Cybersecurity continues to be one of the biggest business expenses of the 21st century. It’s estimated that cybercrime costs businesses over 8.4 trillion US dollars in 2022. It’s estimated that there is a new cyber attack conducted every 39 seconds on the Internet. As companies continue to operate online it’s becoming increasingly for businesses to invest in cybersecurity best practices as a way to protect customer data, meet compliance regulations and reduce financial and reputational damage. In this article, we’re going to discuss the 14 best cybersecurity practices to prevent cyber attacks against businesses.
In this Guide:
What are the Four Cybersecurity Objectives?
Confidentiality
Confidentiality of data means preventing unauthorized users from accessing that information. For example, let’s say your company has a trade secret that is used in the creation of its unique product. For the business to keep its competitive advantage it’s important that the trade secret remains a secret from everyone except those that are authorized to read. As a cybersecurity best practice data should always to categorized based on its sensitivity and then accessed needs to be restricted to users that are authorized to view that information.Integrity
Integrity of data means ensuring that data is only modified by those that are authorized to so. In order to prevent fraud, business errors or other mistakes it’s important to have controls around your data that prevents if from being modified by unauthorized users. A common example of this is user information. In order to make sure all customers are treated fairly, it’s important that there information be protected from unauthorized alteration.Availability
Availability means ensuring that all company resources are accessible by it’s intended users whenever it is needed. A simply example of this is a company website, it’s important for the benefit of the company that your website has high uptime so that users can find your business and engage in commerce. As part of your organization’s security operations it’s your job to protect these assets from undue downtime.Non-Repudiation
The last of our four cybersecurity objectives is non-repudiation, this simply means that any action that takes on your systems should be traceable back to an individual and that individual should not be able to deny that they took that action. This is important for ensuring that there is proper accountability across the organization and for auditing purposes as well. These four areas together outline the main goals of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy.What Should You Do in Case of a Cyber Security Breach?
Cybersecurity Best Practices and Tips
Now that we have outlined the main goals of organizational cybersecurity, we can discuss some of the cybersecurity best practices and tips that will help you to reach those goals. Implementing cybersecurity across an organization is difficult and requires the implementation of multiple controls. This is often referred to as defense in depth, having multiple layers of security to protect any system or resource. Keep this in mind as you read this list, as many of these controls work together in order to create a secure environment:1.) Work with your C-level Executives and Board of Directors
It is critical to work closely with your organization’s C-level executives and board of directors to ensure that security is a top priority across all departments. The success of any cybersecurity initiative hinges on the support and commitment of upper management, as security measures must be integrated throughout the organization in order to be effective.
With cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and pervasive, it is vital that upper management recognizes the importance of implementing robust security measures to protect the organization’s critical assets. Cybersecurity efforts must not be seen as an isolated function but as an integral part of the overall business strategy. This requires a collaborative approach that involves working closely with key decision-makers across all departments, including software development, IT, and Human Resources, among others.
By enlisting the support of upper management, you can create a culture of security throughout the organization, where everyone understands the importance of safeguarding data and protecting against cyber threats. Your senior leadership can also help to establish policies and procedures that support a comprehensive cybersecurity framework, as well as allocate the necessary resources and budget to fund these initiatives.
Working with C-level executives and the board of directors can also help you to gain greater visibility into the organization’s risk management processes, as well as identify potential areas of vulnerability that may require additional attention. This can help you to develop more targeted and effective security measures that are tailored to the organization’s specific needs and risks.
2.) Analyze Your Current Cybersecurity Posture
Conducting a thorough evaluation of your security measures can help you identify potential vulnerabilities and gaps that may exist within your existing infrastructure. This enables you to take a proactive approach in making improvements that can help safeguard sensitive data and prevent malicious actors from gaining unauthorized access to your systems.
To evaluate your current cybersecurity posture, it is important to assess all of your organization’s security controls, including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and antivirus software, among others. By examining the effectiveness of these controls, you can gain a better understanding of how well your organization is protected against cyber threats. Additionally, it is crucial to assess your data IT assets, including sensitive information, such as customer data and intellectual property. By analyzing these assets, you can identify potential areas of weakness that may require additional protection.
Through this process, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of your organization’s overall security posture. Armed with this knowledge, you can then develop and implement strategies that address the identified gaps, fortify your security controls, and further strengthen your data IT assets. By taking this proactive approach, you can better protect your organization from cyber threats and help prevent data breaches from occurring.
