Countermeasures

In this section, we will see how we can protect ourselves from the attacks we explained in this chapter. Now, if we think about it for a second: How could the attacker reach our internal host to begin with? Well, we rely on a social engineering attack along with a client-side attack to make it happen. The main key defense here is to start by securing people as they are the weakest points in the whole system. So you've got to start securing your staff on a regular basis with some management enforcement. Next, you should never rely on antivirus software, a sandbox, or VMware, as modern malware has built-in mechanisms to protect itself from being detected. Also, you should stay away from any suspicious software, especially cracked files. Before you install any software,if it was a legitimate software, verify file integrity using MD5 or the sha1 algorithm. If possible, use Data Leaking Prevention (DLP) to detect any file transfer on the endpoint or in the network transit path. Also, as a best practice, you can install something called Host-Based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) to collect the operating system logs and notice any modification that is happening on the operating system logs. If possible, create a whitelist, and limit which process is allowed to run on the operating system. During the security awareness session, always inform nontechnical people to report any phishing email or suspicious files to the network security team or to the security operator or analyst.