NSA Report: How To Defend Against Destructive Malware

In the wake of the Sony breach, spy agencys Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) arm provides best practices to mitigate damage of data annihilation attacks.

Prevent, detect, and contain: Those are the key overarching strategies for combating data-destroying malware attacks, according to a new report issued this month by the National Security Agency.
The NSAs Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) outlined key best practices for defending against such attacks-- à la Sony or Saudi Aramco -- that require organizations being proactive rather than reactive to a cyberattack.
Once a malicious actor achieves privileged control of an organizations network, the actor has the ability to steal or destroy all of the data that is on the network, the NSA says in its new
Defensive Best Practices for Destructive Malware
report.
The report comes in the wake of the massive and destructive attack on Sony, and includes some already well-known best security practices.
Some tools can mitigate some of the damage, the report says, but preventing the attacker from getting control over the network is a more effective defense. The earlier that network defenders can detect and contain an intrusion, the less damage the intruder can possible cause, the report says. Planning for the worst-case scenario is also key, according to the NSA.
NSAs recommendations recap some strategies the NSA previously had published in its
Information Assurance Mitigation Strategies
report. Among the best practices in the latest report for preventing, detecting, and containing attacks are:
Segregate network systems and functions so that if an attacker hacks in one area, he cant necessarily reach others
Reduce and protect administrator privileges to minimize the damage if a bad guy obtains them
Employ application whitelisting to prevent malicious code from executing
Limit workstation-to-workstation communication to reduce the attack surface
Run perimeter firewalls, application-layer firewalls, forward proxies, and sandboxing or other dynamic traffic and code analyses
Use and monitor host and network logging
Implement pass-the-hash mitigations
Run Microsofts EMET or other anti-exploit tools
Employ antivirus reputation services to augment traditional signature-based AV
Run host intrusion prevention systems
Regularly update and patch software
On the incident response side, NSA recommends an incident response plan and regular testing of the plan. Preparing through offline backups and exercised incident response and recovery plans can make the organization more resilient, enabling quick reconstitution and the resumption of normal business functions as soon as possible, the report says.

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NSA Report: How To Defend Against Destructive Malware