Cyber Security Awareness amongst employees has emerged as one of the primary concerns that a business must focus on in the modern, digital age. Imparting basic skills needed for cyber security to employees has often been the critical differentiator between companies that get compromised and those that don’t. The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack is a case in point – the global cybercrime “epidemic” managed to attack those businesses that had not made necessary updates to their Windows systems.
Had the global cybersecurity awareness levels been higher and if more organizations worldwide were following better cyber security practices, perhaps the number of attacks and the damage they’re able to cause today would be much lesser. In this blog, we highlight some basic cyber security best practices that businesses should follow to protect themselves from cybercrime and protect the data of their customers, clients, and partners. This list is just indicative and only scratches the surface regarding what you can do to ensure greater cyber resilience for your business.
7 Cyber Security Best Practices To Follow
- Review Encryption Software: It is essential to review your current encryption processes and keep updated with the latest technology. With cybercriminals getting more advanced every day and the number of people trying to steal information for monetary gains growing, it is crucial to review your encryption software and ensure it is up to scratch.
- Review Vendor Security: It is crucial to review the third-party security because your data gets transferred between your company and theirs. Your company can be as secure as you want it to be. Still, if the people who receive and handle your data do not have the same level of security, your data and the sensitive information of your customers continue to be at risk.
- Invest in the IT Team: As a company, your IT team is your first line of both defense and offense. The people who make up your IT team need to be trained and updated with the latest information on what to look out for in terms of cyber-attacks and potential issues. Having meetings with your IT team, understanding their concerns, and investing in the best possible resources for them are all great ideas if you want to ensure that you have an excellent cybersecurity posture.
- Understand your Backups: Check and understand how you backup your data regularly. Backing up your information is an essential operation, crucial to business functioning, but it is also one of the critical components of a ransomware readiness checklist. If your backup technologies are secure and your backup processes are foolproof, that’s half the battle won against ransomware attackers, as they won’t be able to block your access to your data.
- Review Authentication Processes: The way authentication occurs in a business should always be recorded. The way employees use specific systems should have checks and balances to ensure that there is no use in bad faith. Authentication processes should be as watertight as possible, and it is essential to have a record of who has what access within a business. In addition, privileged access users should be monitored and trained with greater diligence.
- Continue emphasizing strong passwords: As a security-focused business, you’ve probably already highlighted the importance of using strong passwords for your staff. But this is one aspect of good cybersecurity hygiene that needs continuous reiteration.
- Staff Training: Finally, cybersecurity training is vital for general employees, IT teams, and everyone in management. It is crucial to ensure that your entire company is well trained in cyber security awareness and cyber incident response training.
In terms of cybersecurity awareness training, every employee must understand their roles and responsibilities regarding cyber security. They must understand the importance of not opening malicious links, suspicious emails, or pop-ups that look untrustworthy. These and other phishing tactics lead to most identity thefts and ransomware attacks.
All key stakeholders must also be regularly trained on the incident response plan, and cyber crisis tabletop testing workshops must follow such training. These workshops simulate a ransomware attack (or any cyber-attack) environment, and every participant is forced to think and act as they would in times of crisis.
All of the above steps should be a part of regular cybersecurity hygiene practices and many other critical aspects that need to be looked into regularly. It is imperative to create a culture of security within the company to ensure that people care about keeping its data safe and secure. They understand the role they have to play in this mission.
About the Author: Sara Sparrow is a technical writer and project coordinator at Boom essays review. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and taking long walks on the beach.
