Boosting Network Security Through Effective Deflection Strategies

Elastic defense strategies have been used ever since the start of wars between human beings. The multilayered defense strategy is noticeable in medieval fortifications such as moats and walls, as well as the demilitarized zone amid South Korea and North Korea.

The point of any elastic defense approach is to create defensive redundancy layers that would block invaders in the event of a principal parameter defense being breached.

It is possible to apply that military approach in this digital domain with tremendous success. Digital frontiers between private information, data, and people are protected through a multilayered form of defense in the best possible way.

What If A Security Violation Occurs?

The defense-in-depth (DiD) approach helps to tackle the thing(s) that occurs following the breach. What happens following this violation is among the main challenges that today’s users, managed IT solutions, network security experts and businesses face.

What Measures To Take To Do Away With Cybersecurity Risks

Which steps can enterprises take to recognize and eliminate cyber threats that have either circumvented defenses/parameters or have accessed important in-house networks?

Today’s advanced ransomware and phishing attacks are widely prevalent.

As per Verizon’s recent Data Breach Investigations Report, 22% of security violations occurred due to a recent effective phishing scam. Most of those phishing events happened by means of emails that targeted users.

All cybercriminals should know that users tend to be the weakest part of any given network security arrangement.

The robustness of your enterprise’s parameter defenses may not matter if those who use the network themselves unintentionally let malicious actors gain access.

Even worse, in the event of accessing a network, a cybercriminal may even stay low for some years as he or she assesses how valuable your information and data is. That means when the person accesses the said network, detecting their deeds before the occurrence of possible damage can be tricky.

Security deflection steps are a tried and tested way of recognizing and mitigating cyber attacks where your network is already accessed.

In What Way ‘Deflection’ Works

If a malicious actor breaches your main defense method, discovering them could be challenging. Anyhow, security deflection offers a great way of not only exposing hidden snoops but misdirecting their deeds toward decoy and fake data as well.

Deflection Strategies

These work by tracking traffic between unutilized ports and unused services in your enterprise’s networks. You may regard those ports as unitized doors that lead to vacant rooms. Continuous tracking and surveillance of those ports/doors will allow identifying odd patterns of traffic. Cybercriminals are unaware of which those unused doors and spaces are. Therefore, they are likely to open a few of those doors seeking valuable data. Accessing one of those will set off a warning of the network security breach.

Anyhow, recognizing that ongoing breach is among the many things that cause deflection strategies to be very effective. Besides checking new ports for any suspicious move, deflection strategies use decoys to mislead hackers and make them squander their resources.

After accessing an unutilized port, a cybercriminal would be directed to a fake service and be shown useless data. In the case of deflection strategies delaying a cyber-attacker, your team of IT security professionals could discover what they are looking to do and the way to send them away from the system.

Enhanced Cybersecurity

Deflection methods can add an extra network tracking and security layer, thereby making your enterprise’s cybersecurity strategy better.

Making honeypot traps and using false, sensitive data for potential hackers will allow IT security experts to drive malicious parties away from valuable data.

That form of defense matters much because it is potentially difficult to implement active steps when a breach happens. Better yet, it is possible to implement deflection strategies at any network endpoint devices.

The strategies mentioned above can also make overall cybersecurity better through the detection of passive cyber-attackers who track network traffic for private information. If a passive cyber intruder tries accessing a monitored network port, they would instantly be exposed, plus their deeds would be diverted.

Successful deflection strategies can play a vital, complementary role, along with usual parameter defenses like virus scanners and firewalls.

Monitoring unutilized ports enable network admins to detect any hidden snooper and data thief. Moreover, an increasing number of organizations switching to telecommuting will cause endpoint attacks breaching parameter defenses to be a common scenario.

Making defensive depth as well as raising the friction that intruders encounter when accessing a compromised device, require network deflection steps.