decrypting myths
Tim Bandos, Vice President of Cybersecurity
at Digital Guardian
taken when securing your environment.
Often, I see environments that’ll leverage
the same user account and password
across every device in a fleet of
endpoints. Sure, to an IT administrator
this may be convenient but it’s not
necessary and can grant an attacker the
ability to pivot across every machine,
even if only one of those computers has
been breached.
From there, attackers can leverage
credential dumping programs to get their
hands on the passwords or even the
hashes themselves and then it’s open
season. Avoid password reuse at all
costs and disable any accounts that are
not required.
Exposed remote desktop
services and default ports
Any externally facing device that’s
connected to the Internet should have
layers upon layers of protection to
Avoid password
reuse at all costs
and disable any
accounts that are
not required.
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combat attempts to gain access, like a
brute force attack. Services like Remote
Desktop Protocol, or RDP, a proprietary
protocol developed by Microsoft,
can provide administrators with an
interface to control computers remotely.
Increasingly, cybercriminals have taken
to leveraging this exposed protocol
when it’s not configured properly.
Administrators should leverage a
combination of strong or complex
passwords, firewalls and access control
lists in order to reduce the likelihood of
a compromise.
Delayed software patching
This, like leaving default credentials on a
server or system, may seem like another
potential no-brainer.
Issue 20
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