Cyber incidents have been on the rise since 2020 and even more so as we may expect heightened level of digital attacks as the world conditions are extremely sensitive. There are always going to be situations and events that are going to be out of our control but there are always ways to be proactive and do our best as a business to prevent becoming a victim of cyber attack and have a game plan for when we possibly have to face incidents.
Regardless of the size of your business, there are some things we can always be mindful of and implement to reduce digital vulnerabilities as much as possible. To improve your organization’s resilience and readiness for a cyber event, improving and fixing some simple cybersecurity overlooked practices could be a major influence in preventing a possible digital attack as your organization would have the know-how to reduce security risks and effectively response to attacks.
Strengthen Your Foundation – Secure Your Business
- Secure ALL your most sensitive accounts with a strong password + turn on MFA/two-factor authentication on email accounts, network or crm systems, online banking, websites you use, email system, remote log ins and back up platforms. Any system or network that has MFA available, turn it on.
- Empower everyone in the company by providing effective training and helpful reminders phishing scams and staying alert and vigilant. Employees are the first line of defense so its extremely important to train everyone to recognize malicious emails to possibly avoid getting hit with a social engineering attack such as business-email compromise.
- Constant backing-up of critical data and systems is essential when dealing with ransomware or cyberattack. Backups need to be isolated, offline and encrypted along with any back up on the cloud system so that they are out of reach of hackers. Frequently backing up important data can drastically reduce the time it takes a business to recover from a cyber attack.
- Develop a breach or incident response plan. Ironing out the details will allow the company to confidently and quickly take action. A step-by-step plan should be written out and agreed upon before facing any breach. If you have one in place, review to ensure it is still suitable for the company at its current state. Be as prepared as possible should their organization be hit by a cyber event.
- Keep all software up to date. Though, it is a chore to do so but these updates apply critical patches to prevent exposure to vulnerabilities and could possibly keep an incident at bay.
- Secure open ports and utilize a secure email gateway to protect against compromise.
- Have end point detection services to actively monitor traffic and catch vulnerabilities before they escalate and become the cause of cyber incident.
- Take an inventory of all your systems & processes. Identify and evaluate most critical systems that’s essential to run your business and types of data that’s being stored. Ensure those systems are secured and backed up.
- Having a cyber policy in the event of an attack could make the difference in the survival of your clients’ businesses. Cyber liability insurance is a specialized insurance product designed specifically with cyber exposures in mind as it also cover additional costs associated with ransomware/cyber extortion, business interruption, and digital damage and recovery along with data privacy and regulatory laws for facing data breaches and cyber attacks.
To learn more about cyber awareness training, cyber incident planning guide or cyber insurance and what cyber liability policies cover and exclude, speak to our cyber experts today. Cyber resiliency is a continuous and ever-evolving step that will constantly be a continuous process for anyone utilizing technology in today’s exponentially digital-era!
Don’t wait, mitigate!