's database to access sensitive data.
Address the risks: Use code signing certificates, which enable developers to digitally sign applications, drivers, and programs and allow end users to verify that a third party has not altered or compromised the code they receive.
6. DevOps environment risks
Your DevOps environment and tools are a treasure trove of passwords, access keys, SSH keys, tokens, certificates, and API keys. However, securing container communication and protecting numerous applications has become more complex as an infrastructure scales and incorporates various DevOps tools.
Address the risk: Implement a PKI solution to enforce cryptographic security across your DevOps implementation. Also, incorporate PKI into your continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline and container orchestration frameworks.
7. Public cloud key management risks
Public key management supports encryption protocols via digital certificates to protect sensitive information in the cloud. However, managing a growing number of certificates is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone. Renewal delays or mistakes could lead to security gaps and outages.
Address the risk: Automate certificate lifecycle management with Sectigo Certificate Manager to eliminate errors and bottlenecks that could result in expired certificates and compromise your data security.