With many employees now working from home for the first time, businesses around the world are trying to prevent themselves from a cybersecurity crisis. Even the biggest tech companies have scary vulnerabilities to cybersecurity threats that can put a lot of customer or user data at risk.
The recent Zoombombing cases, for instance, showed that some of the technology we’re using for work-from-home today are still in their early years and are not fully tested to prevent cybersecurity threats.
If you’re running a distributed workforce, you might get a few insights on how to improve your small business cybersecurity plan from the tips we’re about to share.
In a connected world, experts say Data is the new currency. Data is what hackers are after; whether it’s your credit card information or your employee’s financial or health records, these data are valuable for them.
And if your business handles a lot of customer data in your day-to-day operations, it’s important to ensure that your employees understand the value of it the same way you do.
The best way to prevent hacking is to stay informed. The biggest data breaches in history were a result of stolen identities or credentials. You may want to consider conducting cybersecurity awareness training regularly in your company to keep your employees updated about proper cyber hygiene, possible threats, how to detect them, how to prevent them, and what to do in a case of a data breach.
Aside from improving their personal cybersecurity, increasing cybersecurity awareness also means providing them the resources to stay safer and secure online. There are a lot of resources for employee awareness training such as the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) that offer online learning content on many topics about information technology and cybersecurity.
With so many tools to use and passwords to remember, your employees are probably reusing their login credentials a lot. Having only one password for all your tools is a disaster waiting to happen. Writing passwords on paper? Also not a good idea. And that’s why password managers are here.
Password management tools like LastPass, LogMeOnce, and Dashlane helps you generate UNIQUE, better, and stronger passwords for each tool you use with the convenience of having to memorize only one master password.
And with secured app integration, they can auto-fill your credentials every time you login. Talk about safety and convenience!
In relation to the previous item, some password management tools also offer multi-factor authentication. LastPass for example requires biometrics and contextual factors to protect your account.
Network Vulnerabilities are weaknesses or loopholes in your system, software, hardware, or organizational process that can be exploited by cybersecurity threats and result in a security breach. There are different types of network vulnerabilities, some of the common examples are software bugs in outdated software, misconfigured firewalls, malware, and social engineering.
Security testing services such as vulnerability assessments allow organizations to assess the risks associated with their weaknesses. Below are a few important vulnerability assessment scans:
Focuses on Wi-Fi networks and the possible attack in the wireless network infrastructure. As your employees are working from home, you also need to remind them to only use secured and private wireless networks for work.
Similar to wireless network scans, network scanning provides a quick snapshot of vulnerabilities and analyses network infrastructure from the perspective of a hacker trying to break into the network. It recognizes available network services, operating systems in use, identifying CHAM (common hacker attack methods), among many others.
Database scans use specialized tools that identify weaknesses in database applications.
These types of scans use specialized software that performs functional testing and analyzes the security of web applications you’ve installed in your website. It looks for outdated applications, themes, plugins, etc.
The Zero Trust Network Architecture is a security model that fixates on the idea that organizations should not automatically trust anyone (or anything) from inside or outside their network to prevent data breaches.
Zero Trust relies heavily on internal policies and systems in place that segments and controls who, what, where, and when someone connects. Which ultimately means, giving users, devices, and applications the least amount of access to do their job.
A few examples of Zero Trust technologies are multi-factor authentication, Identity and Access Management systems (IAM), and encryption among many others.
Implementing a Zero Trust infrastructure is more relevant and convenient now since companies are moving to a cloud environment.
Identity and Access Management Systems (IAM) help prevent data breaches by limiting access to sensitive data. An IAM system provides you both control and visibility over who (or what) gets to access data within your organization.
Aside from creating user identities, IAM lets you assign a user’s privileges of access and level of authorization, meaning they can’t change or edit information in your database unless they have the authorization to do so.
Preventing cybersecurity threats in the new normal is a multi-phase and multi-year process. The systems and technologies used in the information technology sector are new but are evolving fast to meet the standards.
If you need expert help in setting up more secure cloud systems or creating an IAM strategy to mitigate online attacks, Codvo.ai is here to help you.
Schedule a consultation with us today and help us help you stay one step ahead in cybersecurity from 2020 and beyond.
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