With over two million Coronavirus cases and counting, the pandemic doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, and SDP becomes a necessity
Written by Damien Mason
Businesses have no choice but to continue using the work-from-home model and while some employees might be happy about it, companies have plenty to worry about as hackers are working overtime.
Business-related cyberattacks are getting worse
According to data, shortly after enabling remote working, around 40% of businesses saw an increase in cyberattacks on their network. Many of those attacks involve DDoSing, which forces business networks offline, causing significant financial damage due to too much downtime.
Alongside that, cybercriminals have also ramped up phishing attacks. Since January, around 4,000 Coronavirus-related domains were registered around the world. Out of them, 5% are suspicious and 5% are malicious, which is 50% higher risk than your standard website.
Coronavirus-themed phishing and vishing preys upon everyone’s hunger for Covid-19-related news, tricking employees into interacting with dodgy websites, downloading malware-infected files, or even sharing sensitive corporate data. The amount of people falling victim to these scams is also increasing because employees don’t take the same safeguarding measures provided to them in an office.
Instead of work computers hooked up to a corporate network, many are working from their own devices connected to their home internet. Blurring the lines between professional and comfortable, it’s much easier for employees to let their guard down and get distracted, seeing them unwittingly answer a phone call from an unknown number believing it to be a colleague that’s not listed in their contacts, or click on an unverified email that claims to offer details on the “newly developed Covid-19 vaccine.”
If anything like that happens, the results are obvious – employee devices will get infected with malware (especially ransomware), which will in turn infect your whole network, and scammers will easily get their hands on all your valuable data.
Add that to the financial strain your business is already dealing with (remote setups, extra bandwidth, paying rent for a workspace you’re no longer using), and your company will go under before the quarantine even ends.
This is where an SDP comes into play.
What is an SDP?
SDP stands for Software Defined Perimeter. Without getting too technical, it’s a security solution that bases your network’s perimeter on software instead of hardware. It establishes a virtual boundary at the network layer instead of the application layer and authenticates user devices and identities before granting them access to your servers.
To offer complete protection from network attacks, SDP architecture uses five layers of security:
•SPA – Single Packet Authentication
•mTLS – mutual Transport Layer Security
•DV – Device Validation
•Dynamic firewalls
•AppB – Application Binding
How SDP Connections Work?
While the terms might vary from service to service, an SDP uses three things to function:
•The SDP client – Usually in the form of an app.
•The SDP controller – This is the trust broker between the employee/device and the company network.
•The SDP gateway – Also called an access node, it grants the user access to the requested network.
Since that all sounds a bit complex and vague, here’s a basic sketch of how an SDP would work:
1. Employees use a dedicated app, run it, and go through the authentication process. Once they pass, the client will whitelist them, and will set up a new connection to the controller.
2. The SDP controller establishes trust between the client and the backend resources (basically, it negotiates an encrypted connection).
3. The gateway grants the user access to the resources they need. Instead of getting logged into a large network, however, the SDP will set up a dedicated network connection for them which nobody else can access.
Simply put, when you use an SDP, it’s like you’re using a web server with an Internet connection but absolutely no open connections with any device, rendering your company servers pretty much invisible.
How can an SDP protect company data during the Covid-19 pandemic?
That explanation probably gave you a basic idea of what an SDP can do for your company, but some of you might still be on the fence about using one. So, here are the perks of securing your network with an SDP during this pandemic and beyond:
Secure Your Network against Malware
The goal of any phishing attack is usually to infect a device. If a hacker takes over an employees’ device with malware, they’ll quickly spread it to your network when they connect to it.
Even if that happens, an SDP can protect your servers. Basically, if a user with an infected device were to ask for access to the network, the SDP will analyze their device for any traces of malware (alongside other security inspections). If it detects any malicious activity, it will block (and sometimes even blacklist) the device.
Also, SDPs seamlessly integrate with any IdP (Identity Provider) solution, meaning you can implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). That’s an excellent defense against hackers who secretly steal employee login credentials. They won’t be able to connect to your network with them because they won’t have the necessary MFA codes.
But while an SDP can protect your network from that, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take extra measures to secure your employees’ devices against Coronavirus-themed phishing.
It’s best to offer them some training on how to spot and protect themselves from phishing. Here are some useful tips from the EFF.
Source: ProPrivacy
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