A nonrestrictive physical access to an infrastructure, undeniably results into a loss of physical security. In cybersecurity, this could lead to breach of infrastructure, data compromise, and possibly physical damage to critical components. This gives rise to the question, what is a breach in physical security?
What is a Breach in Physical Security?
A breach in physical security, is an unauthorized access to an organization’s physical structures by either a malicious person, hacker, or even a terrorist group. The compromise or breach of an organization’s physical security leads to theft, removal, exposure, or even damage of sensitive assets, data, and information belonging to the compromised organization.
In cybersecurity, the protection, and the implementation of physical security, should be of optimum priority when compared to digital security. Every digital data, resources, and information resides on a server, and these servers resides in an organization physical infrastructure, and certainly these structures require protection, to ensure that the CIA of cybersecurity is not only honored, but also see to it that trust is established between the organization and its customers, guaranteeing the protection, and providing of these data and information when needed.
Therefore,
How Do We Establish Physical Security or What are The Common Ways To Implement Physical Security?
1. Building Physical Infrastructure with formidable materials:
Infrastructures housing an organizations data centers and facilities should be constructed with strong and durable materials. Threat actors could find a way to destroy infrastructures by either cutting or using forceful methods in breaking into the physical building. An infrastructure, built with durable materials, could withstand any form of breaking and entry, by unauthorized personnel.
2. Setting up perimeter surveillance and Security Alerts:
To further boost an organization’s physical security, perimeter surveillance should be implemented. This includes the installation of CCTV’s , radio coms, intruder alarms, biometric scanners, and so on. The CCTV’s installed should be of good quality, capable of detecting human motion, possess night vision functionalities, and more.
The security alerts should be able to notify appropriate authorities when it detects suspicious motions, by triggering the security alarms when something doesn’t feel right. These alerts should not only be limited to the on-premises alarms, but also be able to trigger mobile notifications when an external force or a suspicious movement is detected.
3. Securing Server Rooms and Data Centers:
The server room is where every information digitally associated to both the organization and its customers resides. Components in this server room includes routers, switches, network cables, server racks, and so on. It is therefore essential to also prioritize the security of these data centers by ensuring they are under lock and key. The security implemented should be both padlocks, digital security keypads, biometric scanners, and facial recognition security.
Time frames when these storage rooms are to be accessed daily should also be implemented except when there is an emergency, that may require urgent attention. This will also help in keeping track of employees or personnel who might be an insider threat during an investigation process, through system log auditing, and tracking down the employee who accessed the server room during unauthorized time frames.
4. Disable USB Components and Implement Network Jammers :
The presence of insider threats should never be overlooked, as some employees could be a spy working for a competitor of your organization. This could result in them stealing personal data belonging to you, and that of your employees.
To ensure the protection of these sensitive information, it is imperative that the ability of external drives being able to copy from the organizations drives should be prevented. USB ports should be disabled, completely removed, or security configurations implemented in such a way that when a USB drive is inserted, a security key or password should be provided, and permission should be assigned to various employees, and what they can do to a file or folder in the organizations server or computers. To learn how to setup file permissions or disable USB ports on a windows computer, visit Microsoft .
Network jammers are important. A hacker could use a dongle to either crack the organizations Wi-Fi password, or to provide them with their own private internet access, when they successfully compromise a server room. The server rooms which these facilities are stored, should have a smart network jammer. The Smart Network jammer should be implemented, using cognitive radio signals and machine learning algorithms. This would be able to monitor Wi-Fi signals, detect the presence of unauthorized suspicious signals, and disabling the suspicious network, while still ensuring the trusted network (organization network), is still up and running.
5. Sensitizing Employees and Human Security:
There is saying which quotes that “when it comes to cybersecurity humans are the weakest link.” Humans are known to make decisions based on emotions, feelings, familiarity with an event, and of course trusting easily. This is a reason why social engineering is prominent and the easiest way most organizations have been successfully compromised.
It is therefore a necessity without respite to sensitize your organizations team, by continuous education, and cybersecurity awareness. From time to time provide seminars, workshops, and simulate real world adversaries that are trending. This also ensures that they are familiar with trending cyber-attacks, and Threat actors TTP’s ( Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures).
These trainings provided, should include the simulating of phishing attacks, social engineering campaigns involving common techniques such as tailgating, eavesdropping, shoulder surfing, and so on. By such security awareness, it will be minimal or even completely impossible for these threat actors to breach the physical security of your organization.
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