Authored by Sandeep Peshkar, Senior Vice President, Arete
India has witnessed rapid digitization across businesses, with leaders increasingly investing in the latest technologies to deliver impeccable customer experience. However, organizations must realize that the same innovations empower threat actors to innovate their strategies.
The rise in cybersecurity incidents, especially post-pandemic, demonstrates threat actors' ever-evolving nature and how they are getting stronger over time and with constant technological advancements. Gartner has documented the staggering effect of such events on cybersecurity professionals. 49 percent changed jobs and 25% pursued new roles as a result.
As a result, building a robust cybersecurity infrastructure is mandatory for organizations to prevent cyber risks or at least minimize the impact of such incidents at every point possible. Leaders must focus on understanding these threats from the core, including even the minor vulnerabilities that can cause a massive data breach and eventually shatter a company's image. This article talks about five measures organizations must follow to run their businesses safely and seamlessly.
Limit access to data.
Traditionally, most employees had access to all files on their systems. The same practice is being followed by many organizations even today, making their security systems vulnerable, especially in the wake of a more connected world. Organizations must therefore limit access to critical data, such as customers' financial information, to narrow the pool of employees' chance to click on harmful links that can impact the customers and, eventually, cause irreparable loss to the business.
Know third-party vendors.
Every organization does business with an array of third-party vendors. Therefore, it is essential to know the people with whom you are conducting business. Make sure they comply with the privacy laws. Background checks for third-party vendors that are collaborating with the company must be done regularly.
Organise employee awareness training.
One of the biggest drivers of a data breach is employee negligence. It is thus crucial to conduct cybersecurity awareness programs to educate employees on what steps to take after they detect any malicious activity in the system. These programs also effectively update them about recent cybersecurity developments, whether about a new security tool or a common threat gaining traction. Organizations can also create a safety policy for employees to handle, dispose of, retrieve, and share data. Implementing small steps like these will increase cybersecurity awareness among employees and eventually reduce the possibilities of cyber risk.
Focus on compliance management.
Compliance management can help organizations identify gaps, weaknesses, and security misconfigurations. With the help of compliance tools, an organization can configure the best practices to access vulnerabilities and compliance weaknesses.
Insist on using complex passwords.
To deal with data breaches, organizations must regularly stress changing passwords. Use complex passwords, as these are difficult to decipher. This simple practice will help prevent threat actors from barging in and stealing enterprise data.
While the world will continue to evolve by adapting to innovations, leaders must understand that cyber risks are inevitable, and nobody can guarantee 100% safety. Hence, the best we can do is implement safety protocols to minimize the impact of cyber incidents and ensure that businesses can recover faster.
Collaborating with leading cyber risk management companies like Arete can go a long way in achieving this goal. They come with years of expertise in managing some of the most significant nation-state attacks on the back of their team of investigative, technical, and cyber risk management practitioners with best-in-class data and software engineers.
To conclude
Building robust cybersecurity practices while adopting data breach measures can be tedious. But with a perfect security plan and a team of experienced IT professionals, cyber threats can be managed and mitigated. The risks associated with data breaches are evolving every day, empowering threat actors to innovate their attack techniques. However, with the measures mentioned earlier in place, organizations and businesses can stay safe against the ever-evolving threat landscape.
