Businesses are at a real risk of a cyber attack at any given moment. In this article, we offer practical steps that you can take to improve your cybersecurity and mitigate threats.
Step #1: Provide Cybersecurity Awareness Training to Employees
Cybersecurity should be a concern for all your employees as even the most secure network system is easily breached by a simple mistake. A data breach is an expensive problem for any business to have as it impacts employee productivity.
If you lack an adequate budget for staff training, the website of the US Department of Homeland Security has free cybersecurity employee training resources to help your business get started. Some common topics include password and username protection, clear desk policy, warnings against opening suspicious email attachments, and streaming illegal content online.
Step #2: Manage Employee Access to Sensitive Data
Identity access management involves incorporating regulatory policies within your organization that ensure that only authorized employees access technical company resources. It’s a fundamental IT security practice that makes sure company network users (your employees in this case) only have access to the data, applications, and systems they need, denying access to unauthorized users. As a defense against possible cyber attacks, these user privileges are assigned according to the employee level or role.
An example of a trusted and secure identity management platform is OneLogin. OneLogin gives business owners a platform to connect all their applications, to identify and contain threats. Their identity access management works by allowing for:
1. User identity creation
An identity management system acts as a directory service. An example of this is the use of employee bio-data in an HR system to create and identify employee user profiles.
2. User provisioning
Once a user is in the system, the IT department must specify what network resources a user has access to and the amount of access allowed to this user, for instance, they can access certain company documents as an admin, editor or viewer. When an employee leaves your company, the IAM system deletes and deauthorizes the former employee’s access, as this could also be a potential cybersecurity threat.
3. User authentication
When a user requests access to use a service, the access management system validates a user and grants them access.
4. User authorization
The IAM system allows the newly authenticated user to access role-specific resources, according to the user’s provisioning.
5. Report generation
IAM systems generate reports that help organizations prove their compliance with regulations, identify potential data risks, and improve their IAM and security processes.
6. Single Sign-On
While this is not a feature of all identity management systems, the best IAM systems have this tool. Single Sign-On (SSO) builds onto existing cybersecurity measures by increasing staff productivity. It does this by increasing the ease with which users can access the network facilities that they need with a single sign-on process. In this way, users do not have to log in each time they need to access the system or remember different passwords at the same time.
Step #3: Get Cybersecurity Insurance
A cybersecurity insurance policy protects your business from being financially liable for data breaches a These losses can be financial, through targeted phishing and malware attacks for instance; or misplaced company equipment, to name a few. Cybersecurity insurance protects against data privacy and network exposure. As cybercrimes continue to evolve, so will your need to ensure that your business is protected from a potential cyber attack.
Cybersecurity is important as many new businesses depend on technology for a majority of their operations. We hope that the tips provided will help you create strong cybersecurity practices to protect your business from potential cyber-attacks.