When it comes to cybersecurity, a little prevention goes a long way. As per the Cost of a Data Breach Report (2020), businesses assigned a team to create an incident response plan for cybersecurity and tested their strategy leveraging simulations or exercises.
They saved about $2 million in costs; however, these savings were associated with the companies that did not take preparatory steps to ensure data security.
Today, various cybersecurity attacks are highly targeted. Threat actors spend a great deal of time collecting information and looking for a possibility to pounce.
Over the years, there has been an alarming sophistication in malicious activities to an extent that was never experienced before.
Therefore, to increase your readiness — and boost your security teams’ confidence — it’s important to move beyond formulating static incident response plans and instead leverage transitory crisis simulation pieces of training to mimic the effects of a real-world attack closely.
Ways to Ensure Your Enterprise’s Data Security for Advanced Attacks
All preventive measures and cyber crisis preparedness strategies for ensuring data security are not created equal, as per the new Osterman Research highlights.
Here are some key ways to ensure and achieve this.
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Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)
According to Gartner, cyber threat intelligence is “evidence-based knowledge, including mechanisms, context, implications, indicators, and actionable recommendation, about an existing hazard or menace to assets that can be leveraged to make informed decisions concerning the subject’s reaction to that hazard or menace.”
Essentially, it involves gathering and processing data about threat actors and their approaches for defense purposes.
Cyber threat intelligence solutions typically feature machine learning and artificial intelligence and incorporate other security solutions to ensure data processing with precision.
In addition, CTI allows companies to be more proactive than sensitive in their approach to cybersecurity.
By facilitating human analysts to leverage the enormous data available, CTI solutions enable organizations to comprehend their cybersecurity threats and build powerful defensive mechanisms – a route to cyber-resilience.
Furthermore, cyber threat intelligence explicitly allows the IT and security teams to manage better and even prevent exploits by constantly alerting them to vulnerabilities.
CTI depends more on the human actors and less on automation. Also, practical CTI doesn’t just need the right tools but intuitive and trained analysts, too.
However, there is a challenging aspect too. As per CTI practitioners’ survey by Cybersecurity Insiders, 85% received no or little training in Open Source Intelligence risks and techniques.
The growing intricacy of cybersecurity today has made intelligence-based data security measures paramount. From a business’s standpoint, it is essential to invest in the appropriate people and tools (researchers, analysts, etc.)
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Endpoint Protection
The core of cybersecurity is endpoint protection. However, the focus on endpoint security has become more vital as teams go remote. While it is challenging for organizations to protect entry points to avoid malicious entities gaining entry into their systems or networks, catering to it is crucial.
Today, it is way more challenging for companies to guard entry points to prevent malware and other malicious units from accessing and entering their systems or networks. And the effects of increasing BYOD policies add to the trouble of organizations.
Endpoint security and protection are the frontlines. It implies that if an organization fails to shield its endpoints, this can adversely impact the organization. In 2020, the endpoint security state appeared bleak. According to Endpoint Security Research conducted by Delta Risk:
- 34% of companies saw more than one endpoint attack that compromised IT infrastructure or data
- 55% of companies have experienced a surge in endpoint security risk, and
- 67% believe it is reasonably likely to highly possible that they will be the victim of a cyberattack in the following 12 months
Endpoint protection solutions typically function on a client-server base; however, some are provided as SaaS. While virtual private networks (VPNs) and firewalls play a central role in breach prevention, they aren’t the same as endpoint security.
But, you can also set up a VPN with any of the following two approaches: the manual configuration approach and the app-based approach. The manual configuration is a complex method to set up a VPN that mostly requires technical expertise. You can deploy manual configuration when you are not able to download or connect to the app. On the other hand, the app-based approach offers quick and secure connections along with an easy-to-use interface.
All in all, endpoint security aims to protect the data. Information is an organization’s most valuable asset and resource. So as an enterprise, you wouldn’t want to lose access to your data. Therefore, adequate endpoint security focuses on protecting the data.
Cyber Breach Response Plan
Most enterprises can do better with how they are responsive to cyber breaches. The findings of the Cyber Security Breaches Survey (2020) shows some of the most common responses that are:
- giving people specific responsibilities and roles
- finding the source
- formally logging incidents
- gauging impacts
However, only 21% of enterprises perform all the above four, while 30% don’t perform any. This indicates that organizations’ responses to data breaches are generally not comprehensive and foolproof, with 64% of businesses avoiding future breaches.
But, how resilient and agile can a threat avoidance plan be without appropriate incident response to entirely comprehend the situation, detect vulnerabilities and analyze risks?
In order to develop a strong breach response strategy, here are some tips that can help you.
- Have crisis backup plans to ensure smooth business operations even when a severe incident has taken place
- Form a response procedure that contains a risk assessment, outlines alert levels for different incident types, and defines the responsibilities and roles of each individual involved
- Following an occurrence, gauge the breach to find out the effectiveness and impact of your plans and determine opportunities, lessons, and other threats
- Ensure that all the employees take part in the awareness training program, effectively preparing them for various incident response situations. Simulate scenarios and review your plans in those situations
Online Crisis Simulation Training
There’s a significant need for more effective crisis training than what you have currently implemented. Online crisis simulation training is yet another great way to prepare for impending threats proactively.
These training exercises can be customized to address a company’s most pressing current issues. Distribute teams, who otherwise tend to be overlooked during larger-scale practical sessions and in-office simulations.
And this approach is less cumbersome as compared to performing tabletop exercises. As a result, online crisis/emergency examples may create augmented buy-in across the company, even among the staff that isn’t good with the technical stuff.
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Ensure Essential Skills
Cybersecurity is radically changing as a qualified discipline, which keeps the field exciting and dynamic. But, unfortunately, most companies are helpless due to their workforce not being aware of the potential threats early on. Therefore, training and preparing employees is paramount to prepare your business for data security risks.
In the modern world, cybersecurity personnel require essential, conventional skills such as communication, advanced problem-solving, and critical thinking, which are the fundamentals of their everyday work.
Therefore, training employees on writing protocols, developing action plans, and security basics are vital tasks to pay attention to. With these abilities, merge the technical skills to prepare your employees, especially the IT and security teams, to address the issues competently.
Your employees should know the best practices, have professional experience, and understand government regulations to enhance your company’s overall data security efforts.
Consistent training and an effective security awareness program across the enterprise are imperative to foster the right mindset and help employees practice and reinforce procedures for cybersecurity crisis response.
Conclusion
With new and emerging cyber security trends, a robust plan is crucial that emphasizes core skills, readiness, and attention to developing concerns that will be critical to your business success.
As an organization, you can turn the tide by getting proactive, sufficiently informed, and cultivate a secure organizational culture. Your employees must know how and when to change privacy settings to reinforce the data security within the company.
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