3.) Conduct Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees
The human element of business is considered it’s weakest element and is one of the major causes of data breaches. Hackers routinely try to exploit unaware users using cyber attacks called phishing attacks. These are attacks that attempt to manipulate or trick users into performing actions that will lead to data breach, leak sensitive data or give the attacker access to your organization’s computer network. This is typically down by embedding a malicious link into the email and tricking a user into going to that address or by convincing the user to download malware that is disguised as a legitimate attachment. To prevent this you should give all of your employees cybersecurity awareness training during the hiring process and once annually to improve employee awareness of cybersecurity threats.
Common Cybersecurity Issues Your Employees Should Know
Pop-ups, unknown emails, and links: One of the biggest issues in cybersecurity is users clicking on unsafe links, pops and opening emails from unknown recipients. Good cybersecurity practices for preventing this is to implement technical controls for controlling what sites users can navigate too, filtering out potentially phishing emails, and blocking pop-ups on the user’s browser.
Weak Passwords: Many companies have a weak password policy that allows users to reuse the same password, or create passwords that aren’t complex enough to prevent a dedicated and patient attacker. Strong passwords are the first line of defense for your user accounts. All your passwords should conform to a password policy that specifics a level of complexity that will protect your accounts. For privileged users, you should enable multi-factor authentication. This will add an extra layer of protection for privileged users and make it difficult for a hacker to gain access to privileged access in your environment. Lastly, to automate some of these steps you can mandate the use of a password manager, these remember users’ passwords and can automatically create long, complex, and strong passwords for the user.
Wifi Security: If your company uses a work-from-home model it’s important that you mandate the user of a virtual private network (VPN) for your employees. Unlike when they are on your corporate network, a home network or an unknown network like the library or an internet cafe can is not safe. Hackers can eavesdrop on any electronic communications sent on that network and steal confidential information.
Poor Patch Management: Over 60% of data breaches are caused by vulnerabilities that already have a patch available. To maintain a secure environment it’s important that recent software security upgrades are applied in a timely manner. By keeping your software up to date you significantly reduce your chances of a security breach.
Regular virus monitoring: It’s important that all company systems and mobile devices have anti-virus installed. For the most part, any modern operating system (OS) such as windows comes with antivirus pre-installed but you need to make sure that its setting are fined tuned to be as secure as possible and also enable firewall protection. You should also lock these settings so that your firewall software and antivirus settings can only be changed by an administrator and not the end user.
5.) Implement Zero Trust Cybersecurity Paradigm
Introduce multi-factor authentication
One of the first steps to implementing zero trust is implementing multi-factor authentication across the organization. This is critical for ensuring secure access to the company network and resources. This is a great tool to prevent unauthorized users from getting access to user accounts.
Validate Devices
In addition to authenticating users, an important part of a zero-trust model is to validate all devices that are connecting to your network and your company resources. Keeping track of your devices via their IP or MAC address and regulating access accordingly significant reduces risk and protect your company’s valuable assets.
Minimize Data Access
The zero trust model embodies the principle of least privilege, meaning that users should only be granted access to resources (data) that is needed for their job and nothing more. Also, users should be consistently authenticated and validated to ensure that the correct user is being given access at all times. This is important for keeping data safe from data leakage and unauthorized disclosure.
Use Micro-Segmented Data Storage
Micro-segmented data storage is a network security technique that divides a data center into logically segments. Each segment can be isolated and protected by it’s own set of security controls. This helps to ensure that each piece of sensitive data is protected by the correct amount of security.
6.) Adopt Suitable Technology for Zero Trust Principles
Secure access service edge (SASE)
This is a relatively new technology that allows you to deliver security controls and wide area network as a cloud computing service directly to the source of communication rather than a data center. This allows you to securely connect users, systems, endpoints and applications anywhere in the world.Zero trust network access (ZTNA)
This is a security solution that provides secure remote access to a business’s applications, data, and services based on previously defined access control policies. This is a key element of a zero trust architecture.Secure web gateway (SWG)
This is a cloud network delivery service that sits between users and the internet. It evaluates user requests and ensure that malicious applications and websites are made inaccessible to end users.Software-defined perimeter (SDP) Firewall
A software-defined perimeter (SDP) is a way to hide Internet-connected infrastructure so that external parties and attackers cannot see it. This can apply to resources hosted on-premise or in the cloud. The objective of an SDP approach is to base the network perimeter on software rather than hardware. Using a firewall to protect these resources from being seen by outside parties limits the company’s overall exposure and the chance of a data breach.Cybersecurity Best Practices for Testing
7.) Conduct API security testing
Insecure APIs are a significant risk to data security. Hackers can use insecure APIs to access sensitive information and breach company networks. It’s important to test all company APIs to ensure that have any vulnerabilities that would allow unauthorized third parties to access sensitive documents or the company network. Security testing of APIs should include assessments for common vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, broken authentication, and authorization protocols, insufficient logging and monitoring, and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. If any vulnerabilities are detected through security testing, organizations must act quickly to make the necessary changes to their APIs. This includes patching up holes in the system and implementing stronger authentication protocols. It is also important to use encryption, tokenization, and other security measures such as rate limiting to protect against malicious actors. Organizations should have a clear policy in place that outlines the proper process for securely designing and deploying APIs. This includes making sure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information, setting up secure logging and monitoring protocols, and implementing adequate authentication measures. Finally, it is essential to continuously monitor the security of a company’s APIs in order to detect any potential vulnerabilities or malicious activity. Regular testing and maintenance can help organizations stay one step ahead of hackers and protect their sensitive data from unauthorized access.8.) Employ White Hat Hackers
White hat hackers are ethical security professionals who use their knowledge and expertise to simulate cyber attacks against an organization’s computer systems. By doing so, they can identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses that could be exploited by malicious actors.
