The IT Nerd

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month kicks off, Danny Jenkins, CEO of ThreatLocker,  says businesses should look beyond simply training employees to spot phishing emails and focus on building security controls that limit what an attacker can do when someone inevitably makes a mistake.

Danny has outlined five practical steps businesses can take to reduce their exposure:

1. Don’t let one bad click become a breach.

“We spend a lot of time telling employees not to click suspicious links, but the reality is that someone eventually will. Good security isn’t about expecting people to be perfect. It’s about putting controls in place so one mistake doesn’t give an attacker the keys to the entire organization.”

2. Make “default deny” the default.

“If an application or process doesn’t have a legitimate reason to run, why should it be allowed to run? A default-deny approach changes the equation from trying to identify everything that’s malicious to only allowing what the business has already decided it trusts.”

3. Give users and applications only the access they actually need.

“Least privilege is one of the simplest ways to limit the damage from a compromised account. If a user, application or service doesn’t need access to a particular resource to do its job, that access shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

4. Treat remote access as an attack path that needs to be controlled.

“Remote access is essential for modern businesses, but every remote connection is another potential path into the environment. Companies should be asking who can connect, what they can access, from which devices, and whether that access is still necessary.”

5. Reduce the attack surface before attackers find it.

“Security teams can’t protect what they don’t know they have. Unused applications, outdated software, unnecessary services and forgotten remote-access tools create opportunities for attackers. One of the most practical things a business can do is regularly remove what it no longer needs.”

Danny also recommends combining these technical controls with ongoing employee awareness training, strong identity security, network segmentation, software updates and monitoring. ThreatLocker’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month guide covers these and other practical measures for businesses and consumers.

ThreatLocker, a leading provider of Zero Trust cybersecurity solutions, is proud to announce the launch of its latest data center in Toronto, Canada, less than three months after opening its data center in Sydney, Australia. This initiative will significantly bolster cybersecurity capabilities for Canadian businesses and organizations across various sectors, including the private sector, commonwealth, state, territory, and local governments.

The development of this data center by ThreatLocker® will assist Canadian entities in aligning with baseline cybersecurity controls recommended by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which stem from compliance frameworks like NIST, CISC, ISO/IEC, and ITSG-33. More specifically, ThreatLocker® offers Zero Trust, Least Privilege capabilities in the form of Application Control, Ringfencing, Network Control, and Privilege Access Management solutions, amongst many other options.

ThreatLocker®, founded in 2017 by CEO Danny Jenkins, COO Sami Jenkins, and VP of Quality Assurance John Carolan, protects over 2 million endpoints across more than 40,000 organizations globally. The company provides 24/7/365 Cyber Hero support with an average response time of 60 seconds or less. ThreatLocker®offers a powerful Zero Trust endpoint security platform designed to enable organizations to stop ransomware and other cyberattacks by controlling what software can run in their environments. The combined solutions of ThreatLocker®, including Application Allowlisting, Ringfencing™, Storage Control, Elevation Control, and Endpoint Network Control, lead the cybersecurity market towards a more secure approach by blocking the exploits of unknown application vulnerabilities.

 ThreatLocker, a pioneer in least privilege endpoint protection technologies, announced the launch of their MDR service with the Cyber Hero Team at Zero Trust World 2024. 

ThreatLocker understands the importance of preemptively blocking cybersecurity threats with a default deny baseline. Adding detection and response capabilities allows customers to stay secure while alerting them of suspicious or potentially malicious activity happening in their environment.  

Products including Allowlisting, Ringfencing, and Network Control in the ThreatLocker Endpoint Protection Platform block attempted bad actions on a device, and ThreatLocker Detect (formerly known as ThreatLocker Ops) will alert organizations of said attempts. The MDR service is made possible by the near-instant response of the ThreatLocker Cyber Hero Team when they directly notify a customer of a malicious attempt and ensure the security of their infrastructure.  

In addition to providing a prompt notification via the Cyber Hero Support Team, ThreatLocker Detect policies can be curated to completely isolate a machine from the rest of the environment or go as far as implementing an advanced lockdown to stop all software and network traffic from running. 

In a live demonstration at Zero Trust World 2024, ThreatLocker showcased the response speed of the Cyber Hero Team in locking down a machine after an attacker connected to a remote server, tried to run IP Scanning tools, and attempted to disable security tools.   

The attacker was challenged with a QR code. When they didn’t respond and continued taking additional bad actions, such as attempting to disable ThreatLocker service, the attacker’s attempts were thwarted with ThreatLocker default deny, and the machine was locked down. The Cyber Heroes responded within a minute during the live presentation.   

The new additions by ThreatLocker satisfy cyber insurance regulations on implementing Zero Trust MDR strategies to prevent modern-day attacks.  

ThreatLocker will roll out its new products to new and existing partners. It currently protects over one million endpoints globally.