5 Effective Strategies to Ensure the Excellence of Cybersecurity

Cybercriminals are following businesses as they are moving towards digital space. If you are still utilizing old traditional cybersecurity strategies, it’s time to level up. Cybercriminals are floating on cloud nine in this era where the whole world is accommodated with technological advancements. Malicious and vulnerable attacks are prone to damaging businesses permanently. More and more businesses are experiencing the issue of cyberattacks and data breaches, i.e., 32% in 2020 as compared to 22% in 2017.

In reality, small businesses are more prone to cyber-attacks as compared to large organizations, and this fact ensures the need for effective and accurate cybersecurity strategies to fight a strong battle against cyber risks. Businesses can invest to enhance their cybersecurity measures, but more than that,  it would be more efficient to acquire innovative and latest cybersecurity strategies.

Your needs might be dramatically different from your competitors as every firm is unique. Below are some tips and strategies that any business, no matter small or large, should consider for better security measures.

1. Sophisticated Password Creation Strategies

Believe it or not, but the major reason for the occurrence of cyber attacks is that the passwords are so simple to crack. Hackers are advancing at a rapid pace and are easily accessible to such technology that cracking an encrypted password is child’s play to them. You might have seen such stuff in movies that hackers crack one letter at a time during the process of the password by utilizing thousands of variations per word. Obviously, you cannot prevent password threats 100%, but you can make it difficult for hackers to crack them.

Here are some of the sophisticated password strategies:

• Employees should utilize such passwords that include the combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
• High authority accounts, for example, administrative accounts must be protected with more complex passwords and that should be reset every week.
• Implement consequences for employees who do not follow the mandatory password-related strategies to avoid cyberattacks. Conduct a regular audit and ensure the significance of password integrity and length among the organization’s employees.

2. Utilization of Secure Backup Plan

There exists a tactic called “cyber blackmail” which is utilized by many cyber criminals whenever they attack small businesses. Cybercriminals will hold some of the valuable data of an organization and will demand ransomware in return.

While acquiring a secure backup plan, your data must be stored in different locations. The utilization of cloud platforms that do not depend upon any hardware is the ideal solution. This will not only provide you with effective data protection from unauthorized access but also ensures that you do not fail to access your data miserably. Hence organizations must already have a backup plan to have much more leverage in this situation.

3. Education and Training of Employees

Employees of the organization should be provided with the necessary education and training regarding cybersecurity strategies. Everyone should be on the same page in order to combat cyber attacks and stay strong. The more you train your employees, the more they will be capable of protecting crucial and vulnerable data of businesses.

There are numerous methods to train employees. Organizations can develop a proper training program for their employees, hold question-answer sessions, and provide them with informative articles. You can figure that out accordingly which one is more accurate for your organization.

4. Beware of Internet Threats

Do you know that 31% of malicious cyber attacks are carried out by company insiders? Also, inadvertent actors conducted 23.% attacks. This leads us to the fact that 55% of the attacks are carried out from inside. Perhaps identity theft is the up-pacing issue these days as everything is prone to digitization.

Strengthening internal protocols is the best way possible for the protection of businesses by increasing authorization requirements, and by keeping an eye on employees.   An organization should prevent data breaches and cyber attacks even before they happen by enhancing internal protocols to develop a transparent relationship between business and customer. Also, organizations should keep themselves up to date about current cyberattack statistics and acquire security measures accordingly.

5. Implementations of Secure Communication Methods

Insecure communication within an organization's premises is the biggest threat that all organizations are currently facing. There still exists a wide range of organizations that consider choosing relatively insecure information transmission measures such as direct mail or email. Are you familiar with the fact that fax is the most secure communication method in the business world? Surprisingly this is true.

Moreover, mobile communication should also be reviewed within the organization premises. There is a dire need for the implementation of restrictions such as is it safe to take the device home, and appropriate guidelines should be incorporated for the IT department that they should wipe away all the data from the device.

Create Your Own Strategy Today

Companies are acquiring proactive approaches and helpful cybersecurity strategies to fight a strong battle against cybersecurity threats and identity frauds. They avoid reacting to every new threat, which is time-consuming yet expensive.

Below are few steps that can be followed for the development of a strategic and effective cybersecurity plan.

Step 1: The first and foremost step is to set the foundation for the security strategy. This is mandatory to answer the question “what are you going to protect?” Before you begin to develop any cybersecurity strategy, a better understanding of the organization’s risk appetite is crucial for the preparation of strategic objectives. Identify what you are required to protect legally.

Step 2: You need to understand the tread landscape once you acknowledge yourself with what you need to protect. In order to do that, you need to answer the questions: what are you selling? What is your targeted audience? What is the environment in which your company is executing operations? It’s better to have deep insight into what your competitors are going through. Lastly, determine what is the type of threat against which your businesses need to acquire security measures.

Step 3: After answering all the obligatory questions, you now need to develop a strategic plan for cybersecurity measures. Identify the current stage of your working security environment, and after that, pick a framework and establish a timeline accordingly. After the development of a suitable cybersecurity strategy, you should evaluate the maturity level of the company’s security. Perform the evaluation of your technology stack, and after that, make sure that you successfully achieve the merge of both foundational items and quick wins.

Step 4: The final step of developing your own cybersecurity strategy is the evaluation of the organization's ability regarding the plan’s execution. Ensure that the necessary work is done by organizations to deter cybercriminals. You may need to hire additional team members for the enhancement of security measures and for the execution of a cybersecurity plan.

By following the above-described steps, you can develop and implement customized and strategic cybersecurity plans accurately and efficiently.

Prepare Yourself for the Worst 

The right time to develop and implement a cybersecurity strategy is now. The number of hackers is evolving in parallel to the technological advancements in this modern era of digitization. If you are not attacked yet, there’s a high possibility that you get attacked within the next few minutes or days. Organizations are spending billions and trillion of dollars for the excellence of their cybersecurity. The same amount is spent for recovery whenever they face any attack.

Just rethink, and have a look at the above-mentioned effective strategies all organizations should acquire for the excellence of cybersecurity and how you can make your own plan to fight against cybersecurity threats.