Cyber attack landscape

 Cyber attack

Today’s organizations continue to fall victim to sophisticated cyber attacks—including zero-day exploits and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). The following is the lifecycle of cyber attacks which possess an imminent threat to organizations working in both public and private sectors.

Anything that has the potential to cause harm to the system is coined as Threat. Threat creates Attack. Attack exploits vulnerability to create an Impact . The severity of impact can be minimized by applying corrective control. A corrective control is control set which is put in place to mitigate damage once a risk is materialized for example Computer images are created so that if software gets corrupted, they can be loaded

Main function of all security control  is to reduce or minimize the damages once a risk is materialized. Deterrent control which is intended to discourage a potential attacker reduces the likelihood of an attack. Firewall is considered as a preventive control but if an attacker know that it is in place than it is considered as deterrent control.

Detective control like auditing of logs, setting of endpoint security should be implemented together with preventive control set like firewall. Together these controls minimizes the  surface area of attack by minimizing loopholes.

Compensating control is just an alternate control that provides similar protection as the original control, but has to be used because it is more affordable or allows specifically required business functionality. This kind of control measure reduce the likelihood of attack.