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Security CTF are an awesome way to learn new hacking skills and they are the best way to learn new skills and gain more experience in pentesting. There are two common types of CTFs: Jeopardy and Attack-Defence.

Jeopardy-style CTFs have a couple of questions (tasks) in a range of categories. For example, Web, Forensic, Crypto, Binary, and so on. An individual or team can gain some points for every solved task. More points for more complicated tasks usually. The next task in the chain can be opened only after some team solves the previous task. Then the game time is over the sum of points shows you a CTF winner.

Attack-Defence is another interesting kind of competition. Here every team has its own network(or only one host) with vulnerable services. Your team has time for patching your services and developing exploits usually. So, then organizers connect participants of the competition, and the wargame starts! You should protect your own services for defense points and hack opponents for attack points.

If you take a close look at the CTF world, Jeopardy-style CTF is more popular than the Attack-Defence style. If you want to enhance your skills then you must try CTFs which are happening all over the world. You can find the list of the CTF event at CTFTime.

In Nepal, we have been conducting NepHack, the only CTF event in Nepal for the past 3 years and we have seen progress on the participant and on the community. We have been organizing CTF to promote the security community in Nepal, to encourage security researchers, and eventually promoting the security sector in Nepal.

To know more about CTF, take a look at this video.

Here is a picture that will help you to get started.

In this high tech world, data is equal to cash. No matter whether it is a small start-up or a company making millions, billions all businesses are the victims of data breaches. These attacks result in losses of millions of private records and information which can cost millions and it also affects the image of the company. A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment where anyone can access those private data and which is no more a ‘private’.

By somehow your personal data was compromised in a data breach then what? Today we will discuss things you can do if you are a victim of a data breach.

1) Determine what was stolen

You need to identify exactly what kind of information was stolen or lost in the data breach.

You can classify the severity of your information into three general categories:

a. Least Sensitive: These kind of information is pretty harmless like your name and your address. As they are also easily available on social media or on the internet as they probably can’t cause you serious trouble.

b. More Sensitive: These are pretty more sensitive than those names and addresses which include your phone number, email address, security questions, date of birth details, your healthcare report or information. As these leaked information can cause you some trouble as anyone can have direct contact with you via various private means of communication like phone, email, etc.

c. Most Sensitive: These are the most critical information that will directly cause you to trouble both emotionally, financially. These include your payment or credit card information, your bank details, your citizenship details, passport details. This information can directly cause you financial threat as your credit card details are publicly exposed and anyone can perform a transaction on behalf of your card.

2) Change passwords immediately

If you ever noticed a data breach notification, the first thing you need to do is change the password as soon as you can. Create a new and strong password for all the accounts you have.
If you have been using the same password in different accounts, change them as well. Also, most of us use the same user name and passwords for different accounts, so change the passwords of all accounts.

3) Change your Credit Card/Banking Details

If you came to know that your payment details including your credit card information has been breached then you need to contact the bank immediately regarding the data breach concern and change your credit card PIN code, Card Verification Value(CVV) or even you can monitor your financial information.

4) Monitor and Be aware

Now, as your data has been breached, you have taken all the precaution measures as well but still, you need to be aware of the phishing, spam email, messages and be more aware of them and report to the concerned department as soon as possible.

5) Passport was breached? Replace it

There are many ways for cybercriminals can extract money using your passport details so the best thing for you to do is to apply for a new passport. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for that. But new passports come with new numbers and your old number will become invalid.

You can check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach from Have I been pwned? https://haveibeenpwned.com/

In this high tech world, data is equal to cash. No matter whether it is a small start-up or a company making millions, billions all businesses are the victims of data breaches. These attacks result in losses of millions of private records and information which can cost millions and it also affects the image of the company. A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment where anyone can access those private data and which is no more a ‘private’.

This is the time to brush your data security. You should not wait until being attacked, prevent and prepare yourself from the data breaches.

At first, let’s find out who causes data breaches.

No doubt that breaches can be caused by a malicious hacker but it’s not always true. Sometimes results might end up being something else. Here is the list who also might actually also get you to this incident.

