Every year the volume of cybersecurity threats continues to increase. Approximately half a million new pieces of malware are detected each day. Rules for how to govern data protections are constantly evolving. This means even the most minor of security breaches can be incredibly devastating for your organization, leading to negative publicity, hefty fines, and a loss of confidence in your brand.
At Insource IT, we can help you implement a proactive approach to cybersecurity. This means understanding your organization, its systems, and user base. This article will dig into how to do that with a dedicated technology partner.
Identify and Evaluate Cybersecurity Risks
A proactive approach to cybersecurity is all about understanding, managing, and mitigating risk to your critical assets. The easiest way to get comfortable with your cybersecurity posture is to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment. Here are a few basic steps to ensure a smooth risk assessment within your organization:
- Identify and Prioritize Assets: Determine the scope of the assessment and decide which assets are valuable to attackers.
- Identify Threats: A cyberthreat is anything that could cause harm to your organization. It’s no different than a natural disaster or hardware failure.
- Identify Vulnerabilities: You should identify any vulnerabilities that could be exploited to breach security and cause harm to you or your customers.
- Analyze Controls: These are any controls that are in place to mitigate or eliminate the possibility of a cyberthreat. They should be classified as either preventative or detective.
- Calculate the Likelihood of an Attack: You should be able to determine the likelihood of a given attack considering the current control environment your organization has in place.
- Develop a Risk Assessment Report: Finally, you can develop a risk management report that supports management in deciding the level of cybersecurity measures your organization requires.
Invest in Preventative Cybersecurity Measures
There is not a single cybersecurity policy that can sufficiently address all the needs of your business. You’ll need to invest in a multi-layered cybersecurity strategy that covers many core areas of cybersecurity, including network security, cloud security, application security, Internet of Things (IoT) security, and more. To lay the foundation for a solid cybersecurity strategy, it’s important to:
- Understand the risks your organization faces on a daily basis
- Establish protective monitoring to detect and mitigate these threats
- Prepare secure data backups that keep your business up and running in the event of an attack
- Revisit your cybersecurity strategy as your organization changes and evolves over time
Never Underestimate the Power of Cybersecurity Training
A proactive approach to cybersecurity begins with awareness. Lack of proper training can leave employees vulnerable, releasing cyberattacks in your organization. Providing proper cybersecurity training could mean the difference between the success or failure of your business. The responsibility lies on the employer to ensure that employees have the knowledge they need to make responsible decisions or raise concerns. Prioritize cybersecurity training for your employees. We recommend getting executive buy-in, starting training early and often, and making the security health of your organization an ongoing, team effort.
Stop Relying Solely on Reactive Cybersecurity Measures to Protect Your Business
If your company’s current cybersecurity strategy is limited (firewalls, antivirus, ad blockers, etc), there’s a good chance that you already have a reactive cybersecurity strategy in place. Today, reactive cybersecurity measures by themselves are not enough to comprise a strong cybersecurity defense. You need to have a combination of both proactive and reactive measures in order to actively prevent cyber threats from crippling your business. For more cybersecurity solutions, including cloud security services, contact the experts at Insource IT.
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