Cybersecurity incidents have become so common that signing up for cyber insurance is becoming increasingly difficult. The COVID pandemic sent cybercrime stats through the roof, and the sophistication level of attacks reached new heights.
For example, 2021 saw the chilling Colonial Pipeline ransomware hack, showing that malicious actors can quickly strike our infrastructure.
Small and medium businesses are particularly prone to ransomware and other attacks because they typically have fewer resources to set up a strong security posture. Cyber crooks know this and will target these smaller entities to penetrate their defenses.
Two affordable practices can greatly assist SMBs to fight, or rapidly recover from, cyberattacks. These are:
- Tabletop Exercises
- Pen Testing (Penetration Testing)
What are Tabletop Exercises?
A tabletop exercise, or cybersecurity tabletop exercise, is an informal, conversation-centric activity to discuss the different roles during a cyber crisis. Participants in a cyber crisis tabletop exercise go over scenarios, test responses, and work out how best to react. Tabletop testing helps uncover weaknesses in any incident response (IR) plan, allowing businesses to rework their plans to address these vulnerabilities.
What is Pen Testing?
Penetration testing, or pentest, involves simulating a cyberattack on your network to identify vulnerabilities. This can include penetration testing exercises like brute force password attempts and using tools like Nmap, Metasploit, "Rainbow tables", Burp Suite, and SQLMap. Pentest exercises can be conducted either externally or internally, with internal tests emulating attacks from inside, such as those by a disgruntled employee.
How and Why Conduct Tabletop Exercises and Pen Testing?
How to conduct a ransomware tabletop or ransomware tabletop exercise effectively requires the facilitator to be familiar with a variety of cybersecurity scenarios, including tabletop exercise security procedures. Meanwhile, pen testers need substantial technical skill as they are essentially "white hat" hackers.
CoAction helps you stay secure
CoAction is a cybersecurity specialist company that can help you stay secure through effective tabletop exercise cybersecurity and penetration testing exercises. Our service is offered as part of our larger Virtual Security Operations Center, providing a concierge umbrella service for all your IT needs, including cybersecurity.