Regularly conducting tests with experienced white hat hackers can provide valuable insights into the types of customer and client information that may be at risk, as well as the potential cyber threats that your company may be exposed to. This allows organizations to proactively address any security gaps and implement necessary measures to mitigate risks.
With the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats, it is critical that businesses take a proactive approach to their security. Employing the services of white hat hackers can help organizations stay ahead of potential attacks, and ensure that customer and client information is kept safe and secure. By identifying vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by malicious actors, businesses can avoid costly data breaches and reputational damage.
Penetration testing and ethical hacking services can be provided on an ongoing basis, or as part of a one-off security audit. At Oppos, our team of certified security professionals has a wealth of experience in ethical hacking and penetration testing. We can help your organization identify any potential vulnerabilities and provide you with the necessary tools to keep your data safe from malicious actors.
9.) Implement Audit Trails in Your Digital Operations
Having audit trails allows you to see how were able to gain access to company resources. It also allows you to detect malicious behavior inside your network that indicates that cyber threats have made it past your external controls. The ability to have accurate audit trails is essential for one of the cybersecurity best practices mentioned above “repudiation” and it’s invaluable for keeping track of what is going on in your environment.
10.) Back-Up Critical Data
You could backup your company’s data on a regular basis to ensure that the potential for data loss is kept to a minimum. You should backup critical corporate data at least daily and you should keep a copy of your data backups offsite as part of your security practices. Furthermore, you should test your ability to recover data from those backups at least once per year.
With data being the lifeblood of any organization, the consequences of data loss can be devastating, and can result in lost productivity, reputation damage, and financial loss.
To minimize the risk of data loss, it’s essential that you backup critical corporate data on a regular basis, and at a minimum of once a day. This ensures that if a system failure, cyber attack, or natural disaster occurs, you can quickly recover your data and resume operations without experiencing significant downtime.
In addition to daily backups, it’s also crucial that you keep a copy of your data backups offsite, in case of a disaster at your primary location. This helps ensure that you have access to your data even if your primary location is inaccessible, and can significantly reduce the impact of a data loss incident.
But backing up your data and sensitive information is not enough on its own, you should also test your ability to recover data from those backups at least once per year. This is essential to ensure that your backup and recovery processes are functioning correctly, and that you can restore your data effectively in the event of an incident.
While it’s easy to get complacent and assume that a data loss incident will never happen to your organization, the reality is that it’s not a question of if, but when. By taking a proactive approach to backup and recovery, you can significantly reduce the impact of a data loss incident and protect your organization’s valuable data assets.
11.) Monitor Third-party Vendors
While outsourcing certain operations can lead to significant benefits, it can also introduce significant security risks and vulnerabilities that can impact your organization.
It’s essential to monitor your third-party vendors consistently to minimize these risks and vulnerabilities. When working with third-party vendors, you need to evaluate the potential risks they introduce to your environment, including data breaches, attacks, and other security incidents. This evaluation should be an ongoing process, including the initial assessment before onboarding the vendor, ongoing monitoring of their activities, and regular audits.
One of the most effective ways to monitor third-party vendors is to use third-party security systems. These systems are designed to address security concerns within your environment, and they can help you identify any potential security threats and vulnerabilities introduced by your vendors. Third-party security systems can help you detect any suspicious behavior, identify potential security risks, and respond to any incidents that may occur.
It’s also crucial to ensure that they comply with your organization’s security policies and procedures. This includes ensuring that they have adequate security controls in place, adhering to your security guidelines, and regularly updating their software and systems.
At Oppos, we provide Federal Government Assessments wherein a specialized team of security professionals will assess third-party vendors to identify any potential weaknesses in their systems and processes. Our assessments are designed to help you make informed decisions when it comes to selecting a vendor, as well as ensuring that the vendor is compliant with your organization’s security policies and procedures.
