Cybersecurity is essential to conducting business safely and securely. As cybercriminals improve and expand their methods, you must do the same with your business’s cybersecurity policies and practices. Here are some of the best practices you should follow to improve your cybersecurity.
1. Invest in Employee Cybersecurity Training And Resources
The best cybersecurity tools in the world mean nothing if your employees aren’t equipped to use them properly. Before you can put your cybersecurity infrastructure to work, you must be sure your employees are aware of your policy, the tools you use and how they’re expected to use them. Invest in training programs and update them regularly. Write your policy down and make it available for employees to access and review when they need to. Notify your employees whenever you update or change your policy.
2. Put Policies And Tools in Place To Prevent Unauthorized Access
Prevention is key to good cybersecurity. One of the most useful prevention methods is mitigating unauthorized access to your business and there are many ways you can do this. Invest in physical security tools and policies to keep intruders out. Put cybersecurity controls in place to ensure that only authorized users can access your network or certain parts of your network. For example, an important AWS security best practice is to prevent unauthorized access as much as possible. Policies such as disallowing public access to accounts and software and encrypting data help companies that use AWS to do this.
3. Remember To Back up Your Data And Update Software Regularly
Cybersecurity measures always require improvements. There may be holes that developers missed when first writing the code or advancements may need to be made to stay ahead of cybercriminals. This means you should regularly back up your software. You can schedule regular check-ins to update manually or set up automatic updates. You should also back up your data. This helps keep your business’s and customer’s data safe and provides you with up-to-date data if your business is ever subject to a ransomware attack.
4. Stay Up-to-date on Your Physical Security
Cybersecurity is mainly based on the internet, but there is still a physical component. Cyber criminals may benefit just as much from stealing computing devices as they do from hacking them or infiltrating a business’s network. They can also physically infiltrate your property to perform social engineering or physically search for authentication and login information. Make sure your physical security is regularly audited and updated to prevent such breaches. When you train your employees, bring awareness to the dangers of leaving their devices unattended, writing down login information and providing sensitive information to people they aren’t certain are allowed access to that information.
5. Introduce Additional Login Tools And Security Measures
To successfully improve or maintain your security, you need to look at each individual piece of your network and system, not just the whole. Depending on the size of your business, the amount of data you work with and the types of tools you use, you may need to provide different employees with different amounts, levels and types of access. Study each part of your network and determine who should have access and how to grant access safely. For example, a software engineer may need access to one or more development environments, but he or she won’t need direct access to customer data, so he or she shouldn’t have the authorization credentials to access it. Additional login tools include multi factor authentication, random password generation and password managers. Additional security measures include network segmentation and microsegmentation.
Some best practices can be implemented no matter what industry your business is in, while others may be specific to an industry, a market, a business type or a location. For example, online businesses need to invest less in physical security and should have powerful cybersecurity, while brick-and-mortar businesses with online presences should implement a mix of both.
