Securing the MSP: their own worst enemy
We’ve previously discussed threats to managed service providers (MSPs), covering their status as a valuable secondary target to both an assortment of APT groups as well as financially motivated threat groups. The problem with covering new and novel attack vectors, however, is that behind each new vector is typically a system left unpatched, asset management undone, a security officer not hired (typically justified with factually dubious claims of a “skills shortage”) or a board who sees investment in infrastructure—and yes, security is infrastructure—as a cost center rather than a long-term investment in sustainable profits.
In short, malware can be significantly less dangerous to a business than that business’ own operational workflow.
Points of entry
Data on breach root causes is hard to come by, typically because security vendors tend to benefit by not providing industry vertical specific risk analysis. But the data that is available occasionally hints at corporate data breaches starting with some common unforced errors.
The 2019 Verizon DBIR claims that only 28 percent of observed data breaches involve the use of malware for the initial intrusion. While malware plays a significant role in the subsequent exploitation, the numbers suggest the majority of public breaches are not driven by zero-day exploits or outlandishly complex intrusion paths. So if you’re trying to secure an MSP, what are the most common entry points for attackers?
Under the broad heading of “hacking,” the most prominent observed tactics for point-of-entry include phishing, use of stolen credentials, and other social engineering techniques. Subsequent actions to further access include common use of backdoors or compromised web applications. Let’s break these down a little further.
Phishing is a reliable way of gaining a foothold to compromise a system. How would an employee clicking on a phish constitute an unforced error? Frequently, enterprises of all sorts incentivize their workers to click on absolutely everything, while simultaneously limiting their actual reading of messages. The consequences for poorly-designed corporate communications can be huge, as was seen when an MSP lost control of admin credentials via phishing attack that was subsequently used to launch ransomware.
Stolen credentials are a tremendously common attack vector that has been seen in several high profile MSP data breaches. “Stolen” is a bit of a misnomer though, and they would be better considered as “mishandled.”
Setting aside credentials gained via social engineering or phishing, companies can frequently lose track of credentials by keeping old or unnecessary accounts active, failing to monitor public exposure of accounts, failing to force resets after secondary breaches that may impact employees, failing to enforce modern password policies—basically failing to pay attention.
Should any single account with exposed credentials be over-privileged, a significant breach is almost guaranteed. And the consequences for MSPs with sloppy credential handling can be quite severe (1, 2).
Last in the lineup for unnecessary security failures is patch management. Like any other company trying to manage fixed infrastructure costs, MSPs rely heavily on third-party software and services. So when a business-critical support app is discovered to have multiple severe vulnerabilities, it introduces a wide-open channel for further exploitation. On occasion, the vulnerabilities used are brand new. Typically, they are not, and companies that fail to patch or mitigate vulnerable software get predictably exploited.
Mishandled mitigation
These attack entry points have a couple factors in common. First, they are not tremendously technically sophisticated. Even with regards to limited APT examples, the actors relied on compromised credentials and phishing first before deploying the big guns for lateral propagation. Second, mitigating these common entry points are actions that impacted MSPs should have been doing anyway.
Credential management that includes limited external monitoring, timely access control, and periodic privilege review doesn’t simply protect against catastrophic breaches—it protects against a host of attacks at all points of the technical sophistication spectrum.
Anti-phishing system design cues not only defend against employees leaking critical data, they also make for more efficient corporate communications, keep employees safe, and ideally reduce their overall email load.
Appropriate logging with timely human review cuts down time to breach discovery, but also assists in detailed risk analysis that can make for lean and effective security budgets into the future. The relationship between all of these security behaviors and observed MSP data breaches suggests that more attention to industry best practices could have gone a long way toward eliminating or sharply diminishing breach risk.
Finally, a patch management schedule that tracks third party software and services, fixing vulnerabilities in a timely manner is a great way to close some of the largest entry points into an MSP. Subordinating patches to non critical business needs, not having a test network to deploy patches, or simply not patching at all is a large signpost to attackers signifying an easy target.
MSP security: not a luxury
An MSP might be tempted to consider security as an expensive indulgence—something to be considered as a nice-to-have after uptime and availability of resources. Done well, it is neither expensive, nor a luxury.
Adherence to security norms that have been well defined for years can go a long way toward preventing big breaches, and can do so without expensive vendor contracts, pricy consultants, or best-in-class equipment. A managed service provider who chooses to ignore or delay those norms does so at its peril.
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