Cyber Security: 5 ways to protect your business from cyber threats.
All businesses great and small need strong cyber security protections. The data your business accesses be that internal financial results, intellectual property documentation or the personally identifiable information pertinent to your clients privacy; you have an overwhelming responsibility to protect that information.
So where do you start? How do you protect your business from cyber-threats? The cyber-security experts at Astron have put together their thoughts on the 5 most important steps to begin protecting your business and its assets.
1. Understand your assets, risks and threats:
Identifying and understanding the critical assets and information that your organisation possess both directly and indirectly is paramount to protecting business assets, not only from cyber criminals but also employee error. Evaluate present and future risks by assessing potential threats and vulnerabilities to your systems and data.
2. Decide on priorities and goals:
Based on your assessment of risks, prioritize your security needs and goals. Identify areas where you need to focus your resources to best protect your most critical assets and reduce your risks to an acceptable level. Consider your current and future needs, as well as the level of risk your organisation is willing to tolerate.
3. Identify the necessary security controls:
Based on your priorities and goals, breakdown what security controls need to be implemented to best protect your business. This could include both technical and administrative controls including access controls, data encryption, regular software updates, staff training and even network segmentation.
4. Evaluate your staff skills:
No matter how great a team you have, nobody is perfect and everybody needs a hand at times! Do your current staff members have the security skills required to manage and mitigate cybersecurity threats? What skills can and should be improved? How will they be improved? What training and development opportunities will enhance your team’s abilities? Do you need to seek external assistance on the matter? All these concerns need to be honestly considered by any business operator to best protect a business.
5. Develop and implement your security plan:
Create a comprehensive plan to address the gaps in your security posture, including necessary controls and training. Work with your team to implement the plan and regularly assess and update it to ensure continued effectiveness.
Following these five steps will not magically make cyber threats go away, but they do provide a solid foundation for the protection of your most critical assets and ensure you are prepared to defend against any cyber breaches.
Looking for more information or curious as to the specific needs of your business? Contact the team at Camphin Boston on 02 9221 7022 or sign up below to keep in touch on all things cyber!