Cyber Attacks IT Departments Duped
According to the mainstream media, the main reason why M&S and Co-Op suffered such devastating cyber attacks
recently was because their IT departments were being duped into resetting passwords for accounts, which
allowed the cyber criminals to access their systems.
Minerva has learned from these events and we have now resolved to undertake even more stringent review
practices when our clients call in to request password resets. And we are not only applying these stricter measures to
clients trying to log in to Windows or their email, but to every single application we
have management of. This will ensure tighter security and control for our clients’ systems going forward.
Cyber Attack Essentials
There are 4 key actions that we are currently undertaking to review with our existing clients, with points 1 to 3 being
a large part of the Cyber Essential requirements:
- Make Regular Backups
- Offsite
- Immutability
- Security on backup accounts
- Prevent malware from being delivered and spreading to devices
- Proofpoint
- Sophos
- Local admin access
- Patching
- MFA
- Active monitoring of logon attempts
- Prevent malware from running on devices
- Patching
- Sophos
- Local admin access
- Application approval lists via CW or Sophos
- Prepare for an incident
- Identify critical assets
- Plan for an attack, see best practice advice here: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/incident-management
- Plan how you would respond
- Plan how you would recover
All IT providers should have learned a valuable lesson from the cyber attacks on M&S and Co-op and should now be
adapting their security practices accordingly, as we are doing at Minerva.
If your IT provider is NOT implementing similar measures to protect your systems from cyber attacks going forward,
perhaps it’s time to think about switching! Give us a call on 01707 607100 to discuss or email contactus@minervauk.com
MINERVA IT SUPPORT ARE…
