The National Stock Exchange from one of the APAC countries was recently struck by DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The incident happened twice on two consecutive days forcing the stock market to halt for quite some time. Despite this cyber-attack, the exchange was up at the close of business fortunately. According to official sources, the incident originated offshore through the network service provider. The local cybercrime branch is investigating the incident and has claimed that a well-known hacking group is the main culprit behind this.

What if it affected the Privileged Accounts?

A disaster rarely gives you a signal before it strikes. While DDoS attack disrupts normal traffic of a network (or sometimes server) by overwhelming the infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic, it does not always mean any breach of financial or personal information. In the above incident, the organization was fortunate. However, traders might have faced difficulty in carrying out their business operations had privilege accounts been hijacked.

We can’t even presume the enormity of losses that could have happened. As privileged accounts are the gateways to critical information and confidential files, a single stray incident could malign the reputation of the organization apart from inflicting heavy financial losses. A cyber-attack on privileged accounts can push the organization’s business processes to a standstill.

How can we prevent threats to Privileged Accounts?

Any targeted attack never happens abruptly. The hackers snoop, in many cases, the privilege credentials. Once they hijack the credentials, they swiftly move inside the network and move laterally to steal and abuse classified data by targeting privilege accounts, the source of the attack kill chain.

Protect Privileged Accounts with ARCON | PAM to prevent Targeted Attacks

ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) can ensure complete security and control over the privileged account activities. It not only prevents targeted attacks but also predicts risks in the enterprise network with the help of below features:

• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) (with adaptive authentication): With MFA organizations can mitigate malicious insiders and advanced cyber threats by creating multiple layers of validation. In addition, adaptive authentication reinforces the inner periphery by ensuring that any access outside the network is only granted after thorough authentication. This mechanism learns based on its past usage base, using data items such as MAC Address, Location, Typing Speed to determine whether the user login is happening from a known environment or not.
• Just-In-Time Privilege: It lays the foundation of the principle of least privilege and mitigates risks arising from excessive standing privileges. JIT privileges allow IT administrators to grant privilege rights only on a ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do’ basis and the privileged rights are revoked automatically once the task is completed.
• Password Vault: This powerful engine rules out the chances of privileged password abuse by preventing unauthorized access. It automatically changes and frequently randomizes passwords as per regulatory standards and are stored in a secured electronic vault.
• Session Monitoring: Uninterrupted monitoring of privileged activities is the most important feature to ensure security. With the basic auditing and monitoring of the activities, the IT security team can spot anything suspicious and take necessary actions on a real-time basis.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management mitigates risks arising out of endpoints. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.