Wazzup Pilipinas!
The world moves swiftly; the IT security world even more so. Just a couple of years ago, securing the enterprise would basically consist of protecting an organization from external intruders. Today, the battle has changed ground.
Education efforts from industry players have created higher levels of IT security awareness in the business world, and more firms have implemented basic security measures that can thwart direct attacks effectively.
This development is forcing hackers to up their game by figuring out alternative ways to get their hands on valuable enterprise assets. One new strategy that is becoming more common across the world is for hackers to gain entry to a corporate network by targeting its weakest points. Such points can include an unsecured employee mobile phone, or a workstation with limited access to corporate data. These weak points typically reside in low value segments of the corporate network. Once the hacker breaks in and gets a toehold, however, he can often navigate to other more valuable parts of the network − which tend to be much more rigorously protected from external attackers − quite easily.
This "lateral movement" modus operandi proves to be effective most of the time because many organizations do not isolate different segments of the network from one another. Moving from segment to segment is usually a breeze once hackers get into the network.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
