To manage effective cyber security processes and solutions for your business, your entire company needs to be involved. Every member of your organisation has their part to play in protecting your business from cybercrimes and cyber-attacks. Businesses not employing a company-wide, all-encompassing mindset to their cyber security, are much more likely to be a victim of a successful cyber-attack.
Saying that, the cyber security measures needed will differ from business to business, but there is a set of core principles that all companies should manage effectively in order to protect their data, their systems, and their infrastructure from a cyber-attack.
Let’s explore the most common cyber security mistakes that businesses make, and how you can address them:
Your business is a target for cyber criminals. Every business is a target for cyber criminals.
Don’t assume that your company won’t be a victim of cybercrime. Your business is not too small, too large, too well-known, too inconsequential, too niche, too boring, too savvy or not turning over enough to be of interest to a cybercriminal. Victims of crippling cybercrimes include huge international businesses, and lone home workers.
Cyber criminals are indiscriminate when it comes to a target, you just have to be vulnerable.
You may feel that your business is safe as many of the cybercrimes reported are about theft of credit card data or personally identifiable information, but these are just the ‘juicier’ stories. The reality is that cyber criminals are continually undertaking attacks on every sector, in all verticals, on companies of all sizes, with a view to penetrate networks and steal or capture information and assets.
Every single business, school or establishment, has information of value.
Consider your company data to be of high value to a cybercriminal, no matter what your industry is – and protect yourself accordingly.
Prevention is ALWAYS better than cure. Make your cyber security a priority and work with cyber security experts to assess and address any weakness in your systems, processes, and cyber defences. Train your staff to recognise a cyber threat, employ disaster recovery solutions and undertake, and test regular backups.
Let’s consider the consequences, just how could these cyber-attack scenarios impact your business?
You’ve suffered a cyber-attack and all your systems, apps and programmes have been infected meaning that you have no access to anything.
A hacker or cybercriminal has managed to gain access to your network. They’ve implanted code that’s delivering digital attacks to physically destroy real assets, including computers, printers and servers.
A piece of code has infected your servers and every PC, laptop or device connected to the network is being monitored, all password and keystrokes are being tracked, or perhaps every computer screen in the company is displaying a screen demanding a ransom to release your data.
Should any of these scenarios occur…
Now we have an idea of the impact of a cyber-attack, lets investigate what practices you have in place…
Does your business have an assigned employee, employees, internal department, or external resource to manage your cyber security? A CIO for example, or an internal IT resource or team. Or do you work with an external cyber security expert or an IT provider? Who is responsible for your cyber security?
In truth, along with your cyber security resource, everyone else in the business is responsible. No matter who the buck lies with, it’s everyone’s job to maintain great cyber hygiene. Therefore, it’s important that everyone is trained to spot phishing emails and ransomware, that they’ve been provided with the knowledge to understand how to protect systems, and know to not use external devises or drives that have not been previously sanctioned by your cyber team or expert. Businesses need to understand that everyone in the company and with access to the network, is responsible for its safety, and that means that everyone needs to know how to protect the company from cyber-crime.
Your business needs to protect personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, trade secrets, research and development and everything else that you don’t want compromised. The cost of suffering a cyber-attack not only impacts the bottom line, the business financial position, and operations, but it impacts your reputation. The stigma of suffering an attack alone has greatly impacted many businesses; often the fines imposed following a breach can put them out of business. You may or may not know that it’s a legal requirement to report any cyber-attack.
With clear policies and processes in place you’ll strengthen your business, empower your people, and reassure your clients and partners.
Your business cyber security needs to be ingrained into your company culture; everyone is responsible for the safety of it. Ensure that all your teams know their role in safeguarding your data and your business, and what to look for to ensure a cyber-attack is spotted, long before it can do any damage. Test and train your staff regularly and have in place disaster recovery and backup solutions, and test those regularly. Implement an easily accessible Cyber Attack Plan and ensure all staff know how to recognise something suspicious and how to report it. It’s better to have many reports that turn out to be nothing, than none about something that turns into an attack.
Via your network.
Preventing every attack is almost impossible, as the threat landscape changes daily. Networks and business systems are vast with too many potential opportunities providing access. But should your business fail to understand and manage the architecture of your network, to keep software updated, or action regular patching; you’ll be leaving the door open for a cyber-attack to breach and paralyse your system with little-to-no resistance.
Your IT team must implement strong protocols to ensure all software is regularly updated. Critical data must be managed, protected and well referenced. Your business needs a thorough grasp on the scale of your network, an understanding of any weak or vulnerable points, and how the network is segmented. Ensure effective network hygiene practices are in place and are well managed will greatly improve your cyber security.
Should your business still be solely reliant on anti-virus technologies you’re more at risk than ever. Cyber criminals in 2022 are highly sophisticated, the threat landscape evolves daily, and more and more businesses are suffering at the hands of cyber criminals. Relying on anti-virus technologies alone will not protect you from persistent and advanced attacks.
In truth, cyber criminals are able to evolve their attack vectors and cyber threats faster than security companies can update their solutions. Cyber attackers are increasingly employing malware-free invasion strategies, and believe it or not, less than 40 percent of attacks today involve malware. Coupled with the cybercrime increase of 600% due to the Covid-19 pandemic, simply employing anti-virus software is not a viable solution that your businesses should be relying on.
Without doubt, anti-virus software, if kept up-to-date, is still a key pillar in your cyber defence. However, purely replying on a responsive cyber security measure, which is what anti-virus is, isn’t a safe solution. Anti-virus only offers some protection from currently known threats, it’s not a solid stand-alone cyber security solution. To be better protected, your business needs to implement solutions that are more pragmatic, proactive, and practical.
Should your busines fail to monitor your business endpoints, and are concerned with only your network, you’re leaving your systems and data incredibly vulnerable. Cyber criminals are incredibly clever, many regularly target networks, cloud environments and internal systems rather than your laptops, computers, and users. Being solely ‘perimeter-focussed’ for cyber prevention, is simply unrealistic. In 2022, this tactic puts your systems at threat of being a victim of “silent failure.”, this means that should access be gained to your network via an endpoint, a cybercriminal won’t be detected as there are no solutions in place to discover or monitor their access or activity.
Endpoint visibility is critical to ensure that your business is benefitting from both reactive security, and proactive tracking and detection. With endpoint monitoring security technologies, your cyber security is further reinforced. By implementing an end point interrogation solution that searches for uncharacteristic behaviour throughout your business, you’ll be better able to identify and mitigate attacks.
Ensuring effective cyber security is about layering your solutions. There is no ‘single’ solution to the many threat vectors that your business could face. With an effective layering of your cyber security solutions and practices, you’ll have a far better chance of surviving an attack.
Cyber criminals and their practices and threats change continuously, meaning that it’s so important for businesses to keep up. Working with a cyber security partner will better ensure effective, and up to date solutions.
As managed IT providers, the CHS Network cyber security experts work closely with the most impactful cyber security solution providers, meaning we can advise on and deliver solutions that will better protect your data, systems, staff and business.
Ask us how we can help better secure your business.
