* Partner Post

Rarely a day goes by without a reminder in the headlines on making cybersecurity a top priority. Be it ransomware or data breaches, there are constant state-of-the-art attacks targeted at and launched on small businesses and large corporations alike. Of course, there's a huge difference between knowing what you need to do to improve security and how to implement it.

With attackers getting more inventive and cyber threats evolving every day, it's critical to properly define cyber security and identify what constitutes good practice and some cyber essentials are outlined herein.

Implementing Cybersecurity

Its essence might seem quite simple but in practice, security can be exceptionally complex. Cybersecurity involves eliminating or reducing the risks attached to your business and making them visible to allow the business to accept them and continue with its work. In order to achieve this efficiently and effectively, cybersecurity experts should be able to understand it not solely from an IT point of view but from the business' broader perspective.

For a start, there's need to identify business specific needs, map and categorize them to determine the risks that need to be dealt with and the order in which to go about it. Once this has been established, a security plan should be set describing how the changes will be executed. The following are some of the best cybersecurity practices you can adopt for your business:

Application Whitelisting

Most companies are only aware of a few of the custom cloud applications in use in their businesses. Best practice is to initiate application whitelisting to ensure that only the selected software applications can run on computers and that the others are stopped as part of the malware prevention strategy. There are advanced app management tools you can utilize to accomplish this though they should be bolstered with some form of restricting administrative privileges in order to prevent unauthorized software from running. A combination of technology tools and policies works perfectly.

Multifactor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication goes beyond user passwords. This can be accomplished by adding other stronger elements such as a software certificate, PIN, passphrase, physical token and/or biometric data as is with fingerprint scans.

Restricting Administrative Privileges

Restricting the administrative privileges means that only personnel who need them will access them. Thus, the business can proactively get a higher level of security to its systems. This works hand in hand with multifactor authentication.

Application and OS Patch Management

Patching operating systems and applications thoroughly and consistently when they are made available

ensures that vulnerabilities that target computers are effectively eliminated. This implies implementing IT processes that will ensure apps and operating systems on all computers are frequently and regularly updated.

User Application Hardening

Part of safeguarding the network might include user application hardening by blocking web ads, untrusted Java code and web browser access to Adobe Flash Player or uninstalling it. This could make next-generation firewalls more efficient.

Implementation of Next Generation Firewalls

NGFWs are network security systems capable of detecting and blocking sophisticated attacks by enforcing security policies at the protocol, port and application level. These firewalls are responsible for application awareness, reputation-based malware detection, deep-packet inspection, SSH and SSL inspection, quality of service functionality, virtual private networks, URL blocking, network address translation and packet filtering.

Implementation of a SIEM Solution

While this may seem a little overkill for smaller businesses, at a certain point in the growth of the network, a business definitely has to implement a SIEM solution for response and continuous incident detection. With this set of integrated technologies, real-time collection and the historical analysis of security events across a number of sources is made easier.

Backup and Recovery

Important data backup is critical to guard against ransomware and any other malware that could delete, corrupt or encrypt easily accessible data proactively and should be done on a daily basis. Of course daily back up is essential, but there need to be a backup disconnected from the network that's periodically tested to ensure that data is always accessible when needed. You must get Cyber Essentials now to secure such factors.

Penetration Testing

Create practices and policies for conducting regular vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to identify and secure the possible points of failure outside and/or within the network.

Disabling Untrusted Microsoft Office Macros

Consider disabling untrusted macros by configuring setting and blocking them from the internet and allowing only vetted macros. This should eliminate ingress attack and might work perfectly with patch management.

Verdict

That said, there may not be a surefire way to effectively eliminate cyber threat but with protocols and

employee training, the human element of guarding against threat intrusion can be effectively achieved. This should take into account avoiding email phishing as well as deice and password management. Making cybersecurity part of a business' daily culture can help organizations stop some of the most common intrusions and can easily adapt to the education imposed on their staff on emerging threats and how they can guard against them.