Data breaches brought on by access obtained from third-party business ties are known as third-party attacks. Businesses should be concerned about these breaches since it can be difficult to evaluate the security of prospective providers before giving them access to systems. According to a 2019 survey, 44% of businesses experienced a severe data breach caused by a third-party provider. To safeguard their systems and services, companies must understand these methods and reduce risks.
Data Breach: What Causes Them?
When someone accesses private information or system data without authorization from a company, there has been a data breach. The goal might be to manipulate a system within the company or to use this information for destructive purposes.
So here is the question: what causes data breaches?
1. Unintentional Insider
Employees who mistakenly access information they shouldn’t have access to can compromise the security of their employer.
2. Insider Threat: Malicious
An employee who deliberately searches out and uses information from a company’s database maliciously might compromise an organization’s security.
3. Stolen or Lost Devices
It’s possible that there was a breach if a device having access to sensitive data is stolen or lost.
4. Insider Trading
When malicious outside criminals use their resources to purposely open a gap in the company’s security, it represents a serious type of breach.
How to Prevent Data Breach Risks?
1. Examine your suppliers before onboarding
Popular methods for verifying potential providers without incurring operational costs include security ratings. They relieve the operational load on TPRM teams throughout vendor selection, fact-checking, onboarding, and monitoring by giving an instant awareness of a potential vendor’s external security posture and possible cyber risks.
2. Include risk management in your contract language
Integrate cyber risk into vendor risk management contracts and agreements with suppliers to hold them accountable for weakened cybersecurity. Add security ratings, SLAs, and deadlines to influence vendor behavior and lower cybersecurity risk. Include wording mandating communication or remediation for high-risk concerns within 72 hours, and ask for yearly security surveys to find any issues that have been overlooked.
3. Maintain a list of all current vendors
Before a company can effectively assess the risk posed by its third-party providers, it must first understand who all of its third-party providers are as well as what information is transferred to each of them.
Without taking inventory of your third-party connections, determining the level of risk suppliers provide is difficult. Despite this, just 46% of businesses assess the cybersecurity risks associated with vendors that manage sensitive data.
Even though it sounds straightforward, it’s not always easy to be familiar with every vendor your company works with. Mainly if one works for a major company.
4. Discuss the danger posed by third parties
At high-performing companies with established risk management systems, higher board and executive-level involvement was stated by 53% of respondents. Leaders are aware of the need to safeguard private data, follow international data protection laws, and understand the dangers of lax operational security and inappropriate social media content, which hackers take advantage of in spear phishing or whaling attacks.
5. Adopt the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP)
When the third party is given access beyond what is needed for them to do their duties, numerous third-party data breaches take place.
Take into account investing in a strong role-based access control system that adheres to the principle of least privilege (POLP), which is the practice of restricting access privileges for users, just those accounts, computer operations, and procedures that are necessary to do the job in hand.
Conclusion
Constant monitoring, technological adoption, and regulatory compliance are necessary for maintaining data security in in-app integrations and third-party apps. Security is a top priority for software employees since protecting data in a data-driven environment is a shared responsibility.
