Tenable India offers a risk-based approach to help organizations focus on the vulnerabilities

With innovation in the DNA, Tenable pioneers the IT Vulnerability Management market. Tenable helps organizations of all sizes to rethink securing the modern digital enterprise using their Cyber Exposure platform like Tenable.io.

Kartik Shahani, Country Manager, Tenable India, in a chat with VARINDIA, empties his thoughts about the current security trends, the company’s latest security technologies, cyber security challenges and measures etc.

Current security trends

Delving deep into the contemporary security trends, Kartik discusses the different types of security trends observed by him.

Adoption of SaaS services

Distributed workforces require new tools that foster collaboration in lieu of the social interactions that typically occur within a physical workplace. The stay-at-home orders pushed many organizations in India to leverage new cloud-based technologies and approaches to optimize their teams' performance.

Kartik adds, “These solutions also support greater agility and scale where traditional connections quickly become a bottleneck when large groups begin to work remotely. In the longer-term, we may continue to see organizations of all sizes embracing SaaS services, even after office work is back to the status quo.”

An uptick in ransomware attacks

A number of devices could have been infected by ransomware during the shift to remote work. “In a Forrester study commissioned by Tenable, 36% of organizations globally suffered a business-impacting cyberattack due to ransomware. So, we can expect an uptick in ransomware attacks in environments with a less mature security policy, once employees can safely return to their offices”, depicts Kartik.

Acceleration of “zero-trust” networks

As employees continue to work from their homes or begin the migration to a hybrid working model, zero-trust network models will increasingly gain momentum to fortify an organization’s security posture.

Describing further he says, “This means that endpoints must be free of vulnerabilities and be configured in a hardened manner such that they can defend themselves against attacks. Additionally, mutual authentication and authorization of users, devices, and applications will become even more critical since by default every entity is unknown and untrusted.”

Empowering security teams to reduce cyber risk

With remote work becoming commonplace, navigating and managing an expanded attack surface beyond the enterprise can be challenging for security teams. Tenable empowers security teams to see, predict and act to reduce their cyber risk across a distributed attack surface. Tenable sees a stronger need for security teams to understand vulnerabilities in the context of business risk and use that data to prioritize remediation efforts.

Kartik comments, “By taking a risk-based approach to vulnerability management which uses machine learning analytics to correlate vulnerability severity, threat actor activity and asset criticality organizations will be able to identify and manage issues posing the greatest business risk. This innovative approach will help organizations in India focus on the vulnerabilities that matter most and address true business risk instead of focusing on flaws that have a low likelihood of being exploited.”

Social Media – a new breeding ground for scammers

In this post Covid situation, Tenable spotted new drives to attack social media users. On TikTok, scammers are using fake profiles to trick unsuspecting TikTok users to sign up to adult dating websites or pay for fraudulent “premium” Snapchat accounts. Another tactic includes impersonating popular actors and social media influencers, such as Chris Hemsworth and Kaytlyn Stewart with the intention of boosting likes and followers to raise the popularity of a profile. Similarly, on Instagram, a growing phenomenon of Porn Bots has boomed as an evolving method for peddling adult dating spam.

“Our Tenable Research team have spotted a variety of scamming methods across social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and Cash App, which have all become new breeding grounds for online scammers. On YouTube, we’ve found that scammers are creating videos to deceive users into believing they have a way to "hack" Cash App, the popular mobile app backed by Square for free money.”, describes Kartik.

Cybersecurity Challenges and Measures

Talking about the challenges Kartik also speaks up about measures, which can be taken by the users while using the apps. He informs, “Looking at apps such as Cash App, one option could be to present a warning notification whenever someone sends an inbound request for money, explaining that Cash App will never ask users to send money for verification purposes in order to win a giveaway. The notification could also explain that it is not possible to “flip” a transaction in the Cash App system and therefore they’d never offer this as a service. Having more prominent reminders in the app is crucial as a lot of the scams take place across social media sites and are then moved onto the app. Working more closely with social media giants such as Twitter and Instagram will also play a big role in helping to identify spam accounts and ensure more users are aware of how Cash App operates.”

At Last

It can be said that the hide and seek game will continue forever, as the scammers will always find newer ways to attack the users. “Scammers are very determined and with the massive user base across social media platforms, they won’t be easily deterred. They will find ways around whatever mechanisms are put into place to thwart their efforts. That’s why it’s very critical for social media users to use the reporting functionality to help provide platforms with data in order to keep up with the scammers in the proverbial cat and mouse game.” says Kartik. So, the users should be always aware while using the social media platforms.