Handling cyber vulnerabilities and concerns: Follow these 5 tips!

Cybersecurity is more important than just being compliant. Yes, keeping up with data security and privacy norms and laws is critical, but when we talk of security, we are talking of staying safe from cybercriminals. That’s because the consequences of a breach can be devastating.  While fines and penalties are very likely, and agencies will try to hold your company responsible for the incident, you also have to deal with loss of revenue, disruption in operations, and damage to brand value. 

Managing cyber vulnerabilities and concerns doesn’t have to be complicated or about big budgets. While your cybersecurity spending should increase with time, here are some basic tips that don’t need money. 

1. Limit access to data. Employees are in charge of your IT assets, but not everyone needs to have access to everything. Ensure that your company has some form of system to manage access rights. There are identity & access management suites, which are worth considering. 
2. Educate your employees. Let your employees know more on cybersecurity, and if that means getting them trained by experts, that money is worth spending, and you can do that in a budget. We strongly recommend on workforce engagement at all levels, to avoid common traps. 
3. Identify the threats. Only when you have identified the threats, you can expect to counter them with preventive and precautionary measures. Make a list of current and emerging cybersecurity concerns, like vishing & phishing scams, malware attacks and so on. 
4. Create a plan for managing incidents. While proactive cybersecurity is critical and necessary, you have to be reactive at times. In case a breach occurs, what should the management and IT teams do to reduce the damage? This is called an incident response plan, and this is a critical component of your cybersecurity policy.
5. Network segmentation and firewalls are helpful. Using network segmentation, which is about dividing resources into subnetworks, can be useful for reducing the impact of a breach, or something like a malware attack. Similarly, all networked devices, including IP cameras, personal devices used at work, must be placed behind firewalls. 

Finally, don’t forget to focus on protecting passwords. Besides creating strong passwords, it is important to ensure that passwords are saved on a password management tool, and where needed, consider extra security in form of lockout feature and multifactor authentication. There is no denying that cybersecurity needs more attention now than ever before. Take the forward step today!