How NEC XON proactively protects businesses against cyber attacks

NEC XON follows a unique approach to cybersecurity by using a proactive strategy that focuses on threat anticipation.

Cyber threats are thereby detected, anticipated, prevented, and eliminated to minimize business impact.

This groundbreaking approach is crucial in a digital ecosystem where cyber threats such as ransomware and Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) cause catastrophic consequences if not dealt with proactively.

Most organizations operate in a reactive space, which often results in confusion and crisis management in the event of a cyber breach.

Proactive management, instead of mere incident response, emphasizes threat containment and risk management when a threat is detected.

A proactive approach positions businesses a step ahead of malicious actors, enabling them to identify security gaps before they become business risks.

It also ensures that organizations can maximize their budgets by adjusting expenditure towards proactive cyber defenses rather than overinvesting in reactive solutions.

In contrast, the reactive approach taken by many cybersecurity companies leaves clients scrambling to protect themselves during an attack, causing unforeseen crisis management situations and internal confusion—factors that cybercriminals exploit to increase their malicious impact.

“At NEC XON, we decided we needed to revolutionize the reactive status quo,” said Armand Kruger, Head of Cyber Security at NEC XON.

“We come in with a proactive mindset, culture, methodology, and a focus on identifying gaps that could be exploited to gain unauthorized access to organizations, based on tactics we have observed from cyber adversaries.”

“The proactive approach is vital in eliminating gaps before they become business risks. Cybersecurity is simply risk management that leads to a cyber resilience strategy,” Kruger added.

How NEC XON protects its clients

NEC XON’s proactive approach involves identifying common and advanced patterns in cyber attacks based on previous incident response engagements, community-led intelligence, and reputable cyber intelligence sources.

Based on the intelligence gathered, NEC XON develops a proactive, preventative, and resilient cybersecurity strategy for each client, tailored to their unique business operations and goals.

Each strategy includes three key elements:

• Continuous proactive hunting for malicious access points and neutralizing them before they can be exploited or abused, removing the opportunity for cyber criminals to act.
• Proactive dark web monitoring for compromised credentials, data leaks, access points and internet-facing systems.
• Focused incident response if any threat is detected. Incident response must be executed with precision, collaboration and coordination in harmony to contain and minimize the blast radius of the risk to limit the business impact.

Kruger noted that businesses using outdated reactive strategies put themselves at significant risk by failing to execute precise incident response when a threat arises.

Many businesses lack the skills to identify patterns leading to ransomware from existing security solutions. However, NEC XON’s proactive approach ensures that businesses can respond to threats as they arise.

While it is impossible to protect against all cyber threats, defense in depth – combining threat anticipation, prevention, detection, response, and recovery – provides balanced security, Kruger said.

NEC XON’s comprehensive strategy equips clients to handle almost any intrusion attempt.

“Cybersecurity is risk management, and NEC XON’s goal is to provide businesses with the cyber resilience to reduce risks and adapt to modern cyber attacks,” said Kruger.

“There will always be a risk, but NEC XON equips businesses to be proactive and resilient.”