Cybersecurity Best Practices That Should Be Implemented by Every Company.
Employee Cyber Security Awareness has emerged as one of the primary concerns that a business must address in the modern, digital age. Instilling basic cyber security skills in employees has frequently been the critical differentiator between companies that are compromised and those that are not.
The WannaCry ransomware assault in 2017 is an example of this; the global cybercrime “epidemic” targeted firms that had not installed critical Windows system updates.
If global cybersecurity awareness levels were higher and more organizations around the world followed better cyber security practices, the number of attacks and the damage they can cause today might be much lower.
In this blog, we will discuss some basic cyber security best practices that businesses should implement in order to protect themselves from cybercrime and the data of their customers, clients, and partners. This list is merely indicative and only scratches the surface of what you can do to improve your company’s cyber resilience.
There are seven cyber security best practices that must be followed.
1. Examine Encryption Software: It’s critical to evaluate your present encryption procedures and stay current with new technologies. With cyber thieves becoming more sophisticated every day and the number of people attempting to steal information for monetary gain increasing, it is critical to examine and ensure that your encryption software is up to date.
2. Examine Vendor Security: Because your data is exchanged between your firm and theirs, it’s critical to examine third-party security. Your business can be as secure as you want it to be, but if the people who receive and handle your data don’t have the same level of security, your data and your customers’ sensitive information are still at risk.
3. Invest in Your IT Team: Your IT team is your company’s first line of defense and offense. Your IT staff members must be trained and kept up to date on the newest information on cyber-attacks and potential problems. If you want to ensure that you have a sound cybersecurity posture, you should meet with your IT team, understand their issues, and invest in the finest possible tools for them.
4. Examine and comprehend your backup procedures: Examine and comprehend how you backup your data on a regular basis. Backing up your data is a critical business process, but it’s also one of the most vital items on a ransomware readiness checklist. Because ransomware attackers wouldn’t be able to limit your access to your own data if your backup technologies and processes are secure, you’ve already won half the battle.
5. Examine Authentication Processes: The method of that authentication occurs in a corporation should always be documented, and the way that employees utilize particular systems should have checks and balances in place to guarantee that no bad faith is used. Authentication procedures should be as secure as possible, and a record of who has what access within a company should be kept. Users with privileged access should be closely monitored and properly trained.
6. Keep emphasizing the need for strong passwords: As a security-conscious company, you’ve probably already stressed the importance of secure passwords to your employees. However, this is one part of good cybersecurity hygiene that must be reinforced on a regular basis.
Cyber hackers often just need one leaked password to launch big-scale attacks on huge corporations. Everyone should be required to utilize multi-factor authentication when logging into their systems or corporate accounts. This gives another essential layer of protection.
7. Employee Training: Finally, cybersecurity training is essential not only for regular employees but also for IT teams and management. It’s critical to ensure that your entire organization is well-versed in cyber security awareness and incident response.
When it comes to cybersecurity awareness training, each employee must be informed of their specific tasks and responsibilities in terms of cyber security. They must realize the necessity of not clicking on harmful links, strange emails, or pop-ups that appear to be malicious. The majority of identity thefts and ransomware assaults are caused by these and other phishing techniques.
All key stakeholders must be taught on the incident response strategy on a regular basis, with cyber crisis tabletop testing sessions following. These courses imitate a ransomware attack (or any other cyber strike), forcing participants to think and behave as if they were in a crisis.
Conclusion
All of the above measures, as well as many other key factors that must be examined on a regular basis, should be included in regular cybersecurity hygiene activities. It is critical to establish a security culture within the organization to ensure that individuals genuinely care about keeping the company’s data safe and secure and that they understand their role in this purpose.
About the Author: Ashwini Kamble works at Hacktechmedia as a technical writer and project organizer. She spends her free time reading and going for long walks on the beach.