The US cybersecurity agency, CISA, has published a guide containing free cybersecurity resources and services, which may be useful for incident response.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is responsible for monitoring, managing and reducing risks to critical infrastructure in the United States. The federal agency is also known for its alerts about high-profile data leaks and vulnerability disclosures.
Last month, CISA urged organizations to strengthen their defenses in light of cyberattacks suffered by the Ukrainian government, in which computer systems were disrupted and government-owned websites were defaced by cybercriminals.
As part of an ongoing initiative to improve the cybersecurity posture of infrastructure providers, critical services, and U.S. local and state governments, CISA has compiled a guide with tips, resources, and links to services that can help organizations reduce their exposure to risk and manage the consequences of a security incident.
The guide is divided into several categories: fundamental measures, how to reduce the likelihood of a “damaging” cyberattack, the steps to follow to detect an intrusion, incident response, and resources to maximize resilience to destructive attacks.
The list contains a mix of open-source tools and software, services offered by public and private cybersecurity organizations, and resources provided free of charge by CISA itself.
The federal agency first recommends companies take basic steps to improve their security, including implementing patch cycles to fix known software vulnerabilities, implementing two- and multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA), upgrading old and out-of-service software, and replacing default or old passwords.
After tackling the above steps, CISA then recommends that organizations move on to additional categories.
Resources include links to phishing assessment services, remote penetration testing, distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, Project Shield, threat databases, anti-virus tools, forensic software and backup services, among others.
Skill levels for each service or tool are separated based on basic or advanced knowledge requirements.
CISA’s list will be continually updated, and the agency intends to create a process for organizations to submit new tools and free services for review in the future.
Source: “ZDNet.com”