When assessing an organization’s physical attack area, encryption-related issues, particularly SSL misconfigurations, get particular attention. Why? They are more likely to be exploited because of their widespread use, richness of the design, and user-friendly nature.
This demonstrates how crucial your SSL setups are to ensuring the security of your online application and reducing the risk of attacks. However, research indicates that the majority of ( 53.5 % ) websites have and that the most prevalent application vulnerabilities are caused by .
Getting your SSL design right, and you’ll increase your cyber resilience and protect your data and apps. However, if you get it wrong, you can increase the surface area of your group’s attack, giving your company more opportunities for cyberattacks. We’ll look at the effects of SSL misconfigurations and clarify why they pose for a major risk to the attack surface. Next, we’ll demonstrate how a strong EASM system can overcome the difficulties of discovering misconfiguration issues.
Understanding SSL vulnerabilities and the invasion area
When SSL credentials are poorly set up or managed, which expose vulnerabilities in an organization’s community, an SSL malfunction occurs. These errors can include wrong certificate configuration, expired SSL certificates, outdated encryption algorithms, and more. By providing potential access points for thieves, these threats directly affect an organization’s attack area.
SSL vulnerabilities: A considerable risk to the attack’s target.
A safe channel for data transfer between clients and servers is provided by SSL certificates. They verify the names of sites, making sure customers get in touch with the intended person. But, misconfigured SSL certificates may cause hazards, such as:
- Man-in-the-middle ( MITM) attacks: MITM attacks occur when a hacker intercepts communication between two parties, typically a user and a web service, without their knowledge, allowing the hacker to intercept, modify, or redirect the conversation. Both SSL cutting and document impersonation can lead to MITM attacks.
- Surveillance: A hacker quietly intercepts communication between two parties. The attacker just listens in and gathers sensitive information. They don’t alter data. Bad actors can spy on data with weak encryption and expired certificates.
- Data breaches: Data breaches occur when a fraudster unauthorized accesses ( and steals sensitive information from ) your computer. Data breaches can be caused by SSL errors, such as anxious redirections or the presence of combined content.
- Desensitization: repeated problems with your company’s websites’ expired or irrelevant SSL certificates may make users less sensitive to common cybersecurity practices. Months of security consciousness trainings taught them that sites without functioning SSL certificates pose a threat and should not be visited. Since they are “used to” HTTPS errors on your sites, allowing them to ignore the problem on your own websites can make them more prone to hacking or fraud efforts later on.
difficulties in identifying Browser errors
Without a thorough External Attack Surface Management ( EASM) remedy, it is challenging to identify SSL failures. The truth is that the majority of conventional safety measures are unable to continue to monitor and analyze all of your group’s internet-facing resources. It becomes even more challenging to keep safe SSL configurations up to date with the powerful, constantly-changing nature of digital environments, where assets are regularly updated and added. Particularly, for two causes:
- Most normal security tools are designed to screen and safeguard internal networks and assets, but they have a limited capacity. However, they frequently lack the expertise to search and evaluate the wide range of internet-facing goods, including websites, internet programs, APIs, and more, for SSL failures. Standard tools can easily overlook things like poor cipher suites and SSL certificate expirations, leaving your organization vulnerable.
- Your organization’s modern environment is powerful as your group adds, removes, or updates articles, applications, and services frequently. And because of this continual change, you could unintentionally and quickly create Browser problems.
preventing SSL failures with EASM
Consider investing in an automated, cloud-based EASM solution that monitors all of your known and unknown assets to take a proactive approach to managing and securing your organization’s external attack surface ( including SSL configurations ). The best options are:
- Invest in a system that continuously checks and screens all internet-facing resources for SSL breaches, ensuring that any vulnerabilities are quickly found and fixed.
- Monitor SSL certificates for validity dates, the document network, TLS methods, and lenders in order to prevent the use of fragile or expired certificates.
- Consider using a solution that automatically examines your SSL design and discovers possible problems, grading them based on their potential intensity. This ongoing research and selection can help you better focus your restoration efforts.
- Give proactive alerts: You are unaware of your shortcomings. Find a solution that sends strategic updates about SSL errors, enabling you to take action quickly to reduce potential security risks.
- Consider using a company that offers managed EASM service for the most convenient method of securing your organization’s outside attack surface. With a managed EASM service, the vendor may maintain 24-hour monitoring and communicate regularly with you to evaluate threats and fix vulnerabilities.
The EASM software from Outpost24 checks all of these containers. a cloud-based program that increases your cyber resilience. The answer adds computer threat intelligence feeds to a more detailed view of cyber risk, immediately gathering and analyzing data for both your known and unknown assets, and continuously maps your organization’s growing attack surface for a more comprehensive approach to digital risk. Next, the platform provides a number of potential remediation steps you can take to close security gaps and protect your online presence from SSL vulnerabilities.
Your group’s online resources are constantly expanding, and so is your invasion surface. With Outpost24’s Sweepatic EASM, learn how to manage your harm area and improve cyber resilience. Contact us to find out more about how EASM may help reduce digital threat on your attack site.