NEW: Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report 2022 - Read the Findings of Our Annual Report Read Now

  • Partners
  • Support
  • Careers
  • English
    • Deutsch
    • français
    • español
    • 한국어
    • português
BeyondTrust
  • Products

    Privileged Password Management

    Discover, manage, audit, and monitor privileged accounts and credentials.

    • Password Safe
    • DevOps Secrets Safe
    • Privileged Access Discovery Application

    Endpoint Privilege Management

    Enforce least privilege across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix endpoints.

    • Windows and Mac
    • Unix and Linux
    • Active Directory Bridge

    Secure Remote Access

    Centrally manage remote access for service desks, vendors, and operators.

    • Remote Support
    • Privileged Remote Access
    • Privileged Access Discovery Application

    Cloud Security Management

    Automate the management of identities and assets across your multicloud footprint.

    • Cloud Privilege Broker

    BeyondInsight

    Experience the industry’s most innovative, comprehensive platform for privileged access management.

  • Solutions

    Use Cases

    • Cloud Security
    • Compliance
    • Cyber Insurance
    • Digital Transformation
    • Endpoint Security
    • Operational Technology
    • Ransomware
    • Service Desk Efficiency
    • Zero Trust

    Industry Applications

    • Financial Services
    • Government Agencies
    • Healthcare
    • Law Enforcement
    • Manufacturing
    • Schools & Universities

    Solutions

    The BeyondTrust Privileged Access Management portfolio is an integrated solution that provides visibility and control over all privileged accounts and users.

  • Resources

    Learn

    • Blog
    • Customer Stories
    • Competitor Comparisons
    • Datasheets
    • Demos
    • Glossary
    • Podcast
    • Whitepapers

    Attend

    • Events
    • Go Beyond
    • Training
    • Webinars

    Support

    • Changelog
    • Professional Services
    • Technical Documentation

    Universal Privilege Management

    Our innovative Universal Privilege Management approach secures every user, asset, and session across your entire enterprise.

  • Company
    • About
    • Leadership
    • Core Values
    • Partners
    • Careers
  • Watch Demo
  • Contact Sales

Security basics provide the best foundations

October 20, 2017

  • Blog
  • Archive

In the era of next-gen technology, it's the often-forgotten basics that provide the best foundations.

By reducing the attack surface and building secure defensible endpoints you'll be in a far better position to stop cyber attacks and keep your data safe.

Now in its 4th year, The 2016 Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report from Avecto provides an important reminder to organizations that we cannot ignore the simple things.

It's common to think that migrating to the latest operating system will improve security, but in isolation, it’s no way near enough to reduce the risk of attack.

In the 2016 Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report despite Microsoft stating it's "designed to be the most secure Windows ever", Windows 10 had the highest proportion of vulnerabilities (395) compared to any other OS.

And it's a similar story with Microsoft Edge. This is Microsoft's newest and supposedly "safer" browser, yet there were 111 vulnerabilities in 2016. Admittedly, the various versions of Internet Explorer only fared slightly better with a total of 109 vulnerabilities but it will probably still surprise many to learn that Edge is a bigger security issue for those not employing least privilege.

The good news? Removing admin rights could mitigate the risk associated with 100% of these vulnerabilities across both Microsoft browsers.

And our report provided plenty more compelling reasons for doing so. Not least that 94% of critical Microsoft Vulnerabilities can be mitigated by removing admin rights, up from 85% last year.

There were 530 vulnerabilities in total last year, 189 of these were critical. By comparison, take a look back to 2013, the year of our first report, and we saw 325 vulnerabilities, 147 of which were critical.

The benefits of removing admin rights should be clear. However, for some, the reluctance to introduce least privilege across a corporation will be down to the perception it’s difficult to achieve, as well as a belief that it will put up barriers and impact productivity.

How to achieve security and freedom

By building up from secure foundations on the endpoint, you can achieve defense in depth without impacting productivity. Removing admin rights is just the start of the journey. Removing privileges without a solution in place to ensure employees can continue to be productive creates an over-locked environment which will only drive calls to the IT helpdesk. This situation often leads to ‘privilege creep’, as admin rights are slowly reintroduced and ‘shadow IT’ workarounds come into play. It’s, therefore, essential to have technology in place to manage user requests and exceptions.

Additionally, malware can still do damage to a standard user account – although there’s a much lower risk of widespread data loss. The malware still has access to everything that the user does on the machine.

Building up layers of defense

Microsoft's Hierarchy of Cyber Needs is a clear demonstration of the need to prioritize the different layers of security solutions. It shows how to work up from the device through to software and user access, adding detection as a last line of defense.

HCN

Identity management needs

You wouldn't run a bank without asking customers for identification when making withdrawals, so don't try to run your business without identity management. Security is easier with privilege management and everyone is able to get on with their jobs.

Access control needs

To avoid putting the crown jewels at risk, the advice is simple - use least privilege, make all users non admin and sandbox the most common attack vectors like links from email spam and malicious attachments. Least privilege and content isolation allow critical resources, such as sensitive data, to be segmented away and sandboxing makes these harder to get at.

Detection

Detection has an important role to play, but can't be relied upon on its own. Importantly, getting applications and content under control first means that detection solutions are not flooded with the same volume of unknown threats.

A multi-layered defense is achievable with Defendpoint, which takes a simple and smart approach to prevention on the endpoint.

You build the proactive layers before adding the final catch all of detection, rather than the other way around, as this is a far more reliable form of defense.

Find out more and download your copy of the 2016 Microsoft Vulnerabilities Study here.

Andrew Avanessian,

Stay Up To Date

Get the latest news, ideas, and tactics from BeyondTrust. You may unsubscribe at any time.

I agree to receive product related communications from BeyondTrust as detailed in the Privacy Policy, and I may manage my preferences or withdraw my consent at any time.

You May Also Be Interested In:

Whitepapers

Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report 2022

Whitepapers

Cybersecurity Insurance Checklist

Whitepapers

Privileged Access Management: PAM Checklist

Keep up with BeyondTrust

I agree to receive product related communications from BeyondTrust as detailed in the Privacy Policy, and I may manage my preferences or withdraw my consent at any time.

Customer Support
Contact Sales

Products

  • Endpoint Privilege Management
  • Password Management
  • Privileged Remote Access
  • DevOps Secrets Safe
  • Remote Support
  • Cloud Privilege Broker

Resources

  • Blog
  • Case Studies
  • Competitor Comparisons
  • Datasheets
  • Glossary
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Webcasts
  • Whitepapers

About

  • Company
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Leadership Team
  • Partner Program
  • Press
BeyondTrust Logo
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Privacy
  • Security
  • Manage Cookies
  • WEEE Compliance

Copyright © 1999 — 2022 BeyondTrust Corporation. All rights reserved. Other trademarks identified on this page are owned by their respective owners. BeyondTrust Corporation is not a chartered bank or trust company, or depository institution. It is not authorized to accept deposits or trust accounts and is not licensed or regulated by any state or federal banking authority.