Engineering and manufacturing firms often approach the NEBRC for cyber security support. One such business had recently seen companies within its supply chain suffer with ransomware attacks and were concerned that such attacks could happen to them.
The NEBRC worked with the company’s technology provider to undertake a vulnerability assessment of their server and a review of existing information security policies. The NEBRCs student ethical hackers, under the supervision of industry professionals, checked how the server might be attacked across the internet and looked for any weakness that might have been present on the inside of their network. They also benchmarked the company’s security policies against the internationally recognised best practices in the ISO27001 series.
While undertaking the assessment, the team found numerous PORTS (connections used to exchange information) were open on the server, presenting a possible opening for cyber-attacks. The policy review suggested improvements to the data backup position, to ensure that if a ransomware attack were to occur the company had recent data snapshots it could restore to.
The firm then collaborated with its technology provider to close unnecessary ports and strengthen its backup processes, ensuring the availability of clean, unencrypted backups in the event of an attack. These technical improvements, combined with phishing awareness training delivered virtually by the NEBRC team—addressing one of the most common ransomware entry points – helped the engineering firm significantly enhance its resilience and reduce its risk of falling victim to a ransomware attack.
The NEBRC was able to keep costs low for the engineering firm by subsidising security assessments. And by working with the NEBRC, the engineering company helped ethical hacking students were able to gain some invaluable hands-on experience, making them highly employable post-graduation.
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