You’re likely not going to often see a day where cybersecurity or cybercrime doesn’t feature in the headlines at the moment. The prevalence of cybercrime is at an all-time high and businesses are struggling to keep up with being ready and prepared to defend themselves against it. Without a proactive approach to cyberthreat prevention, you’re setting yourself up to becoming a victim. Here are some effective proactive steps you can take to limit your exposure to cyberthreats.
Assess Your Readiness
Assessing how ready your business is to protect itself from the emergent threat of cybersecurity requires a comprehensive audit on many fronts. This can be done by employing the services of a company that specializes in cyber attack solutions to conduct a full audit of your systems and people to ensure that they are equipped to deal with any cyber threats or attacks. Using the report generated by this audit should then inform your strategy to improve your readiness going forward.
Educate Your Workforce
Often the workforce is the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain, so making sure your workforce is aware of the best practices for cybersecurity safety and educated on the different ways these threats present themselves will be a valuable exercise for your business. Aim to educate your staff on preventing social engineering attempts, phishing emails, and other common attack attempts, so that you’re less likely to suffer a data breach because of a staff member revealing or leaking information they shouldn’t – or even having their system credentials compromised.
Make Two-Factor Authentication Mandatory
Two-factor authentication (also sometimes written as 2FA) is a system that requires users to authenticate twice – once with a standard username and password, and again with a live temporary code. This is done either with an authenticator or by a one-time password, delivered by text or email. This way, even if your passwords are compromised, there is another level of security on offer. You should consider making this mandatory for authentication within your business systems.
Know the Attack Vectors
Having an idea about what hackers use to gain access to your systems or bypass your security is probably one of the best ways you can plan to stop them. Even a rudimentary understanding of what is used to compromise your IT systems will assist you in planning to stop it.
Choose Effective Software
An antivirus solution is a must within your organization, but it shouldn’t stop there. You should employ the use of software built for the task of protecting and filtering malicious attempts from reaching your network workstations. This software usually runs on your firewall or forms part of your firewall and if it is a good quality product with constantly updated protection, it can go a long way to helping you mitigate even more attack attempts – and reporting on them.
As we rely more and more on technology to do business, and as it integrates more with our critical systems, the prevalence and appearance of cybercrimes and hacking attempts are only going to increase. It is essential to stay one step ahead if you’re going to mitigate this threat as much as you can.
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