What are The Most Commonly Targeted Ports?


Understanding the most commonly targeted ports enables you to better protect these threat vectors. Once you know where to look, you can reconfigure the ports to mitigate data breach risks and better secure data.
The 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, in its appendix, notes some of the most valuable ports that malicious actors use in targeted attacks:
·         cLDAP (389)
·         DNS (53)
·         NTP (123)
·         SSH (22)
·         Telnet (23)
·         HTTP (8080)
·         NetBIOS (445)
·         Dell Open Management
As with all research, the Data Breach Investigations Report provides limited information. While these ports may have been the most commonly targeted at the time of the research, malicious actors continuously evolve their threat methodologies, meaning that they target other ports as well.

Continuous cybersecurity monitoring for defense in depth

Continuously monitoring your cybersecurity controls with artificial intelligence/machine learning enables you to gain real-time visibility into new risks. Defense in depth is a cybersecurity controls model that incorporates multiple defensive practices layered over each other so that if one protective control fails, it has others to back it up. Unfortunately, without cybersecurity monitoring, you may struggle to implement a defense in depth strategy.

Suggestions for creating a defense in depth strategy for ports


As part of your defense in depth strategy that protects against attackers targeting ports, you should be continuously monitoring for:
  • ·         Unused open ports
  • ·         Host-based firewalls
  • ·         Network-based firewalls
  • ·         Port traffic filtering
  • ·         Strong passwords
  • ·         Access controls
  • ·         Penetration testing


While all of these suggestions seem simple, your interconnected IT infrastructure complicates them. For example, adding more devices increases the number of ports which in turn means you need to continuously scan for unused ports. Firewalls control the way information flows across your network, but they also lead to application visibility and control issues.

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