How to defend against zero-day vulnerabilities

What Zero-day vulnerabilities are and how to prepare for them

News By Dirk Schrader published 14 October 2024

A quick start out of the gate is an enormous advantage for sprinters, swimmers, jockeys and race car drivers alike. It’s also extremely valuable to cybercriminals. By exploiting a zero-day vulnerability before anyone else knows about it, cybercriminals gain an early window to infiltrate systems and achieve goals like stealing data or deploying ransomware while avoiding detection.

Attacks that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities cannot be prevented — but they can be faced with confidence. This article offers practical guidance containing these threats by building a resilient IT infrastructure that features reducing the attack surface, fast detection and effective response.

Dirk Schrader

Resident CISO EMEA and VP of Security Research at Netwrix.

The Frustration of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

It is an inescapable fact that every operating system and software application have vulnerabilities that are not yet known by the vendor or the organizations using the product. Another unhappy fact is that cybercriminals are constantly looking for these vulnerabilities, and when they find one, they begin working hard to find a way to exploit it.

Organizations need to come to terms with the reality that adversaries sometimes succeed in developing an effective zero-day attack and there is little they can do to prevent the initial strike. Instead, they must focus on blocking the escalation of the threat and preventing attackers from gaining access to precious data or establishing control over the whole system.

Essentially, exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability is just the first stage of a longer battle for control over your valuable digital assets. To win that battle, security teams must proactively reduce their exposure to attack, stay on top of vulnerabilities, master threat detection and response, and ensure they can restore operations quickly after an incident.

Reducing the Attack Surface

The first priority in reducing the risk from zero-day vulnerabilities is to minimize the attack surface. Core strategies that will help include disabling unneeded services, implementing a robust patch management process, and segregating your network into distinct segments to isolate critical systems and sensitive data.

Another critical best practice is configuring stringent access controls that adhere to the least privilege principle. Even if an attacker gets into the system, their ability to move laterally will be restricted, since each account has only the access rights necessary for the user to perform their tasks.

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