While hacks and breaches involving large corporations may be the ones that make headlines, every business is a target for cyber security attacks. Yet, many small and medium sized businesses still treat cyber risk management as an add-on; performing the bare minimum prevention tasks in fortifying their assets against hacks, malware, and other cyber risks.
But with the expense and long-lasting damages that result from cyber attacks, simply having a bare-bones cyber risk management plan isn’t enough to protect your company and its data. Plans must be well thought out and involve the participation of all employees in order to do the job they are intended to do; protecting the data they are designed to protect.
Still not convinced you could be a target? Think like a cybercriminal. Small to medium sized businesses often pay the least attention to cyber risk management and prevention, making them a piece of cake for attackers to infiltrate.
If you’re not taking these steps, there is a good chance that your cyber risk management plan is thin, and vulnerable to failure.
- Identifying and patching vulnerabilities – every company’s defenses are vulnerable somewhere. Without analyzing your defense strategies and identifying weak points, your cyber risk management strategies are destined to fail. Examine all of the ways cybercriminals could find an “in” to your organization. This includes monitoring and securing endpoints, strengthening credentials, and employing firewalls.
- Detection – once hackers or viruses take hold, it’s imperative to eliminate them as soon as possible in order to minimize damage. By having systems in place for early and speedy detection, you can begin the process of removing intrusive, malicious individuals and programs. Programs like antivirus software and cloud backup should be used to increase your company’s visibility into malware attacks. In the case of viruses, cloud backup can alert your IT leaders of a suspicious amount of recently modified files. This can be a huge tip-off to the presence of a virus and is often an early indicator. Once detected, the virus should be removed and new files be restored from your backup. With cloud backup, you can even restore the most recent version of a file before the existence of a virus — allowing you to retrieve as much work as possible with the least amount of data loss compared to any other data recovery method.
- Education – if upper management doesn’t take cybersecurity to heart, it’s unlikely that employees will — or that they will even know how to. It’s important that everyone in your organization is informed of the dangers of cyber attacks, and how to prevent them. Train employees on email best practices and the care they should take utilizing endpoints — in today’s freelance-style work environment, it’s becoming more common to take home things like laptops and company phones, which can spell danger if precautions are not taken.
- Response – whether your organization comes face to face with a hacker, breach or virus, you should always have an immediate response plan on hand to mitigate the damage. Work with your IT team to develop a plan of action for what immediate steps to follow in the event of each type of disaster, how to minimize the damage from spreading and infecting other computers, how to communicate the breach to employees, and when and how to notify customers and regulatory agencies. Once the immediate threat has been eliminated, your organization should have a plan on how to get back to business as usual with the least amount of downtime.
- Plan B – sometimes, despite all of our best planning, disaster will strike. If your response plans are thorough, you may be able to eliminate the danger quickly, but chances are you’ll still need to do some recovery in the aftermath. Data loss is a common symptom of malicious viruses like ransomware, and after a breach of any kind, you should be wary to trust the data that remains after the threat has been eliminated. However, no matter how much data you’ve lost or have to delete in the aftermath, you can recover it all and restore it to any old or new device if you take one, simple precaution: installing cloud backup. Cloud backup is the ultimate plan B for when disaster strikes. It allows you to bypass lengthy and expensive data recovery programs and experts, instead restoring all of your most recent, uninfected data with just a few clicks. This means your company can return to normal sooner, deal with less downtime, and lose less critical information — incurring less expense and less frustration.
Readiness and response planning is critical in order to keep your organization safe and afloat in a constantly evolving environment of cybercrime. While attacks can’t be prevented 100% of the time, you can always control how you respond to them by learning how to properly manage and heal from cyber attacks.
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