The POWER of the “Unlimited Breach Response”

By Chris Nyhuis, Vigilant CEO

A Vigilant Value Series

When a company doesn’t offer an “Unlimited Breach Response,” there are many impacts. There are the obvious ones like, the eventual costs for the service can greatly escalate for the client (and the security company is incentivized to execute additional breach responses.) But there are other impacts, some people may not think of.

Let me explain…

Sometimes security technologies can actually increase your company’s attack surface risk. Think about it… threat actors can buy the same firewalls that organizations buy. They can own them, test against them, and discover the weaknesses. Which is why Vigilant provides greater visibility and full aperture.

Vigilant secured a finance company. We performed our Full Security Certification, executed regular detection audits and provided our state-of-the-art 24/7 Managed Detection and Response. Because of our constant presence, we were able to detect a particularly voracious malware repeatedly attempting to infiltrate the system. Our team identified the threat immediately and stopped it in its infancy (resulting in no harm to the company.) But we didn’t stop there. Since we provide Unlimited Breach Response, it didn’t benefit us to just let this problem continue over and over and over and just to run up the client’s costs (like another security company might.)

Our team dug in. We studied it over and beyond, the way our hunt team loves to do. We determined that every time the malware had similar indicators… suspicious. We tracked it. First, we would identify it in one system and then it would appear in another. However, it was not passing through the company’s environment. So, as you might guess, it must be passing by way of email.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many training sessions you complete or what security policies you put in place, there are some risk factors that are almost impossible to account for… like a loving mother’s cat GIF daily encouragement emails.

Respect: As we do our life and work, we are constantly encountering other people. Too many of us treat other people like they exist only for our agenda, they are our audience, they are objects we use to get what we want. Respect means that I treat other people as precious humans, not objects. How? That involves listening to them. Not just hearing their words, but listening. When one listens, we hear not only their words, but the meaning within their words, their hopes behind the words and even the things that they may be too afraid or anxious to say aloud. So we ask questions. We have an open posture toward others. We respect.

Sure enough, an important member of the finance company’s team was receiving a daily cat GIF encouragement email from his mother (with masked malware) and forwarding it to several people in the company (despite a “no forwarding” company policy). What could be more innocent, right? Vigilant didn’t settle on successfully stopping the malware when it popped up, we did the work. Because of our full visibility, we were able to identify the entry point, down to the source. We secured the endpoints and even provided security for Mom, helping her clean her computer and ensuring she would no longer, unknowingly, be a criminal accomplice.

Wouldn’t you rather the work be done right the first time? Down to the source? Snuffing it out? This is another reason Unlimited Breach Response is so important for your company.