Cyber-Security Readiness: Top 5 Things for Companies to do to improve security readiness
As we are in the midst of the digital transformation wave, many companies are embarking upon changing and digitizing their operation processes. With advanced technologies come new cyber-security threats that companies might not be aware of, without any approach or plan in place in case such threats and attacks happen.
With that said, many companies do actually have their own cyber-security defense system but are ineffective in detecting threats and protecting organizations from advanced attacks.
Why maintaining security readiness is so challenging?
Even though some form of general cyber threats still exist – and most businesses have already had a system in place to protect themselves from such common threats, new and more complicated threats are on the rise together with the introduction of new technologies, in particular mobile devices and IoT.
Consequently, companies must be aware of the new landscape in order to protect themselves.
If cybersecurity is among the chief concerns of your organization, here are a variety number of actions that your company can take in order to improve your cybersecurity readiness:
1. Provide cyber security knowledge and awareness training
It could be said that many potential cyber-attacks could be avoided in advance if companies simply have their security readiness in place. This means a layered approach to security should be adopted.
Lack of cybersecurity readiness leaves companies vulnerable to the risk of attacks and data breaches.
Nevertheless, many business organizations still often make some basics mistakes when it comes to cybersecurity preparation and compliance, approaching their IT foundation in an inefficient way leading to potential security problems, such as:
- Mismatching the operation of new and advanced applications in an outdated legacy IT environment. As a result, leaving risks exposure due to the gap in technologies.
- Along with the advance in cloud computing, many companies have seemed to overlook the risks of handing over their data to one single cloud vendor who could very well be unreliable. Where many companies do not consider extra protection of their cloud estate, one security attack could wipe out the entire data assets which very likely result in business loss.
- With the rise of mobile and remote work, many companies may find it challenging to monitor their IT network in its entirety as employees may use their own devices or access the company network remotely.
In effect, business organizations need to provide measures and training to employees to improve their security defense and create an overall healthy IT network.
However, in reality, not many companies have the in-house security experts and skills to build a robust security readiness and compliance process.
With cybersecurity threats quickly expanding in this day and age, business organizations indeed have a legitimate reason to worry about potential attacks stealing data and much other confidential business information.
2. Hire a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
A chief information security officer is the person in charge of managing and overseeing all aspects of the company‘s cyber-defense. CISO will be responsible for your organization’s cybersecurity readiness, such as establishing cybersecurity policy, drafting training and cyber risks awareness plans for employees, and formulating incident response plans among many other cybersecurity-related responsibilities.
Employing a CISO provides your organization the skilled personnel who can take over cybersecurity for your business.
It’s undeniable that cybersecurity protection is a legitimate need and employing a CISO means you’ll have someone on your team who will worry about this aspect for you.
3. Provide Cyber Security Training
Among the causes of data breaches and attacks, human error is one of the root causes that contribute to such breaches. For instance, many employees accidentally opened scamming emails and download attachments which itself is actually Trojan horses or spyware.
Here, employees are actually a critical factor that makes up the whole organization’s cybersecurity defense. And lack of training is the reason leading to such breach. Therefore, cybersecurity training and awareness should be seriously considered and deployed across organizations so that they can be equipped with the knowledge to protect themselves and businesses from future attacks.
4. Perform a Cyber Security Risk Assessment Audit
In addition to the security personnel, your organizations should also undergo a Cyber Security Audit to assess and determine your IT network defenses against potential threats and attacks. This includes checking on various aspects of your IT network infrastructure ranging from hardware conditions, software, and operating system, as well as the patches for potential vulnerabilities.
One common practice that many companies employed is to hire external cybersecurity firms to perform audits and also carry out testing (e.g. penetration testing) to check for any flaws throughout the organization’s cybersecurity system. Any potential weaknesses, once discovered, will be fixed and make the company’s defense becomes stronger and safer.
5. Have Your Cyber Security Response Plan Ready
One common problem that companies usually found themselves in is that they waited too long to respond to attacks after incidents already happened. This is because, in many organizations, executive and management teams don’t have a clear cybersecurity response plan in place to protect themselves, even after determining that an attack is going to happen.
This usually happens to companies because executives and employees don’t have a clear plan for how to proceed once they determine an attack is happening. Drafting a cyber-security response plan gives internal teams guidelines for how to proceed to quickly remediate the situation.
Additionally, your company can improve cybersecurity protection by using enterprise security protection systems as a layer for defense – which proves highly useful for the security protection of day-to-day operations across the business.
Conclusion
Along with the advancement of technology, cyber threats are also changing and evolving, staying ahead is clearly challenging. The good news is applying best practices and investing in personnel for cybersecurity could be an effective way to establish an effective defense against cyber-attack.
Hence, practicing security awareness and training is essential to protect your business from cyber-attacks. However, your organization can also hire a cybersecurity managed services provider to help your company combat and respond quickly and effectively to cyber threats.
TP&P Technology can offer the much-needed experience and expertise in cybersecurity to help our clients proactively defend and keep their valuable data safe from security threats
If cybersecurity is on top of your mind and your organization, get in touch with us today!
