Continuing our series of articles for business owners, aimed at explaining the cyber risks and remedies in simple and understandable language, we look at security misconfiguration.
What is security misconfiguration?
Security misconfiguration is failing to implement essential security measures correctly, thus making them vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
According to the OWASP: Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion.
How to find security configuration issues
You might think that your business has protected itself against sensitive data exposure, however, almost all companies have misconfigurations, mistakes, or gaps in cybersecurity. Your company is undoubtedly using third-party services, and configuration issues often exist in applications, firewalls, hardware, and cloud services, putting your company at risk. With this in mind, it is vital to check for misconfiguration.
You can identify misconfiguration issues in 3 ways:
- Learn more about cybersecurity – You can learn about the level of security needed either with paid training, by speaking with other knowledgeable experts and seeking best practices. However, this is not very reliable, and while it may be cheaper initially, it may not be cost-effective long term. Furthermore, this will take a lot of your time and take you away from running your business.
- Employ a penetration tester – You will need to feel confident that the tester is capable of finding issues such as broken authentication, security misconfiguration, and using components with known vulnerabilities. However, even then, you may have to also invest in additional software and hardware.
- Get a Pen test from a trusted company – While this is openly the most expensive, it is likely to be the most trusted as the pen testing company will have reviews. They have access to the knowledge and equipment and can give you results in a short time. Most companies charge around £500 – £1000 per day, depending on the app or website being tested. Also, there is the benefit of combined experience.
Contact OmniCyber Security to learn more about how our penetration testing services can help you identify any security misconfiguration issues and reduce the number of vulnerabilities that pose a risk to your business.
