Cyber Security is an essential component of any company’s infrastructure. No matter the size, scope or industry of a business, it is essential that they answer two fundamental questions:
What is Cyber Security?
How to create a successful Cyber Security strategy?
This article will provide answers to both these questions. Regardless of size, scope, or industry, every company that wants to survive must answer two fundamental questions:
How to create a successful Cyber Security strategy?
This article will answer both of these questions.
A Definition of Cyber Security
Cybersecurity is a series of protocols that a company or an individual follows to enure information maintains its “ICA” – integrity, confidentiality and availability. You will be able to recover quickly if you have the correct security. You will be less vulnerable to external hacker attacks. You’ll be protected from sophisticated criminals and’script kids’ who can execute APTs (also known as advanced persistent threat). Business continuity is crucial to a company’s survival. You can keep your audience engaged by recovering quickly from threats. If you have a plan, problems are less likely to become issues that affect customers. Disaster recovery is the process of maintaining your data and infrastructure integrity after a catastrophe. These threats are ultimately classified by the level of cybersecurity currently implemented in your digital infrastructure.
The Importance of Cybersecurity
Why should security be at the forefront every company’s agenda? Why should senior management, including non-tech C-suite decision-makers, concern themselves with cybersecurity?There is one undeniable reason:
The digital world in which we do business is vulnerable and open to attack.Digitization brings with it endless opportunities for innovation. The digital world is still a long way from being a self-regulating, autonomous ecosystem. All systems within a company should adhere to the most recent high-security standards. The employees must be educated in the basics of cyber-security. This is especially
true of non-tech employees. Everyone should be able to recognize a phishing message and know how to quarantine the email, notifying both the internal and external authorities. You can count on the controls being tested, even if they are the most robust. The solution is to practice good ‘cyber hygiene’, or the fundamental security tasks that will keep out most threats. The solution is having good ‘cyber hygiene’, or practicing the fundamental security tasks that will keep the majority of threats out.
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Challenges of Cyber Security
The best cybersecurity strategies go well beyond the basics mentioned above. Cyber Security Challenges
The best cybersecurity strategies go beyond the basics mentioned above. As a business grows, cybersecurity becomes even more challenging. For example, the ‘attack surface’ of a Fortune 1000 company is much larger than a small to medium-sized business.
Expanded Attack Opportunities for Hackers
Another challenge of cybersecurity is dealing with the increasing overlap between the physical and virtual worlds of information exchange. The Internet of Things and BYOD policies allow criminals to gain access to cyber-physical system as driverless cars, self-regulated devices and other autonomous devices become more common. This includes cars, factories and even the smart toaster, fridge, or refrigerator in your home. It could also include a medical pacemaker. In the future, infiltrating one of these systems may mean infiltrating them all.
Complicated Regulation General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)The regulatory environment is also complicating cybersecurity, especially the political discussions around consumer privacy. Recently, the European Union implemented a framework called that creates more obstacles for businesses to do business without being fined. Security mandates in regulatory agreements such as the GDPR force all companies to adhere to a higher standard. This can lead to more problems for startups and SMBs. Long-term, a virtual environment will likely be safer for all involved. However, there is a balance that must be achieved between protecting the consumer and offering that same consumer the choice of new business.
Lack Of IT Talent
A critical challenge of cybersecurity is the lack of qualified professionals to do the job. Many people at the lower end of the spectrum have generic skills. Rare are security experts who can protect businesses from sophisticated hackers. They are in high demand because they know how to do things. They charge high fees for their services, which most small businesses cannot afford. Only the biggest and richest companies in the world can afford these elite-level services, another hurdle that SMBs have to overcome to compete online.
Types of Cyber Security
Cybersecurity covers is a wide subject matter. We will discuss the main types of cybersecurity below. A holistic strategy includes all of these aspects and overlooks none.
Critical Infrastructure
The critical infrastructure of the world functions as a cyber-physical hybrid.
Everything from hospitals to water purification plants to the electricity grid are now plugged into the online world and digitized. This super-structure offers us many benefits. When a company connects to the physical and digital worlds, it first plugs into critical infrastructure. When a company first connects itself to the physical and then digital world, the first infrastructure it plugs itself into is the critical infrastructure.
Company decision-makers must include this perspective into their plan on how attacks might affect their functionality. If a company does not have a contingency plan, it should create one immediately.
