Effective Cybersecurity in 5 Easy Steps

Follow these steps to protect your personal and business networks

Cybersecurity is an ever-changing landscape and protecting your home or business network can feel like an endless battle between the forces of good and evil. Whether you’re a business owner, an employee responsible for IT security, or someone who works from home and relies on their computer to make a living, you’ll want to be knowledgeable about these five vital stages of cybersecurity.

Understanding the threat

Identifying the many different cyber threats people and businesses face today is an essential first step in knowing how to combat them.

Malware and Ransomware

All malicious software that tries to infect a computer or mobile device falls under the broad definition of malware. Its main purpose is to gain access or cause damage to data, devices, and networks.

Malware falls into four main categories:

• Ransomware — software that hijacks a system and holds information for ransom
• Spyware — software that secretly monitors activity on a computer or network
• Trojans — malicious software disguised as a legitimate tool
• Viruses — software or code that copies itself onto computers

DDoS Attacks

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks attempt to make online service unavailable by flooding it with traffic from multiple sources. These types of attacks are often used to prevent access to servers, devices, networks, or applications. The results of DDoS attacks can range from being a minor annoyance to having entire websites taken offline.

Phishing

Phishing refers to scams designed to trick a user or business into handing over sensitive information such as account numbers and passwords. The most common forms of phishing come as emails that masquerade as trusted businesses or contacts in order to manipulate the recipient into handing over data.

Rogue Devices

Any wireless device connected to a computer network should be considered a rogue device. Unsecured wireless devices such as tablets, phones, or even printers can compromise network security by unintentionally allowing for unprotected entry points that targeted cyberattacks could exploit.

Compromised Credentials

The simplest method attackers use to gain access to a system is through compromised user identities and passwords. Nearly four in five hacking-related breaches involved stolen, default, or weak passwords. User credentials can often be a prime target because many people don’t bother changing default user names or passwords and have a tendency to use the same credentials with both their business and personal computers and devices.

Taking protective measures

With an understanding of the potential threats to your business, it’s time to put policies and processes into place to protect your assets. Of primary importance are such steps as protecting your network and devices, backing up your data, and employee training.

Network and device security

When it comes to protecting your network and physical devices, you have a number of procedures and types of software to use:

• Employ spam filters to monitor incoming emails and catch phishing and malware attempts before they reach your inbox.
• Install antivirus and malware detection programs to continuously scan your computer for threats. They can usually catch things before they can infect your system and will aid in the detection and removal of threats already installed.
• Staying current with network and software updates is essential to this process. Software developers constantly identify new threats to their systems and create patches and updates to help protect users. Running outdated software puts you at risk for additional threats to your system.
• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) can help detect rogue devices or other network breaches before they can become problems.
• Effective firewalls can be used to filter traffic between various parts of your network or between the Internet and your network. If you reduce the number of pathways onto your network and enable safety protocols to the existing ones, you can make it much more difficult for a threat to infiltrate your system.
• Apply network segmentation to classify and categorize your assets, data and personal info for specific groups, then restrict access to those groups to only pre-approved users. By doing this, you can ensure that if one device or group becomes compromised, the entire system can avoid being exploited.
• Don’t get complacent even if you’ve put all of these systems and protocols in place. Constant monitoring is still a good idea — either by your in-house IT people or a contracted specialist.

Data protection

Data is the lifeblood of your company. The steps above will help protect your data, but there are additional steps you can take to ensure data integrity.

• Encrypt your data. Encryption scrambles your data into a code that only users with the key can access and read. This makes data encryption one of the most popular security methods in practice.
• Save and backup your data. Regularly scheduled backups guarantee that if something damages or erases your data, you’ll still have access to recent versions. Because keeping your data backups safe is so important, consider off-site or cloud storage options to keep your backups separate from the rest of your network in the case of a breach.

Education and training

The greatest security assets in your business are the people who work there — provided they are properly trained. Without training, they could easily be your biggest security risks. To make sure you’re working with assets and not risks, take these steps:

• Establish policies to provide employees with guidance on how to safely handle systems and situations.
• Follow these password best-practices: change passwords regularly, use strong passwords, and enable multi-step authentication.
• Train employees on identifying phishing and spam attempts. Hold a mock phishing attack to expose potential holes in your system.
• Train employees on safe, smart and secure Internet browsing practices.
• Have a procedure in place for employees to report suspicious activity.
• Don’t just train employees once and call it a day. Schedule regular training with updated information to keep security issues at the forefront of your employees’ minds.

Have a recovery plan

Even with all of these steps in place, hackers and cybercriminals are constantly creating new ways to carry out attacks. Should the worst happen, having a recovery plan in place is key to minimizing damage to your business.

An effective recovery plan should include:

1. Identify potential threats and create an action response plan. You may need several recovery plans because you would not respond to a data breach the same way you would a natural disaster.
2. Determine who in your business is key to response actions. Make sure they understand what to do in case of business disruption.
3. Create a communication plan. Establish how you will communicate internally with staff and externally with your clients and the public.
4. Testing your plan.

You may also want to look into cyber insurance. It won’t prevent problems from happening, but a good insurance plan can cover losses or protect you from claims by third parties.

Don’t leave the security of your business data up to chance. With so much information available, make sure you’re working with experts in the field. Start with the information here, and then consider consulting with the pros.

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