Reducing Cybersecurity Threats

Technology couples both reward and risk. Technology connects companies, transforming the world into an efficient global village for organizational growth and productivity. However, this great reward has also introduced risks related to the implemented technology. Here we will read about the importance of cybersecurity to the success of a business

With the shift to cloud computing, fraudsters now have more access to conduct cyber attacks and shut down entire businesses. Cybersecurity is critical for all businesses big or small; however, not all of them prioritize cybersecurity. This has pushed them to a reactive cycle in dealing with emerging cyber security risks as threats materialize. It is prudent for organizations to lay a firm strategy on cybersecurity and oversee its implementation. This should include business resilience activities like disaster recovery and business continuity planning to cater for data security as data is the new oil in this information age.

Data security is a difficult task. Experts must tailor cybersecurity solutions to the operations and goals of your company. Collaboration with a managed cybersecurity provider can ease the journey towards a more secure organization. Examine the current state and structure of your IT infrastructure to identify any flaws. Make informed investments as part of your budget and TCO once you know what risks you are seeking to address to achieve a cyber security maturity threshold.

Financial & Reputational Losses

A data breach can cause significant damage to your company. A breach in operations could lead to financial loss and/or reputational damage.

Cybersecurity is critical for organizations in order to protect their assets and the private information of their customers. Customers’ trust is the foundation of an organization’s reputation; this trust is offered on promise to protect the customer from unauthorized access or use. Breach of trust could lead to direct financial, legal or reputational damage. A recent case of data breach that has led to financial loss has been with the giant social media platform Facebook; therefore, after a research organization was able to access personally identifiable information.

To conclude with legal frameworks taking sharper form, protecting data is crucial. Advancement in statute like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) have seen penance leading to fines that hold a percentage of a business’ annual revenue.

Data Loss

Threat actors will not hesitate to exfiltrate data as long as the opportunity exists, regardless of the nature of the business information. This could include information about employees, bank and transaction records, company planning, and client information; collectively termed personally identifiable information (PII).

If you are the victim of a cyber attack, such as ransomware, you will be unable to recover your data. Extortion tactics used to force victims to pay for their data is also not a guarantee that data will be restored to its original state. This, however, can be avoided with cyber security, particularly a secure backup and recovery solution that can get you back up and running as if nothing had happened.

Your company will be jeopardized if you do not have safeguards against such threats. That is why Cybersecurity is important to the Success of a business.

What Should Be Done to Prevent Cyber Attacks?

One of The Importance of cybersecurity to the Success of a Business is stopping cyber-attacks. People are critical in preventing cyber-attacks on your company. Therefore Cybersecurity entails more than just installing fancy technology security solutions. A big chunk of security is held by users of these solutions.

With the adoption of remote-working being a norm in post covid-times, organizations are facing higher risk of a breach with more assets being released outside the perimeter. A member of the team can be the weakest link to the organization; a recent example is the breach on uber that led to compromise of their entire IT infrastructure; this shows even with proper technology the users that are unaware are still a risk.

Password Management

If employees are using weak passwords on all their accounts, your data is at risk of being compromised. Implement a password policy in your company that encourages the use of strong passwords. Make sure they use different case-sensitive passwords for each account. also include capital and lowercase letters, special characters and digits. If you have trouble remembering passwords, password managers can aid in storing these; some premium ones check for breach in the deep web for compromised credentials.

Multiple-Factor Authentication (MFA)

“MFA” is a principle of authentication that adds additional layers of identity verification.  Traditionally authentication relied on:

• Something you know- This could be a password, PIN

Threat actors managed to beat this form of authentication and other elements, hence MFA were introduced to ensure that authentication is more reliable, and impersonation is not happening; leading to multifactor authentication principles.

Two major concepts added included:

• Something you have – token, SMS code etc.
• Something you are – Biometric information like FaceID, fingerprint etc.

This initiative sought to solve the rising threat prevalence and the susceptibility of familiar elements to compromise. It also aimed to address the human inclination to create easily predictable PINs or passwords based on familiarity.