How vulnerable is your supply chain to cyber attacks?


If your supply chain is susceptible to cyber attacks, then you are too. Wouldn’t it be great to know about your supply chain’s cyber vulnerabilities?

Let’s find out more

Cyber attacks can be devastating to your business – and cyber criminals are infiltrating smaller companies with fewer cyber security resources to get inside bigger companies further up the supply chain. Even if your cyber security is excellent, you could still suffer an attack, thanks to the companies you work with. 

‘Vulnerabilities’ is the term we use in the cyber security industry for the weaknesses in a system that has the potential to be leveraged by cyber criminals to compromise a network. There are several different types of vulnerability, which all have the potential to cripple your business if spotted by a hacker. In this article, we’ll talk about five of them – and how Darkbeam can spot them in your network and those of your partner companies.

1 – Exposure

Exposure provides the most immediate threat to your company or your suppliers. Exposure covers content living on the open internet or dark net that could be used by cyber criminals to mount a phishing attack. 

This content could include domains that closely resemble yours but are actually malicious sites. For example, darkbeam.com could be darkbeem.com.

 

2 – Privacy

Is there information out there in the wild that could be used to target your employees?

If any of your staff members’ details get leaked, attackers could use them to get into your network and steal confidential information. Perhaps worse, they could stay silent, monitoring activity and waiting to pounce.

Personal details are often used for spear phishing attacks, where cyber criminals target individuals with targeted, relevant content.

 

3 – Connection security

How secure is your website? How trustworthy do you look to visitors? 

If you don’t have a valid SSL certificate, any computer between you and your server can see any sensitive information you send, including credit card numbers, usernames and passwords.

Of course, you have your SSL certificate all present and correct, right? But what about the companies in your supply chain?

 

4 – DNS security

DNS was created in the early years of the internet before cyber security best practices were a thing. It’s the protocol that allows us to navigate the internet using domain names. Today, however, it’s a vulnerability often used by cyber attackers.

DNS hijacking is when cyber criminals trick a user into thinking they’re connecting to a legitimate domain, when they’re actually connected to a malicious one. Attackers can do this by using compromised DNS servers. Are you certain your DNS servers are safe? 

 

5 – Favicons

Finally, favicons. Look at the top of the screen and find the tab for this web page. The favicon is the little logo you can see in the tab. 

Favicons are a great way to identify a site, which is why cyber criminals will often copy them and use them when they’re making malicious clones of your site. 

 

The Darkbeam solution

Darkbeam can spot these vulnerabilities – and many more besides – on your system and your suppliers’ systems too. All you need to do is enter the domain name for the companies you work with on your Darkbeam platform – and we’ll do the rest, giving you a comprehensive audit of all existing vulnerabilities.

For example, it can spot exposure vulnerabilities like similarly-named websites and assess whether they pose a threat or not. For privacy vulnerabilities, Darkbeam can identify any breached emails that relate to your company on the open internet or dark net. Darkbeam can even pick out any instances where other websites are using your favicon.

Once you have this information, you can take steps to fix the issue (if it’s you), or alert your supplier to take action as a matter of urgency. What would you give to know for sure that your network (and your suppliers’ networks) are secure? 


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