Teck Genius: 8 Cybersecurity Strategies For Your Business
If we were to tell you that regardless of your company size you can and will be hit by a cybersecurity attack; would you believe us? This is the reality of what is happening today. No longer are cybersecurity threats and attacks limited to large corporates. They care very little about size and scale and are just after exploiting an opportunity.
The goal for these hackers is to leverage something to then get money from you. More often then not this is around data. Your data is your asset and as such they know that if they can access and obtain it; then they have leverage over you in terms of getting what they want. This is generally followed by some form of a ransomware note asking for monies in the form of cryptocurrency.
However, there IS good news. With the adoption of some basic cybersecurity strategies, you can significantly reduce your attack surface, which essentially means there’s less a hacker can latch on to access or exploit.
Naturally, these hackers are constantly evolving their attack methods and also upgrading their techniques to keep people off guard; but if the basic safeguards are in place they will be less likely to invest time trying to dig deeper for that first phase attack.
Teck Genius recommends that you stay one step ahead of these attackers and refine/enhance your cyber threat protection approach.
The Top Eight Cybersecurity Threat Prevention Strategies for your Business
Let’s list the 8 crucial things you should be looking at and adopting to make life that much harder for these hackers
1. User Training and Awareness: Our best line of defence is our people. They are our strongest firewalls but also can be our biggest weakness. Users are a class of protection that can introduce or inhibit risk to your systems. Click on the wrong thing and it can be the start of a downward trend. A large percentage of compromises are because users have been duped in to downloading software or click on a link that then asks for credentials. Hence, user training and cybersecurity awareness MUST go hand in hand to reduce this risk
2. Security Culture: Common ground and aligned messaging are key. Cybersecurity should be a very high priority in your business as it can make or break its existence. Having everyone conscious of their modes of working and how they deal with data and systems is key.
3. Backups: Your opportunity for recovery is only as good as your last backup. You would be surprised how many companies do not have backups nor test there recoverability. This MUST be such a critical operational activity and needs the correct cybersecurity product and solution in place.
4. User Access and Segmentation: Have you got access to systems that provide you with varying levels of information that you don’t need as part of your job? This is a common trait in companies, especially smaller ones. Whilst it may feel nice to have unrestricted access; it does bring along with it a major issue. Should the account get compromised then the hacker will have access to all information. Hence it is extremely important to limit access to users and where possible segment their access.
5. Network Security: Often, yet surprisingly, overlooked, network security is a key strategy to adopt, control and implement if you want to limit your attack surface from hackers. A robust network security implementation prevents unauthorised use and misuse of your company network. A few basic steps you can take involve locking down which kind of traffic has access, ensuring your Wi-Fi is secure and has a robust password policy and ensuring that you have monitoring and alerting in the event of any issues or breaches.
6. VPNs and Firewalls: Review and implement robust cybersecurity products that allow for safe and secure access to your networks. Industry-leading vendors such as Cisco, Palo Alto and Fortigate all offer solutions that do an exceptional job in protecting access and authorisation.
7. Cloud Security: With the popularity of cloud-based services (SaaS, IaaS and PaaS) many companies have and will adopt cloud-based applications. Whilst these do make their adoption and use easier; it also brings with it risks and issues. The very nature of cloud services means that you are transferring elements of security to the service provider and hence you need to be sure their service is vetted. Controlled access and authentication should be enforced by MFA and a stringent password policy.
8. Updates and Upgrades: This strategy is THE most overlooked in companies. The very act of checking operating systems, firmware updates, patching of applications is one of the main reasons why exploits occur. Hackers look for these vulnerabilities qin networks and once they find them, they will provide them with access to adjacent systems with ease. Always ensure you have a robust patch management process in place.
Cybersecurity and active threat prevention must be on every companies agenda if they care about their survival. Putting in place a robust cybersecurity strategy with the correct cyber threat solutions can be the difference between success and failure. Teck Genius offer a host of cybersecurity services that can provide you with active and ongoing cyber threat protection. For more information please contact us here.
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