A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that the DVLA has been subjected to 264,484 attempted cyberattacks in the past three years, equating to more than 200 a day. Almost 6,000 incidents have been classed as structured query (SQL) attacks. Attacks such as SQLi (SQL Injection) are extremely frequently used by cyber criminals to insert malicious code to exploit computers, but also to extract sensitive information such as usernames, passwords or even more serious data.
Depending on where these attacks occurred, if successful they could have allowed attackers to distribute malicious code from their websites (as happened to Jamie Oliver only last week) or perhaps perpetrate even more serious criminal activity such as cloning vehicles, creating a false number plate, or manipulating qualifications. That said, given what has been revealed it is highly likely these attacks were against their more public assets. We should be clear that these categories of attack are extremely common, growing in volume and in SophosLabs we see them running into tens of thousands every day.
The same report also uncovered that the Student Loan Company (SLC) was the target of 930 attempted phishing attacks through spoof emails, and it also emerged that Ofcom and the Disclosure and Barring Service were also targeted by cyber criminals.
Though the DVLA has said that no cyber-attacks have been successful, the unfortunate truth is that many cyber-attacks on businesses go unnoticed. Often obvious indicators of compromise are missed, because organisations either have nothing in place to collect the right data or systems are so complex that it requires a team of individual with a specific skills set to analyse that data. For small and mid-sized businesses in particular, this is a major headache as they don’t have large teams of IT specialists, let alone security specialists. In today’s threat landscape, businesses need to have a security system in place that allows them to protect all attack surfaces but also to quickly detect a compromise in the event security is breached. Only in this way can they be confident, like the DVLA, that they were not a victim of a breach.
Data breaches are far more common than most people realize and as a business it is prudent to assume you may have already fallen victim and you just might not know it yet. This is what happened to the SLC. To protect your company and yours and your customers’ data, you should assume attackers are already on the inside and implement a security system which, if a hacker does manage to get through, can warn you of a breach and provide you with the intelligence to quickly track down where and how.
Below are 10 top tips on how businesses can protect themselves by building up layered security defences which focus on everything from the enduser to the network and cloud to increase the probability of prevention and detection.
How businesses can protect themselves:
John Shaw is VP of product management at Sophos
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