When most people think about reconnaissance in cyber security, they picture hackers running network scans or probing for open ports. The reality is far more sophisticated and frankly, more terrifying. Modern threat actors don’t just scan your network – they study your entire organization like they’re writing a dissertation about you.
This blog post summarizes the main points of my latest podcast episode. If you’d like, you can listen to it or watch it at https://www.backupwrapup.com/
The Human Element of Reconnaissance in Cyber Security
Here’s something that’ll keep you up at night: the most effective reconnaissance in cyber security doesn’t start with technical tools. It starts with studying your people. Think about it – if I wanted to take down your company, would I spend months trying to crack your firewall, or would I figure out which of your employees is struggling financially, has a drug problem, or is just naive enough to take a CD from some random guy on the street?
That’s exactly what we see in Mr. Robot. F Society didn’t just magically know about Evil Corp’s backup infrastructure at Steel Mountain. They did their homework. They figured out who worked at Allsafe (the cybersecurity firm), studied their habits, identified their weaknesses, and then exploited them. Elliot was targeted specifically because he had access and vulnerabilities they could exploit.
This is the part that most security awareness training misses. You tell people “don’t click suspicious links” or “don’t plug in random USB drives,” but you don’t explain why. The reason isn’t just that the device might have malware – it’s that someone spent weeks or months studying your company to figure out exactly how to get that device into your hands at precisely the right moment.
Network Mapping: The Technical Side of Reconnaissance in Cyber Security
Once threat actors get that initial foothold – whether through a malicious CD, a compromised employee, or any other vector – the real reconnaissance in cyber security begins. They’re not just looking for your crown jewel data (though they want that too). They’re specifically looking for your backup systems.
Why? Because they know that if they encrypt all your production data but leave your backups intact, you’ll just restore and move on. But if they can map your entire backup infrastructure and take that out too, now you’re really in trouble. This is where the technical side of reconnaissance in cyber security gets scary.
Modern backup systems, especially those that are entirely disk and cloud-based, are surprisingly easy to map once you’re inside the network. Attackers can identify your backup servers, trace your replication paths, find your cloud storage accounts, and map your entire recovery infrastructure. They’re looking at your purchase orders to see where you send your offsite tapes. They’re reading your disaster recovery documentation that’s sitting in plain text PDFs on your file servers.
Defending Against Reconnaissance in Cyber Security
So what do you do about this? First, understand that you’re probably going to be compromised at some point. I know that sounds defeatist, but it’s realistic. The question isn’t whether you’ll face reconnaissance in cyber security – it’s how you’ll limit the damage when it happens.
Your backup infrastructure needs to be segregated. I’m talking about separate networks, separate authentication systems, separate everything. Don’t use your main Active Directory domain for backup authentication. Use local passwords with a good password manager, implement multi-factor authentication everywhere, and make it as difficult as possible for an attacker to move from your production environment to your backup environment.
The other thing is tabletop exercises. You need to understand how this stuff actually works. Walk through scenarios where an attacker has gained initial access and is conducting reconnaissance in cyber security against your organization. What would they find? What could they access? How would you detect it? How would you respond?
The Reality Check
Look, I get it. This stuff is overwhelming. You’re thinking, “If sophisticated attackers are going to spend months studying my company and mapping my infrastructure, what’s the point of even trying?” But here’s the thing – most attackers aren’t that sophisticated. They’re looking for easy targets. If you make it difficult enough, many of them will move on to someone else.
But for the ones that won’t move on – the advanced persistent threats, the nation-state actors, the organized crime groups – you need to be prepared. You need to understand that reconnaissance in cyber security is just the beginning of a much longer campaign against your organization.
Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at S2|DATA, which helps companies manage their legacy data
