Six Steps to Reduce Cyber Risk

In an ever changing cyber threat landscape, it is interesting to note that a large number of issues can come from careless individuals rather than from sophisticated attackers. Issues can also arise from simple internal processes that aren’t implemented as well as they could be or internal processes that are not implemented at all. So, we should look to protect our businesses from internal threats as well as external threats.

With that in mind, here are six simple steps that you can take now to maintain and improve the security of your data and help eliminate cyber risk factors.

Secure Remote Access

With more employees working from home than ever before this means that the number of remote access points to our data have increased dramatically. You should ensure that all access points have adequate protection from cyber-attacks. This is vital to secure your infrastructure and keep it safe from hackers who want to break into networks and steal or corrupt information. A VPN or virtual private network is a great idea. In addition, it is best practice to use multi-factor authentication for remote access.

Employees should also be encouraged to secure their home networks by taking appropriate steps like changing default passwords on their Wi-Fi routers and updating firmware or applying security patches to routers and IOT devices when they become available.

Read our blog The Cyber Security Risks of Remote Working to find out what employers and employees can do to mitigate the cyber security risks of working from home.

Information Security Training

We all need to stay up to date with the constantly changing nature of cyber-attacks so investing in cyber security education and training is critical to improve the security awareness of your employees. Too often information security is seen as an issue or it falls on the shoulders of the IT department which shouldn’t be the case. Information security impacts the whole organisation; therefore it is vital that all employees understand the risks and threats they face and know how to minimise these and how to report cyber security attacks when they do occur.

Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Management

Penetration testing is becoming more important in these high-risk times. Penetration testing will highlight any potential points of entry into your systems, applications and website that can then be made secure.

All businesses should have a vulnerability management programme in place. This should identify system weaknesses and ensure these vulnerabilities should be patched in a timely manner to ensure any gaps are plugged.

Incident Management

All companies should have an incident management process for reporting information security incidents and data breaches. Incidents may be technical such as system intrusion by a hacker or incidents may be the result of human error.

Consider developing and documenting some pre planned incident response scenarios around your critical services and then testing these scenarios.

For our Incident Management consultancy services please click here.

Update Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans will ensure that you can continue to operate if the worst happens, but your plan should be updated on a regular basis to take new threats and vulnerabilities into consideration.

It’s also a great idea to at least tabletop test business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

Please click here to access our Business Continuity Management consultancy services.

Backups

Data breaches have increased massively over the last few years. It is crucial that you have plans in place to prevent the loss of critical data. Backup systems regularly and most importantly test the backups so you know they work when you need them and you’re backing up the right data.

Read our blog Top Five Backup Tips to Secure Your Data.

Conclusion

By taking these 6 simple steps we can help secure our businesses, it’s definitely not rocket science and it is an opportunity to maintain and improve the security of our systems.

Contact Romano Security Consulting today and let us help to secure your organisation.

T: 01625 315 021

E: enquiries@romanosecurityconsulting.com