How To Start Securing Your Digital Business
The importance of digital assets in businesses has increased with the new digital age. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this even more prominent since many companies have had to work remotely. No matter how small or big, all businesses have digital assets and sensitive data that they need to protect. When there is no digital security strategy in place to safeguard it, this data is shockingly simple to steal.
Let’s look into ways to start securing your digital business so that you don’t have any surprises along the way.
Forms of online dangers
Cyber risks are always evolving. Attack strategies and tactics are always getting more advanced. If you want to protect your business from these attacks, knowing what you need to protect yourself from is essential.
Malware
Invading software known as malware is created specifically to harm and incapacitate devices and systems. Malware is used for a variety of reasons. These reasons can be to make money from your company, hinder your company’s capacity to do tasks, make a political statement, or simply because they can. Malware that is frequently encountered includes worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, and ransomware.
The internet and emails are the two most typical entry points for malware. In other words, you are exposed whenever you are online. Malware can be detected through many methods, but the most popular is to scan your device for dangerous applications or files.
DDoS attack
DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks are currently one of the main issues in internet security. It is a malicious effort to stop a server, service, or network’s regular traffic by saturating the target or the area’s infrastructure with a torrent of Internet traffic. DDoS attacks are successful because they use several hacked systems during that process.
An abrupt slowdown or unavailability of a website or service is the most evident sign of a DDoS attack. However, since several factors, including a real increase in traffic, might result in performance concerns, more research is often needed.
Spam & phishing
Cybercriminals use a variety of email-based tactics to take advantage of people and steal sensitive and personal information. Spam and phishing are the two most popular ones of these tactics.
Spam is unsolicited email, text, or social media communication. These messages are quite obvious, and opening or responding to them might have negative effects. Phishing is when an attacker sends an email pretending to be from a reliable, trustworthy source. You are being enticed by the message to divulge private information.
While both spam and phishing may be dangerous annoyances that fill inboxes, only phishing seeks to steal login information and other critical data. Spam is mostly a technique used to market products by sending unsolicited emails to large databases of recipients. Spamming is irritating, but phishing, which seeks to deceive a user into disclosing critical information, is even more harmful.
Corporate account takeover
Corporate account takeover (CATO) focuses especially on user credentials belonging to businesses. It takes place when a hacker learns how to get access to an employee account. While acting as the employee during CATO, hackers may carry out illegal financial transfers, theft and resale of intellectual property, as well as broad social engineering within the company.
Digital business security best practices
Promote secure password practices
Most people find it hard to create strong passwords. Even if they do create a strong password, many people use the same one for many accounts. Every account you have that uses the same login information becomes vulnerable if one of your accounts is compromised or has its information exposed.
You can utilize password managers to create and safely save passwords for all of your online services. You only need to create one secure password to access the remainder. Make sure to keep that password in digital form only.
Back up your data
One of the greatest methods to protect your digital business assets from a cyberattack is by backing up your data. Every corporation, no matter how big or small needs a safe archive of its most important business data. With a successful data backup policy, you can recover data and continue operations with little disruption to staff and clients.
Whether it’s data you’ve gathered from customers or vital information for your company, having a backup can help you deal with a data breach, convince clients that their data is safe, and guarantee audit compliance.
Use multi-factor authentication
Attacks using credentials are considerably more complex now. These attacks rely on traditional credentials, such as simple usernames and passwords. Implementing multi-factor authentication is the best strategy going forward for boosting access security. MFA results in significant improvements to the authentication process. A username and password, which can be stolen through phishing or other malicious methods, are no longer the only knowledge-based components used in the authentication process with MFA.
Embrace Zero Trust
One fundamental tenet of Zero Trust security is that you shouldn’t assume that anybody or anything has your permission to access your data – whether they are connected from within or outside of your business. Implementing Zero Trust entails a variety of technologies, rules, and procedures. These enable you to effectively counter the highly technical methods attackers are employing to obtain sensitive data.
With Zero Trust getting more and more popular, there are a lot of companies that offer Zero Trust solutions. Since each solution comes with a different package, we would advise you to choose one depending on your company’s needs. Checking out NordLayer can be a good starting place as they are one of the most advanced cybersecurity companies out there.
Final words
Cybersecurity has become essential in the current day. There is little question that any digital organization, no matter how big or small, will be vulnerable to cyberattacks if necessary precautions are not taken in the wake of high-profile data breaches.
You can make yourself more familiar with the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape and follow the best practices mentioned in this article. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so make sure to embrace cybersecurity as a mindset.