12.) Use a Secure File-sharing Solution to Encrypt Data
Encryption is a fundamental aspect of a zero-trust model, and it plays a critical role in maintaining the confidentiality of your data.
Encrypting your data ensures that it remains protected from unauthorized access, theft, or breaches, both when it is at rest and when it is in transit. This is particularly important in today’s world, where data breaches are a common occurrence and can lead to severe consequences, including financial losses, legal issues, and damage to your organization’s reputation.
To safeguard your data, you should choose a secure file-sharing solution that uses strong encryption methods to protect your files. This ensures that even if a cybercriminal intercepts your data, they will not be able to read or access it. Additionally, a good file-sharing solution will also provide features such as access controls, audit trails, and multi-factor authentication, which add an extra layer of security to your data.
13.) Use a VPN to Privatize your Connections
A Virtual Private Network is a good way to make sure that your users are securely connected to network resources. VPNs help to prevent eavesdropping from hackers on your electronic communications and should be considered essential in any environment where users are required to connect company resources.
It is especially important when accessing company resources from public Wi-Fi networks, which are known to be prime targets for hackers seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in network security. By using a VPN, you can protect your sensitive data from potential breaches and cyber-attacks.
Moreover, VPNs help to ensure that your online activities remain private, shielding you from potential surveillance or tracking by your internet service provider or any other third party. With the increased use of online services and cloud-based platforms, it is essential to protect your company’s confidential information from unauthorized access, which can lead to financial loss, legal repercussions, and reputational damage.
14.) Implement Think Before You Click Policy
Cyber attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated than ever before, and no organization is immune. That’s why it’s crucial to establish your company’s cybersecurity policies and implement a comprehensive security awareness program that covers all aspects of online safety, including the “Think Before You Click” policy.
This policy is an essential component of any organization’s security awareness program, as it empowers users to recognize and avoid potential threats before they become major security incidents. As cybercriminals continue to employ increasingly sophisticated tactics, such as phishing attacks, malware-laden links, and social engineering schemes, your employees must remain vigilant and cautious.
The “Think Before You Click” policy is an effective way to raise awareness about potential threats and equip your employees with the knowledge they need to protect themselves and the organization from cyber threats. By training your employees to think carefully before they click on suspicious links, open pop-up windows in web browsers, or navigate to suspicious websites, you can significantly reduce the risk of a successful cyber attack.
To make this policy effective, it should be included as part of your formal security policies that all employees are required to read during the onboarding process. Additionally, it’s essential to reinforce this policy regularly through security awareness training sessions and simulated phishing exercises. By doing so, you can help ensure that your employees remain vigilant and informed about the latest threats and best practices.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity best practices are a group of guiding principles that can be used to implement cybersecurity across your organization effectively. One of the best frameworks for doing so is the zero trust framework, which is a model where all users whether internal or external are required to authenticate and be continuously validated to access network resources.
At Oppos Inc. Cybersecurity Compliance and Assessment, we help ensure our clients are properly implementing cybersecurity best practices and using security measures that are aligned with organizational objectives. We provide a comprehensive range of services, including risk assessment, policy development, incident response planning, and technical security testing. Our team of experts has the knowledge and experience to help you protect your assets from malicious hackers and attackers. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your organization stay secure.
Data Breach FAQs
The 5C’s of cyber security are change, compliance, cost, continuity, and coverage.
- Change: This your organization’s ability to adapt to the ever changing business environment
- Compliance: Companies must demonstrate an ability to comply with various business regulations based on their industries and geographical location. This includes both cyber and physical security.
- Cost: A good cybersecurity program seeks to be as cost-effective as possible while still meeting all of its security requirements for the organization.
- Continuity: As part of your business information security strategy you must have a means of ensuring business continuity during potential disasters.
- Coverage: This is the capability of your company’s information security operations to expand as the business grows and ensures proper coverage across your IT department and infrastructure.
There is no single most important cybersecurity best practice, each is important to the overall security of the business. However, we had to suggest one to start with a good patch management program is one of the best ways to reduce vulnerabilities across your organization.
The four key issues in data and network security are confidentiality, integrity, availability, and non-repudiation.
- Confidentiality: Keeping unauthorized users from accessing data.
- Integrity: Protecting data from unauthorized changes.
- Availability: Making sure resources are available when needed.
- Non-repudiation: Keeping an audit trail of actions taken on a system and having that linked to an individual user.
There are several cybersecurity threats in 2023. Some of the most important ones include malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, and social engineering. All of these threats have been consistently increasing in usage over the last few years.