Network Security
The security of a network protects a company against unauthorized access and intrusions. Proper security over a network can also find and destroy internal threats to the system as well.
Effective implementation of network security often requires some compromise and trade-offs. Extra logins, for example, can help protect company information from unauthorised access but also slow down productivity. One of the significant problems of network security is that it uses a lot of company resources.
Network security tools generate huge amounts of data. Due to the volume of data produced, even if the network security system detects a threat, the threat may be overlooked. But it’s far from a perfect system.
Cloud Security
Cloud security is a set of policies, controls, and procedures combined with technologies that work together to protect data, infrastructure, and cloud-based systems. But it’s far from a perfect system.
Cloud Security
Cloud security is a set of policies, controls, and procedures, combined with technologies that work together to protect data, infrastructure, and cloud-based systems.
They are specific security measures which are configured to protect a customer’s privacy, guard data, support regulatory compliance, and also sets authentication rules for devices and users. It can be anything from filtering data, authenticating users, or configuring cloud security to meet specific client needs. It’s mobile since it’s configured and managed in one location, and frees up businesses to focus resources on other security needs.Application Security
Many of the best modern hackers find web application security the weakest point to attack an organization.
It’s hard to keep up with them due to the proliferation of new relationships with apps companies have which are not yet properly vetted and secured. It is difficult to find good coding for application security. Security for the Internet of Things (IoT).
The IoT, or internet of things, is a cyber-physical system that helps online systems communicate. IoT is a network of interconnected computing devices that can be defined by mechanical and digital machines or objects, animals, or people who are given unique identifiers and have become digitized. It also refers to the distinct ability of this system to transfer data over a network without needing human-to-human or human-to-computer interactions.
IoT will only become more critical to business as time goes on. Internet of Things is a new way to connect neighborhoods, and even neighborhoods with critical infrastructure. If we’re not careful, in a few short years a hacker could open up a refrigerator and use it to exploit a victim or shut off the electricity for an entire town. IoT devices are often shipped insecure to consumers today. There are many devices that have no patching for security either, which makes them prime targets for botnets.
Developing a Cyber Security Strategy
Every strategy should be custom-designed. It is not the same for every company. It’s different for every entity based on their specific needs and vulnerabilities.
However, there are some overarching themes that you can take into account regardless of your company size, scope, or industry.
Understanding risks to critical business operations
Cybersecurity is continually becoming more complex. The organization must develop a “security vision” of what cybersecurity is to them. This includes generating an acceptable level of risk and prioritizing areas to target for the majority of security investments.
Integrating the strategy across departments
A good security strategy must work across all the security measures that a company already has in place. Companies should intervene smartly in crucial areas to close off backdoors and improve overall security.
Deter the threats on the inside
Many of the backdoors and vulnerabilities that doom a company to cyber victimhood begin from an internal problem. Every cybersecurity package should include an internal monitoring component to stop insiders using their access for malicious purposes. Protective monitoring also helps a company to differentiate between insider attacks that are purposeful or accidental.
Plan for breaches ahead of time
Understand that hackers are always one step ahead of the curve in security. Your defenses will eventually be compromised, no matter how strong they are. Prepare for the worst, rather than waiting for it to happen. Boost your disaster recovery and business continuity metrics so that when something does happen, you can return to normal functionality as quickly as possible.
With the basics of cybersecurity covered, should a company now feel relaxed with their new insights into protections? Not at all. Cybersecurity is about being ever vigilant in an ecosystem that is constantly changing. Cybersecurity is about being constantly vigilant in a digital ecosystem that is always changing. The solutions of today may not be the best for tomorrow. Hackers will have figured out something else by then, and they will be at your front door with even more powerful executions.
- Here is a cybersecurity checklist to get you started:
- Put Policies and Procedures in Place
- Ensure Gateway Security
- Have End Point Security
- Implement Identity and Access Management
- Implement Multi-Factor Authentication
- Get Mobile Protection, Secure Remote Access, and Virtual Private Networks
- Have Wireless Network Security
- Back up and Disaster Recovery
Provide Employee Security Awareness Training
Reduce Your Cybersecurity Risk
It is imperative that you use the above best practices and tips as a point of departure to ensure that your business is moving in the correct direction. This can be the difference between your business’s life and death. You can save yourself millions of dollars in legal fees associated with ecommerce security threats. Do not allow your customers’ trust in you to be compromised or threatened. You need to do just that by investing in smart cybersecurity solutions today.
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