Our Approach

Definitive Guide to Ransomware

Cybersecurity for Governments

Hunt & Hackett has observed a discerning increase of activity of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups in the government sector. There is this legendary saying on how to overcome your adversaries: 'know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated'. To know your enemy starts with gaining an understanding of your threat landscape, your adversaries’ intentions, their modus operandi, and specific attacking methods. The following sections provide a glimpse of the government specific threat landscape to highlight what is going on and is followed-up by our approach on how to defend against it. The blog series which can be found at the bottom of this page provides further details of the (central) government threat landscape.

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Threat landscape

For governments

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Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)

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Tactics, Techniques & Procedures (TTPs)

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Attack tools

Governments Governments + related All known
APTs 480 519 781
TTPs 3,418 3,897 4,109
Attack tools 3,076 3,285 3,616

Government organizations face more cyber threats than ever

To stay in control becomes increasingly difficult

While governments are scrambling to meet the various societal, cultural and economic challenges, malicious actors are inflicting damage to their organisations even more. Driven by motivations that range from financial, such as ransomware attacks, to information theft and espionage. Governments as a sector have made it to the top of the list of hacker groups. The threat diagnostic system that was developed by Hunt & Hackett, helps government organizations to gain insight into who, how and why their organizations are being targeted as well as on how to address these threats appropriately.

Actor overview

The most active attack groups targeting government organizations are shown in the dynamic chart highlighting the relationships between the various threat actors, their motivation and their country of origin.

Knowing the APT groups, their motivations and origin countries provides a solid starting point for understanding what you are up against. To get a more comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape, it is important to research, map, and document your adversaries’ intentions to their modus operandi, attack methods and attack tools, as this provides more actionable information for strenghtening your defences.

More detailed information on the threat landscape for this sector?

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Our articles about the government sector

From Hunt & Hackett experts

Our approach

Controlling your cybersecurity risks

In their fight against cyber attacks, our customers typically go through several stages of maturity. By ramping up their prevention, detection and incident readiness over time – and optimizing this for their actual threat landscape – they reach a point where they have developed solid resilience against targeted attacks, with only highly controlled and accepted risks remaining.

There is no simple 'fix' to become resilient against the sophisticated cyber threats of today. Without serious resources or processes for systematic security activities, protection against modern cyber threats like ransomware is just a wish. Hunt & Hackett has developed a unique threat- and sector-driven approach to cybersecurity, enabling you to work from your current situation to a highly improved and controlled situation, optimized for your specific threat landscape and context as an organisation.

Schietschijven1

STAGE 1: Unknown risk
Pre-monitoring
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Preventitive controls
 
Limited resilience
 
 
Schietschijven2-1

STAGE 2: Reduced risk
Post-monitoring
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Preventitive CIS controls (IG1)

Detection & response controls

Resilience against non-targeted attacks
Schietschijven3

STAGE 3: Controlled risk
Implemented roadmap
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Alignment between preventitive, detection & response CIS controls (IG2)

Resilience against non-targeted and semi-targeted attacks
 
Schietschijven4

STAGE 4: Highly controlled risk
Targeted attack resilience
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Full redundancy between preventitve, detection & response CIS controls (IG3)
 
Resilience against against advanced targeted attacks
 

Our services

Optimized for governments

Because we use your actual threat landscape and your sector as our starting points, our services are optimised for your specific context and needs.

Managed Detection & Response (MDR)

We detect & react to attacker activity in your environment, minimizing the impact on your business.

Security Program Gap Assessment (SPGA)

We assess your current security program, threat landscape, security controls and risk.

Incident Response (IR)

We help you manage a cyber crisis and contain security incidents, breaches and cyber threats.

Breach & Attack Simulation (BAS)

We validate your security choices by simulating attacks.

Learn more about our threat research?