How Secure are Your Third-parties’ Servers?

At recent InfoSec World, digital risk and privacy were high priorities on the 2020 agenda. Security professionals gathered virtually to hear the keynote about how to prevent the next big data breach.  A common thread among sessions was how to diminish the digital risk of cybersecurity breaches. To make good business decisions, organizations must be aware of threats to their enterprise, including digital risk of a data leak becoming front page news.  “Identifying and managing risk is extremely important to an organization’s livelihood and resilience,” says Teri Robinson of SC Media; “It can make a difference in curbing, mitigating and/or recovering from cybersecurity incidents.” In times of digital transformation and increased sharing of data with business partners, securing a company’s internal network is not enough to safeguard corporate information.  Companies must also safeguard their data that could be vulnerable on third-party servers.

Threat landscape increasingly external

Cybersecurity budgets once focused on the cost to secure data inside the IT network.  That was before companies created value by sharing data with business partners.  Now the need to share data in real time with business partners, cybersecurity budgets must include costs to secure data inside and outside the IT network. According to Todd Carroll, VP of Operations at CybelAngel, “third-party data breaches will dominate the threat landscape in 2020.” Estimates indicate that approximately 60 percent of data breaches are linked to third parties, with that percentage expected to go up as more companies embrace digital platforms and new operating models that require sharing of data with partners and service providers.

More sharing, more digital risk

Sharing business data with partners increases the risk of data leaks.  Endpoint security is often touted as a solution to third-party data risk, but what’s the fix for human error? With the endpoint security approach, computer networks that are remotely connected to client devices are protected by ensuring that client devices adhere to compliance standards. Even if users’ computers and data access are in compliance, fixing human errors in configuration, insecure passwords, trust in social engineering exploits, and bad judgement leaves data exposed.

Data leaks inevitable, damage optional

With today’s shared data imperative, continuous vigilance is required to diminish the risk of third-party data leaks. But how can CISOs secure IT networks that they do not control?  How do CISOs know when a partner’s server is not secure? At CybelAngel we believe that data leaks are inevitable; but damage is optional.  We continuously scan the web for companies’ most sensitive data. Using advanced machine learning and cybersecurity experts to protect data from our global enterprise clients from leak becoming a major data breach. Enterprises across the globe turn to CybelAngel for continuous monitoring of hundreds of thousands of data sources, billions of documents, and hundreds of threats to discover a company’s sensitive data at any location, despite which third party may have accidentally exposed it.

Quick action required

Beyond identifying data leaks on unsecured servers, CISOs and their security teams must take quick action to remediate internal and external data leaks.  When the leak is on a third-party server, InfoSec teams may pursue their internal chain of command to contact the business partner who hosts the unsecured server.  However, using outside security experts can prove to be the fastest, most diplomatic, path to remediation of unsecured servers. It turns out that going through internal processes can be so time consuming that data leaks become costly data breaches.

Take the first step.  Map your attack surface.

To diminish the risk of cybersecurity breaches, InfoSec teams must map their attack surface, including identifying all sensitive data that flows from your IT network through third-party servers. To see your company’s exposure to data leaks, be sure to get your free CybelAngel data leak score. When security teams learn the extent of their attack surface, it’s easy to see why they partner with CybelAngel for continuous monitoring of hundreds of thousands of data sources across the entirety of the Internet. CybelAngel uses advanced machine learning and cybersecurity experts to supply instant alerts, with no false positives, when there is a critical data leak. There is a way to diminish cybersecurity risk by finding and remediating incidents before they become major data breaches.  Diminish your cybersecurity risk today by learning your data leak score.  Because data leaks are inevitable, but damage is optional.  Click here for a free data leak score.