1. A Malicious Insider: This person purposely accesses or shares data with the internet or public with the intent of causing harm to an individual or a company.
2. Lost or Stolen Device: An unencrypted and unlocked laptop or the external hard drive of a company or individual where they had saved some sensitive information.
3. Malicious Hacker: These are the hacker who uses various kind of attack vectors to gather information from a network and exploit them to get internal access to some sensitive data.

How to Prevent Data Breaches?

Reputation management and data breach are two phrases you don’t want to see together. A data breach can truly cause serious damages to the company, both financial and reputational. I know you never want to happen this with you so here are the ways which can help you to prevent data breaches.

Update software on a regular basis

This is an easy and cost effective method to prevent from attacks. It is very essential to regularly update operating systems and other application software. The networks are sensitive if not patched. Make sure all the programs are patched and updated regularly.

Limit access to the most valuable data

This is a very common but important step. If you limit the access to the most valuable data, you also limit the employee who may click on any harmful link that is directed towards attacks. Let only the concerned department have access to the most important data. For instance, a mailroom employee shouldn’t have the access to go through the customer’s financial information. Also reduce the space where those data are physically stored.

Train the employee

It is sure that the companies have a strong IT Security team but sometimes the security issues are out of their hands. The cybersecurity scenario keeps on changing so it is important to train the employees about the latest cybersecurity practices and policies. The team should also educate the employees about the potential risks.

Vulnerability and Compliance Management

Prevention is better than cure. Perform various kinds of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing on your critical infrastructure which will help you to identify the gaps, weaknesses, and security misconfiguration. It also helps you to continuously monitor your infrastructure and IT asses for vulnerabilities and compliance weakness and configuration best practices.

 Observe the Third-party vendors

All the companies get connected with many third-party vendors. It is important to know about the people you are working with. Before getting connected with any third party, check the background and the reputation. Ask transparency if you allow any company to view your data. Similarly, also observe any third party vendor that you allow in your office premises.

Monitor the devices

Many companies have a culture of asking their employees to use their own devices at work. But this can be a great risk as they use their personal devices. Employees use it for work and also for their personal needs. The breaches can also occur due to this. It is important to monitor those devices as well.

Notify early

As soon as you realized about the data breach, inform your security team about it immediately. If the management knows about the breach at early stage, they will have higher chances to control it and minimize the loss. Even if you notice any sort of suspicious act or any unusual act, report it early. This can change the major breach to a minor one.

Reputation management and data breach are two phrases you don’t want to see together. A data breach can truly cause serious damages to the company, both financial and reputational. A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment where anyone can access those private data and which is no more a ‘private’.

We know that data breach are worse but still it has happened. So what to do?
Here are the few things which you can do if you ever had a data breach.

1) Notify immediately

First and the foremost thing which you have to do is to notify the affected individuals/customers/clients about the data breach which you had recently. It can be done via email, notification, social media post or press release.

2) Notify what information has been breached.

Here’ you also have to mention what amount of data has been compromised or what are the PII details have been compromised. For example, the breach might only contain some PII details like Name, email, address, phone number or the entire details.

3) Request for Modification

After the incident and with your notification user/customer/client might not feel bit insecure so you can ask them to reset their password to a new and other information as per required.

4) Investigating the incident

Now here comes your internal part which is to investigate your data breach. How it happened and why it happened, time when it happened. Meanwhile, you can also contact the legal authority to investigate the data breach.

5) Find & Mitigating Vulnerabilities.

Now, once you find out the vulnerabilities on your application or system you should patch them immediately and also inform your customers about the patch and notify them their data is now safe and secure.

6) Protection against Future Incidents

Now, you have learned your lesson and now you don’t want this incident to repeat again. In order to prevent this kind of breaches all you need to do is perform Penetration testing of your application or system to find out the vulnerabilities which exist on your system.

If you haven’t gone through data breach yet, you never know so its better to secure your environment beforehand and if you are looking for that kind of security services then do check out our services.