Of late, the transition towards digitization by organizations of all sizes and nature are giving rise to a variety of cybercrimes. As per reports, cybercrime is forecasted to cost the world over $10 trillion annually by 2025. In the wake of the situation, it only becomes too crucial for the organizations to up their cybersecurity game and foster a society and corporate environment that has the necessary awareness to deal with the threats.
With threat actors becoming more creative, here is what organizations can do to mitigate or prevent an adverse situation. Let’s look at the 5 best practices to safeguard your organization against cyberattacks.
1. Encrypt crucial information – As a rule of thumb, you will have to ensure turning on your network encryption and encrypting data while storing or sharing over different online platforms. Not only this reduces the risk of theft but also renders the data useless if it falls into the wrong hands.
Data encryption is widely considered as the most efficient fix for data breaches. This is perhaps the reason why full-disk encryption software is included in mostly all operating systems today. Even while using a public network, you can enable network encryption via router settings or alternatively by installing a VPN solution on your device.
2. Usage of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – In order to prevent attackers from accessing any private information, it’s wise to enable multi-factor authentication. So, even after getting their hands on a compromised password, the attackers can’t get access to any private/confidential information as multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires one to provide two or more proofs of their identity before they can access the account.
Another noteworthy fact is that a majority of the attacks at company networks happen from within the company. Therefore, access to crucial data or information should be granted only to few trusted employees. Such a practise also leads to better management and control.
At CyFrica 2021 (Africa’s premier cybersecurity conference), Ravi Baldev, the manager for Systems Engineering at Dell Technologies – DPS Division, while enlightening on the same topic had expressed, “You got to know your customer but you got to know your team as well. It just takes one rogue individual or an unhappy admin to go into the air gap and destroy the golden copies.”
3. Cyber Insurance – In today’s world, just like any other insurance policy it is pivotal for organizations to invest in cyber insurance. A cyber-attack can make organizations pay a much heavier toll than just repairing databases, boosting security or replacing hardware. Cyber liability insurance cover will not only transfer some of risk to the insurer but will also aid your organization with the costs of recovering from an attack.
4. Keep a tab on updates – For a robust security framework, it is essential to regularly check the system updates. Developers are constantly trying to give us the edge by sharing these updates post-working on the security related flaws that can be exploited by the hackers through malware. Without these updates your network and data might become more vulnerable to the cyber criminals.
5. Awareness and training – With the hackers constantly evolving, the entire organization as a whole should prepare in advance for enabling a constant vigilance and should not leave the whole process to the IT department.
Awareness and training regarding security issues should therefore be a continuous process, starting from the day of induction. As every single employee regardless of the department plays an important role in an organization to keep security in check.
Considering the ground realties where employees might at some point in time use their personal devices for work, it is important to train them to use both their personal and work devices in a way that minimizes the risk of being hacked.
For staying up to date with the latest developments in Cybersecurity and availing a learning opportunity like no other, register now for the 2nd edition PhilSec happening at Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila, Philippines on 12 – 13 July 2022.
The event will feature the leading thought leaders, cybersecurity experts and top organisations from across the region who will share the latest objective insights, use cases, strategic advice, case studies and a lot more. For more information, visit the website: https://philsecsummit.com/