Maintaining and bolstering one’s cybersecurity strategy and infrastructure is critical for any business operating in the digital age. This becomes more important as business processes are migrated to digital platforms. The ease, flexibility, and convenience such platforms provide comes at the cost of unique security vulnerabilities that must be addressed, particularly if a business wants to take advantage of these benefits. Thus, cybersecurity remains a major priority for most modern organizations.
Unfortunately, however, cybersecurity remains an endeavor similar to what many refer to as the “arms race” between rival nations. Businesses invest in techniques and technological breakthroughs to bolster their protection, and in response, hackers invest their time and efforts into parsing these for exploitable weaknesses. These breakthroughs in cybercrime, in turn, define the direction for new innovations in security, and the cycle goes on without end. The result is that effective cybersecurity requires constant, vigilant attention and investment.
Online Computers has compiled the following list of strategies that allows organizations stay on top of the latest threats.
1. An adequate cybersecurity budget
The first and most important truth an organization needs to accept is that cybersecurity is a considerable and constant expenditure. As such, businesses need to set aside an appropriate budget for cybersecurity that’s commensurate to the level of activity they choose to conduct online.
This budget can be allocated toward building an internal team or outsourcing to a third-party cybersecurity expert. Each of these options has its share of benefits, and which of the two is more economical depends on an organization’s specific circumstances. What is true is that because cybersecurity is an arms race, this investment will be continuous. This budget needs to cover not only the manpower needed to conduct security, but investments in up-to-date hardware and software licenses.
2. Rigorous testing
Because the world of cybercrime is ever-evolving, repeated security tests are necessary to ensure that an organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure is equipped to deal with the latest and nastiest threats. It simply isn’t enough that a system be cleared as sufficient once and to rest easy on the assumption that this assessment will remain true. Hacking methods and malware are always changing and exploiting new vulnerabilities in systems.
Thus, regular audits need to be conducted and designed to reflect the latest advances in cybercrime methods and the current landscape. These audits should include vulnerability scans to test the strength of current security measures and cyberattack simulations to assess employee security awareness. They should also extend beyond the hardware, software, and policies in place to include the human element, as social engineering is a major aspect of cybercrime. This refers to methods that take advantage of human psychology and exploit the human components of a system.
3. Data analysis
Tests alone aren’t enough to ensure a robust security system. While they can be used to verify whether the system works against known threats, they would be unable to predict and respond to unforeseen ones.
The data gathered from audits, as well as a company’s day-to-day operations, present an opportunity in this regard. With sufficient scrutiny and analytical capability, this data can reveal a lot about vulnerabilities that may not have been thought of, and thus not tested for, and of likely methods of attack.
This data can also paint a picture about the “normal” state of a system, enabling one to be cognizant of deviations that might be a sign of trouble. In this regard, artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly being leveraged to detect anomalous behavior that may indicate a breach.
Bolstering your organization’s cybersecurity is a considerable, but worthwhile, investment. Contact Online Computers now for all the latest and greatest in cybersecurity systems.
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