Coffee with Kampas - Episode 15: Increased Risk of Cyberattacks

Hi, this is John Kampas, Founder and CEO of EMPIST. On today’s “Coffee with Kampas”, I want to talk to you about the risk of a cyberattack against your organization; especially in light of the recent events between the U.S. and Iran. The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, also known as CISA, has issued an advisory for all organizations to be prepared for a potential cyber response from Iran. This is known as cyber warfare. Attacks like this typically target private business and government infrastructure in an attempt to disrupt operations. On Sunday, a federal website was taken offline when a hacker defaced the site the uploaded photos that included the Iranian flag with an image of President Trump being punched in the face.

00:48 - On Monday, the Texas Department of Agriculture website was also defaced to feature a pro Iran image. The governor of Texas tweeted: “Attempted cyberattacks from Iran against Texas agency websites are occurring about 10,000 per minute”. As a result, he put all Texas agencies on high alert for potential attacks. While these current events have created high possibility of cyber attacks in the short term, the reality is that we should always be on alert and prepared for these kinds of attacks. Cyber attacks don’t only surface when events like this happen. Organizations are being targeted all the time.

According to a study by the 01:27 - University of Maryland, a cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds. I recommend you do the following to mitigate these threats to your organization. First, disable all unnecessary ports on your network. This includes both internal and external ports. Also, make sure you configure network and email monitoring to keep an eye out for any unusual or malicious activity. It’s also very important that you keep your patches and antivirus up-to-date. This is especially true for externally facing equipment. Lastly, enable MFA on all accounts that support it and ensure your backups are up to date. You also want to make sure your backups are not directly accessible from your network. Whether an attack comes through a sophisticated cyber warfare attack, or from a teen with a laptop at a Starbucks, there is a lot of money in hacking so there’s no signs that it will slow down. Preparedness is key here.

It could mean 02:24 - the difference between a minor inconvenience and a complete disaster. If you need any help with this, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly. Thank you. .