Europe’s cybersecurity threats from Cloudflare
Recently, the Wirebox team attended Shielding the Future: Europe’s Cyber Threat Landscape Report webinar, which you can watch on-demand here. There were a tonne of amazing insights shared by Trey Guinn, the Field Technology Officer at Cloudflare. So, we’ve put together this overview to help you understand where Europe’s cybersecurity threats are coming from and how to protect your business data.
Key security architecture challenges faced across Europe
From this webinar, we noted that Europe’s key security architecture challenges are around vulnerable apps and data in the public cloud. There’s also an over-reliance on VPN (castle-and-moat architecture is not good) and, in general, too much trust in VPN as the end-all-be-all protector. The thing is, once a bad actor is connected, they have access to the internal network—all of it. There’s also limited IT supply chain oversight (software supply chain, insider threat, third-party due diligence and risk management). A very famous example of a supply chain attack is the SolarWinds hack of 2020. That incident compromised more than 30,000 public and private organisations who shared a supplier.
It’s not about whether you will be attacked, it’s a matter of when. We need to turn dealing with cybersecurity into a normal, regular task through talent, culture, etc. That’s because we have to be right every time and the attackers only need to be right once.
Cloudflare study (self-reported):
- 40% of organisations experienced at least one cybersecurity incident in the past year
- 72% experienced at least one cybersecurity incident in the past two years
- 71% of businesses do not believe they are fully prepared to respond
- 63% of businesses experienced over €920k loss due to cybersecurity incidents over the past 12 months
Percentage of attacks (e.g. how many of the attacks were phishing, DDoS, etc)
- 59% phishing
- 58% web attacks
- 37% DDoS
- 32% insider threats
And these are probably low figures. That’s because organisations do not want negative press or they may simply be unaware of an attack in their environment. As such, a lot of attacks go unreported.
Priorities of security and technology leaders
The priorities of security and technology leaders have changed. 10 years ago we’d have a corporate network inside a boundary. There would only be a handful of VPN users which were very easy to manage. But, recently (because of the cloud), we have an unorganised hybrid environment which will only grow in size and complexity.
What to focus on?
To keep your environment as safe as possible you want to start with Identity (both for users and assets). Make sure you know who has access and move towards a Zero Trust architecture. Next, work on your Culture. Be able to talk openly about security incidents, build teams and include everyone in your cybersecurity efforts. See it, say it, sort it. Consequence-free. Even if it’s not an incident, still call it out so everyone can be safer – like noting phishing campaigns.
What are the architectural things I need?
Increase the quality and sophistication of your automated threat detection and hire the best people. The salient people in dealing with incidents have experience. The more experience everyone gets in managing and responding to a cybersecurity crisis, the better protected your business is. Cybersecurity incidents lose the business money, making it that much harder to invest in improving security in the future. But cybersecurity is separate from IT. You can’t lump it into your CTO’s business as usual. It is a business risk and a business priority instead of a departmental issue. Culture spreads from the top, therefore executives are crucial stakeholders who need to invest in protection from the top down.
However, more products do not mean better protection. You need the right products, culture and expertise to mitigate your risk.
More products can actually increase the attack surface:
- Less than 5 solutions = 11%
- Between 5 and 10 solutions = 40%
- Between 11 and 16 solutions = 34%
- More than 16 solutions = 14%
Plus, you’ll have experts for all these solutions that you must integrate too.
If that sounds like too much to handle internally, get in touch today. We can help you navigate Europe’s cybersecurity threats and minimise your risk profile.