How To Start Securing Your Digital Business
The importance of digital assets in businesses has increased with the new digital age. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this even more prominent since many companies have had to work remotely. No matter how small or big, all businesses have digital assets and sensitive data that they need to protect. When there is no digital security strategy in place to safeguard it, this data is shockingly simple to steal.
Let’s look into ways to start securing your digital business so that you don’t have any surprises along the way.
Forms of online dangers
Cyber risks are always evolving. Attack strategies and tactics are always getting more advanced. If you want to protect your business from these attacks, knowing what you need to protect yourself from is essential.
Malware
Invading software known as malware is created specifically to harm and incapacitate devices and systems. Malware is used for a variety of reasons. These reasons can be to make money from your company, hinder your company’s capacity to do tasks, make a political statement, or simply because they can. Malware that is frequently encountered includes worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, and ransomware.
The internet and emails are the two most typical entry points for malware. In other words, you are exposed whenever you are online. Malware can be detected through many methods, but the most popular is to scan your device for dangerous applications or files.
DDoS attack
DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks are currently one of the main issues in internet security. It is a malicious effort to stop a server, service, or network’s regular traffic by saturating the target or the area’s infrastructure with a torrent of Internet traffic. DDoS attacks are successful because they use several hacked systems during that process.
An abrupt slowdown or unavailability of a website or service is the most evident sign of a DDoS attack. However, since several factors, including a real increase in traffic, might result in performance concerns, more research is often needed.
Spam & phishing
Cybercriminals use a variety of email-based tactics to take advantage of people and steal sensitive and personal information. Spam and phishing are the two most popular ones of these tactics.
Spam is unsolicited email, text, or social media communication. These messages are quite obvious, and opening or responding to them might have negative effects. Phishing is when an attacker sends an email pretending to be from a reliable, trustworthy source. You are being enticed by the message to divulge private information.
While both spam and phishing may be dangerous annoyances that fill inboxes, only phishing seeks to steal login information and other critical data. Spam is mostly a technique used to market products by sending unsolicited emails to large databases of recipients. Spamming is irritating, but phishing, which seeks to deceive a user into disclosing critical information, is even more harmful.
Corporate account takeover
Corporate account takeover (CATO) focuses especially on user credentials belonging to businesses. It takes place when a hacker learns how to get access to an employee account. While acting as the employee during CATO, hackers may carry out illegal financial transfers, theft and resale of intellectual property, as well as broad social engineering within the company.
Digital business security best practices
Promote secure password practices
Most people find it hard to create strong passwords. Even if they do create a strong password, many people use the same one for many accounts. Every account you have that uses the same login information becomes vulnerable if one of your accounts is compromised or has its information exposed.
You can utilize password managers to create and safely save passwords for all of your online services. You only need to create one secure password to access the remainder. Make sure to keep that password in digital form only.
Back up your data
One of the greatest methods to protect your digital business assets from a cyberattack is by backing up your data. Every corporation, no matter how big or small needs a safe archive of its most important business data. With a successful data backup policy, you can recover data and continue operations with little disruption to staff and clients.
Whether it’s data you’ve gathered from customers or vital information for your company, having a backup can help you deal with a data breach, convince clients that their data is safe, and guarantee audit compliance.
Use multi-factor authentication
Attacks using credentials are considerably more complex now. These attacks rely on traditional credentials, such as simple usernames and passwords. Implementing multi-factor authentication is the best strategy going forward for boosting access security. MFA results in significant improvements to the authentication process. A username and password, which can be stolen through phishing or other malicious methods, are no longer the only knowledge-based components used in the authentication process with MFA.
Embrace Zero Trust
One fundamental tenet of Zero Trust security is that you shouldn’t assume that anybody or anything has your permission to access your data – whether they are connected from within or outside of your business. Implementing Zero Trust entails a variety of technologies, rules, and procedures. These enable you to effectively counter the highly technical methods attackers are employing to obtain sensitive data.
With Zero Trust getting more and more popular, there are a lot of companies that offer Zero Trust solutions. Since each solution comes with a different package, we would advise you to choose one depending on your company’s needs. Checking out NordLayer can be a good starting place as they are one of the most advanced cybersecurity companies out there.
Final words
Cybersecurity has become essential in the current day. There is little question that any digital organization, no matter how big or small, will be vulnerable to cyberattacks if necessary precautions are not taken in the wake of high-profile data breaches.
You can make yourself more familiar with the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape and follow the best practices mentioned in this article. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so make sure to embrace cybersecurity as a mindset.
