5 Steps To Improve Your Cyber Security Posture

Malicious actors are always looking for low-hanging fruit. In a post-pandemic world, that image may represent companies still operating with a pre-COVID cyber security posture. While many companies raced to adopt cloud solutions, the corresponding changes to security haven’t necessarily been pursued with as much urgency.

There are steps you can take to improve your cyber security posture and ensure that your company is pursuing the right strategies to protect data and systems:

Begin With Awareness and Training: While malicious actors are a problem, employees contribute significantly to cyber security issues too, whether intentional or not. Invest in training sessions that help employees understand the risk involved and the dollars attached to that risk so they will be more likely to buy into practices like multi-factor authentication and preventing shadow IT.

Examine and Implement Best Practices: Improving security is an ongoing process, and there are items that you can place on your to-do list to begin addressing the gaps and vulnerabilities in your systems:

• Teach your team to recognize phishing and ransomware attacks and have a user-friendly process in place for reporting them.
• Establish app-based multi-factor authentication for all devices and users.
• Implement an effective disaster recovery plan that includes cloud-based backup.
• Push for executive-level support for a coordinated updating and patching schedule, particularly for virtual private networks (VPNs) and firewalls.

Pursue Balance: Using various security tools may offer more protection, but an overly complex cyber security posture can create more vulnerabilities when it becomes unmanageable. The right security stack will include endpoint protection, backup and recovery, multi-factor authentication, zero-trust network access, and active response 24/7 monitoring.

Invest in Cloud Backup: If your company does experience a breach, you can minimize downtime if your backups are automated and stored in the cloud. A cloud-based backup helps ensure you can quickly resume operations, even if a ransomware attack means a malicious actor is holding your data hostage.

Assume the Worst: Response time is crucial, but you won’t be effective at launching your response if you operate from the perspective that it’s unlikely you'll need it. The opposite is true; companies are vastly changing their cyber security posture from a prevention/eliminate risk perspective to one that assumes a breach and is ready with steps to remove the threat and mitigate the damage. The heart of a quick response time is monitoring and automated response because you no longer have hours or days to initiate your disaster recovery. It needs to happen in minutes.

For more information about improving your cyber security posture with these and other best practices, contact us at ITBroker.com. We can help you identify your vulnerabilities and leverage the best solutions to eliminate gaps in your security policy.