Semalt Islamabad Expert: How To Avoid The Same Fate As TalkTalk

The TalkTalk was in the headlines last month as more than 150,000 customers complained that their personal details were stolen. This was surprising because spammers could have achieved such attacks as young as fifteen years, and the breach cost Talk Talk more than $40 million. Shockingly, the attacker used an SQL injection to perform his task, and the attack exploited some famous and best types of vulnerabilities on the internet.

The Customer Success Manager of Semalt, Michael Brown, assures that despite having been around for years and featuring on top websites, the vulnerability has continued to expose the enterprises and talked about the brand damages. Most notably, it was used in a big cybercrime in Russia, where more than one billion usernames and passwords, as well as their combinations, were stolen, and over 400 million email IDs were hacked.

Veracode analyzed the data:

From the cloud-based app and the security service with over 50,000 enterprise apps, Veracode was the first to analyze the problem. It scanned all of the applications from 2012 to 2014 and discovered that an SQL injection was disturbing all the data online. This led some security companies to question whether it is enough to depend on the traditional cybersecurity measures or not.

Look, and you will find it:

As most organizations and companies understand that the cybercrime is a major threat, others have yet to believe or take measures against the cybercriminals. As of now, they depend on the limited number of defense systems such as IDS, IPS system, and firewalls. However, they need best and most reliable network-layer systems to prevent the malicious traffic from attacking or damaging their web applications. While the threats of SQli are big, it is not insurmountable.

The bigger picture:

The cybercriminals go through the nook and cranny of applications and infrastructures of different companies to find vulnerabilities especially SQLi. You should not let it beat you. So, the solution is to analyze the thousands of production sites at the same time and identify the unknown or suspicious websites outside the corporate IP range.

Once is never enough:

When you fully discover the full range of web perimeters, ad-hoc testing once in a while is not enough. So, you should find the automated cloud-based methods too that will help you maintain the secure web perimeters and will monitor the entire website for you. It's important for a company to protect its data and apps from such threats by changing its policies and avoiding all vulnerabilities.

Be ruthless:

All the unpatched websites should be shut down as soon as possible if you want to reduce the threats. For this, you should deploy the security intelligence from the automated application security assessment into the web application firewall (WAF). This will protect your company from the vulnerabilities until the codes are remediated. No company or system is cent percent secure and up to the mark, but with the evolution of cyber attacks, you can ensure your safety on the internet. Not heeding the warnings is not an excuse and anyone was not taking essential measures could find himself in the shoe of TalkTalk and may damage his reputation before the customers.