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Is your important data safe?
Every business might indeed become a victim of cybercrime. Banks, legal companies, NGOs, government agencies, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities are just a few groups that have reported cyber-attacks.
Hackers, insider threats, ransomware, and other dangers are out there. Because attackers are continually devising new ways to gain access to sensitive data, cybersecurity has gotten more challenging.
Furthermore, powerful and remote users are now among the top insider players due to the recent trend of remote work and privileged access to numerous workers.
Modern life is much more pleasant thanks to various digital devices and the internet. Every good item has a negative side, and the modern digital world is no different.
Although the internet has improved our lives today, it has also presented a significant challenge to secure data.
What Exactly Is A Cyberattack?
Before we go into the various cyber-attacks, let's go through a cyber-attack. A cyber-attack occurs when an outside party obtains unauthorized access to systems or networks. A hacker or attacker is someone who conducts a cyber-attack.
Cyber-attacks have several adverse effects. When an attack is conducted, it may result in data breaches, which may cause data loss or manipulation. Companies suffer financial losses, a decrease in consumer trust, and reputation damage.
We use cybersecurity to prevent cyber-attacks. Cybersecurity is known as network, computer, and their component protection from unwanted digital access.
Here is our IT security best practices checklist to help you discover answers to these issues and prevent cyber-attacks.
1. Raise Awareness Of Cybersecurity
The first point of advice truly concerns your capacity to establish good contact with every employee & customer and to inform them of potential cybersecurity dangers and countermeasures.
People may either be your top security danger or your best security protection. Because hackers frequently employ people as access points, a technology-centric approach to cybersecurity is no longer sufficient to provide complete protection.
Therefore, the greatest strategy for reducing risks associated with people is to take a people-centric approach.
The employees themselves are a crucial perimeter in people-centric security. Employers grant staff the freedom to use gadgets, handle information, and take security measures by;
- Having faith in them
- Putting them in charge of protecting the corporate data they use
However, you must ensure that every employee complies with the cybersecurity best practices outlined in your security policy.
2. Inform Employees About Phishing Techniques
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Your staff should learn how to avoid the hacker's trap. Cybercriminals frequently use phishing attacks to steal employee passwords, infect a company's computer systems with malware, or collect employee financial information.
According to a survey by the Identity Theft Resource Centre, phishing and its subtypes, including Smishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC), are the most prevalent forms of cyber-attacks now.
3. Maintain Access To Your Critical Assets
Keep this in mind: How many employees, when, and in what manner can access your organization's most important data?
It's time to reassess your access management procedures if you don't know the precise answers to these inquiries, especially in light of recent changes on a worldwide scale.
Prevent remote device access and ensure access control for all user types. It's crucial to protect access to your sensitive data from any place or device. Today, the security of a business depends more than ever on remote workers and employees using their own devices.
4. Passwords Should Be Handled Safely
Why is using secure password management and creating intelligent passwords important?
Privileged accounts are gold mines for cybercriminals looking to access your private information and priceless company data. A crucial component of corporate security is password management, particularly regarding privileged access (PAM).
Using specific technologies, such as password vaults and PAM solutions, is the best method to assure adequate security. This will make it easier for employees to maintain their passwords and stop unwanted individuals from accessing privileged accounts.
5. Protect Your Data
You may ensure the security of your company's data by frequently backing it up and closely monitoring any activity related to vital resources with prompt notifications and thorough reports. As a result, you can reduce the likelihood of losing, hacking, or stealing your data.
Privileged users are fully equipped to steal your sensitive data while remaining undetected.
Even if you believe your users are trustworthy and have no malevolent intentions, they nonetheless run the risk of having caused a leak or having their accounts compromised.
Utilize your privileges responsibly in four easy steps.
In other words, it's essential to oversee the users and accounts that have access to sensitive data and keep an eye on their activities while preventing threats.
6. Back Up Your Sensitive Data
By often backing up your data, you can ensure its security.
Having complete and recent backups of all your data can be a lifeline with the emergence of ransomware. One of the information security best practices that have become more important in recent years is backing up data.
After phishing, ransomware ranks second among the most common cyber-attacks in 2022, and if it continues to expand at its present rate, it will likely overtake phishing by 2023.
Here is how you can handle backups;
- Ensure thorough protection.
- Divide duties.
- Encrypt data.
- Update frequently.
- Use offline endpoints.
The frequency of ransomware assaults has doubled over the previous two years. Data is encrypted during a ransomware attack, so users cannot access it until they get a unique key in return for paying the ransom.
Having a strong backup strategy also makes you more disaster resilient.
- Use different passwords for your production environment and your backups.
- Don't rely just on online backups.
- Keep your backups on disconnected endpoints and control who has access to them.
7. Create A Hierarchical Cybersecurity Strategy
Why is a documented cybersecurity policy so important?
A written policy, first and foremost, acts as a formal manual for all cybersecurity measures implemented in your company. It provides a mechanism to impose regulations that secure business data and enables your security professionals, employees, and managers to communicate effectively.
However, because every department's workflow is different, unnecessary cybersecurity techniques and procedures might easily disrupt it.
Second, while a centralized security policy might be helpful as a general set of rules for the entire business, it shouldn't apply to every procedure in every division.
Give your departments the freedom to develop security policies based on the main policy.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are connections among numerous information security principles.
You can secure your data and credentials by following the data security best practices described above.
By combining this capability into one compact solution, you'll be able to adopt many of the above-mentioned recommended practices in 2023 and solve your security gaps.
