Reduce your risk for attack with these simple steps
Why is cybersecurity important to your business? The answer seems simple, however, many companies still find themselves vulnerable to cybersecurity threats and attacks. Simply put – cybersecurity is essential to business because cybersecurity breaches cost money… lots of it.
Today, cybercrime, the act of exploiting security flaws to steal information, data, or money holds the greatest risk to your business. If a data breach does occur, organizations are forced to spend copious amounts of time and money on identifying, fixing, and recovering their stolen assets.
The damage to a company’s reputation can be even more detrimental than the financial burden alone. Cybersecurity attacks can cause existing customers to lose trust in you and your business and the reputation of inadequate cybersecurity can make it difficult to maintain current customers and attract new customers in the future.
Contrary to popular belief, your business is an active target for cybersecurity attackers regardless of your company’s size. It’s important to remember that no one is immune to an attack. By implementing these seven steps into your business practice, you can help reduce the risk of a cyberattack and will keep your company safe.
7 Steps every business should be taking to protect themselves from cybersecurity threats:
- Create an IT security strategy and follow it
- Invest in training your employees
- Use strong password managers
- Employ multi-factor authentication
- Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network)
- Stay up to date with industry cybersecurity standards
- Continuously monitor and backup your IT infrastructure and network
Create an IT security strategy and follow it
Creating an IT security strategy and actively implementing it into your business helps ensure good practice. By having strong cybersecurity measures in place, you can help ensure that your business’s data and systems are safe and secure against data breaches and other cyberattacks and will ensure that you’re in compliance with industry standards.
Included in your IT security strategy, your business should create a disaster recovery plan, a thorough, well thought out plan that your business will implement in the event a cyberattack occurs. This recovery plan will get your business back up and running after an attack.
Invest in training your employees
Your IT team is going to be at the forefront of the efforts in protecting your business’s data, however, your IT team is not solely responsible for managing your cybersecurity. A security breach will affect your entire business, so investing in training for all your employees can help immensely.
Making sure that leadership and employees understand the importance of cybersecurity and that all employees are prepared for a security breach are simple steps and if done properly, will ensure that your company will properly respond to the attack. Numerous research studies have found that employees who receive consistent cybersecurity awareness training are five times more likely to identify and avoid clicking on malicious links. Keeping up with current threats and maintaining continuous training is necessary to be effective.
Similarly, to check the success of your business’s training initiatives, your business should periodically “test” your employees. Phishing emails, phone calls, and/or text messages are a wonderful tool your business could use to test if your employees could still fall prey to a cyberattack.
Use strong password managers
Most organizations assume that their employees are using strong passwords however that’s not always the case. You should focus on creating a strong password policy and use a password management tool like LastPass for solving the “I can’t remember dozens of different passwords” problem.
Employ multi-factor authentication
Using a multi-factor verification service like Duo will help ensure that attackers can’t access your company’s network even if they manage to steal an employee’s password. These multi-factor authentication tools will force users to prove their identity before access is granted to the device, network, and system.
Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network)
Using a virtual private network (VPN) can protect your business from hackers. Using algorithms, a VPN scrambles your business’s information making it unreadable to anyone who might want to eavesdrop on your internet connection. A VPN sets up a secure tunnel between two devices over the internet and encrypts your information making it virtually impossible to identify your employees’ location, track down your business’s network, and can’t gain access to your valuable data.
Stay up to date with industry cybersecurity standards
While technological advances provide many benefits to your business, they can also benefit those who seek the valuable data you have. It is vital that your business keeps up to date with the latest cybersecurity measures and industry data regulations so you can detect and respond to malicious activities quickly and effectively. While staying compliant and up to date with industry standards will protect your business from legal consequences, it will help you immensely in building trust within your organization as well as the public you serve.
Continuously monitor and backup your IT infrastructure and network
The IT field is vast and new vulnerabilities and attacks are rapidly evolving. Your business should continuously perform vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to help you test your entire network. These assessments will help with identifying vulnerabilities and fixing bugs present in your network which can be exploited by attackers.
Similarly, your business should routinely perform backups of its data. Having a copy of your business’s backup data (either offline, air-gapped, or immutable) will be incredibly useful in ensuring successful data recovery in the event of a ransomware attack.
Conclusion
With advances in technology come vulnerabilities to your business’s security. Cybersecurity threats are becoming more common and sophisticated than ever before. It’s vital that your business prepares for and acts proactively in protecting your data. By implementing these seven steps into your business practices, you can be protected against cyberattacks and help maintain the reputation of your business.
At Affinity Energy, we pride ourselves on operating safely, efficiently, and reliably. Implementing these seven steps into our organization’s daily routine keeps our company, employees, and clients safe from ever-present cyber threats. We know how detrimental a security breach or overthrown control of a computer controlled system can be to your business, contact us today to get cyber support for your SCADA and PLC systems.