2020 has ushered in a paradigm shift in the way businesses of all shapes and sizes conduct themselves. Even after the pandemic has passed, the new normal will continue to exist for a long, with remote and anywhere operations becoming the new standard for businesses all over the world. Companies have done their hardest to harness technical assets for smooth delivery of products and services to satisfy the growing expectations of remote consumers and clients.
However, data breaches have increased substantially in recent years, with 36 billion records compromised in the first half of 2020 alone. Businesses should make a New Year’s resolution to build resilience and a secure environment for their partners, customers, employees, and extended network in the coming year. Maintaining and enhancing their trust has never been more critical than at this point in history.
With thieves becoming more clever than ever before and increasing pressure to maintain governance and compliance, here are some of the most important cybersecurity resolutions for your company in the near future:
Automated Backups
Early on in your company’s journey, decide on the most cost-effective and efficient backup method. You have a wide range of options to choose from, including backup systems, cloud-based backup systems, data support centres, and more. Before deciding which system is appropriate for your backup and recovery needs, you should thoroughly assess each system’s merits. Backup solutions that are well-managed can not only help you restore and forensically analyse data in the event of an incident, but they can also help you quickly restore business continuity to maintain a smooth customer experience even in the event of a breach or a natural disaster.
Employ Hybrid Strategies
To build a hybrid security approach that maximises the efficiency of your cybersecurity outcomes, you must invest in the right tools and technologies. When combined with external services like pentesting-as-a-service (PtaaS), scanning-as-a-service (ScaaS), disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), and backup-as-a-service, a software-defined approach can serve your needs well (BaaS). This ensures that internal teams have the help of third-party cyber security specialists and, if necessary, law enforcement. For more information on these services, contact your nearest and most dependable managed IT service company.
Control Administrative Privileges
Hackers are always on the lookout for valuable administrator credentials that can give them access to all of your company’s data. This is why it’s so important to educate your employees on password hygiene, sensitivity, and commonly used cyber-attack strategies. Please make sure that all employees are obliged to utilise password managers, SSO, and multi-factor authentication as a first step. You should also have procedures in place that require employees to change their passwords on a regular basis and to use unique and complicated passwords.
The rise of the Dark Cloud
That’s right, you read that correctly. Hackers are turning to the cloud for the same reasons that corporations do. By adopting the cloud path, they can avoid the ‘sunk cost’ of capital expenditure and infrastructure fees and opt for a flexible, scalable means of payment to develop and develop their business as needed. They can also access data from anywhere and set up a worldwide remote foundation for their operations thanks to the cloud. Doesn’t that sound awful?
They are always on the lookout for susceptible businesses from which to steal data, as these caches frequently contain very valuable consumer data such as email addresses, credentials, and personally identifiable information (PII) such as passport scans, social security numbers, bank invoices, and more. You now genuinely face the risk of losing the scope of your business continuity for good if you don’t have a robust and frequently tested cybersecurity policy in place, since your infrastructure can only become more vulnerable over time without proactive policies and actions to shore up its defences.
Train your employees on cyber security practises
With remote operations set to become the norm in the near future, it’s more important than ever for businesses to shut their biggest security loop — human error. While we will never be able to completely eliminate the risk of human error, we can surely reduce it via repetition, active employee participation in guaranteeing safety, and safety exercises. You must guarantee that your threat simulations stay realistic, and that your staff understand what to do in the event of a security breach or incident. Employees should be actively encouraged to seek for red flags in day-to-day operations and monitoring, and you should endeavour to instil confidence in them that they will not face any problems. Regular employee training drills as well as executing simulated threats can be greatly aided by IT Support Providers.
Maintain, Monitor, and Analyze Audit Logs
Audit logs can be a crucial weapon in your company’s armoury for defending against future attacks. In addition to maintaining compliance, checking logs and analysing data can indicate exactly where vulnerabilities occurred and assist you in patching them.
Update your corporate website
Many attackers are now attempting to construct highly sophisticated social engineering attacks and even whaling campaigns using publicly accessible information on your company’s website, such as facts about specific team members, etc. While all businesses must market themselves, please evaluate your website content to verify that you are not giving any information that hackers could use. Limit the availability of employee email addresses and linkages to any personal information, like as information from social media platforms.
Buy cloud-based anti-spam software
Protecting your mail systems against the threat of email assaults such as phishing, whaling, and spoofing assaults might be one of the most effective stages in tightening your cyber security programme, as 94 percent of malware is distributed over email. Humans will always make mistakes, especially in high-pressure work environments, and anti-spam software can reduce the risk of human error by filtering out the majority of spam communications before they reach your employees’ inboxes. This also lowers the chances of people mistakenly clicking on harmful links or downloading harmful stuff onto workstations, jeopardising the network’s integrity. As part of their cyber security package, IT Outsourcing Services should be able to give you with powerful anti-spam software.