Cybersecurity Tips: Typical Indicators of System Infiltration
Posted: September 22, 2021 to News.
Precursor warnings can only go so far when it comes to prevention of possible forthcoming attacks. While staying up to date on vendor advisories, intelligence sources, and security blogs are certainly important, it comes as too little too late for some victims. According to FireEye’s “M-Trends 2018” report, the global median dwell time between infiltration and discovery was 101 days in 2017, ranging from 75.5 days in the Americas to a whopping 498 days in Asia-Pacific. Do you know how to detect a breach on your network?Here are three typical event indicators that may signal your system is compromised.
- Unusual Activity. Unusually high system or network activity, abnormal login times, abnormal login locations, unexpected user lockouts and unusual network ports activity can all be signs someone is working within your system.
- Software Issues. Every system has glitches, but repeated application crashes can signal something deeper. Configuration changes that can’t be traced back to approval, firewall changes, the presence of unexpected software or system processes, installation of startup programs, even repeated pop-ups on the web browser are all signs you need to look into a possible breach.
- Alerts. Notifications from your malware protection solutions as well as disabled solutions are obvious signs of an issue. So is a ransomware message from an attacker. Internal reports can be very valuable sources, as often employees are the ones reporting issues. More subtle alerts, such as reports from outside contacts that they received unusual messages from your email or social media accounts should also raise suspicion of attack.