Even though large-scale cyber-attacks are in the news very often and most of us think that we how much damage cybercriminals can cause, the truth is that our understanding of the scale of cybercrime around the world is most likely a huge underestimation of the real situation. In reality, many companies that become victims of security breaches prefer to hide the breach from the public to save their image. But no matter how distorted and underestimated cybercrime statistics are, experts agree that cyber attack prevention is extremely important for any company. So what preventative steps can you take to improve your company’s cybersecurity and minimize the risk of cyber attacks?
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Cyberattack prevention – why do you need it?
Everyone knows that cyberattacks are bad and can cause a lot of damage to their victims. But what exactly are the consequences of a hacker attack for a business? Hacker attacks can be divided into two broad categories that include sabotage and security breaches. Data security breaches happen when unauthorized individuals gain access to confidential client information, intellectual property and other sensitive data, while sabotage includes DDoS attacks and disablement of applications and systems. These types of cyberattacks can cause your business to lose revenue, disrupt your operations, damage your company’s image, cause you to spend a large amount of money to investigate the breach and mitigate its consequences, damage equipment and even expose you to actions from regulators and legal claims from customers, suppliers, etc.
How to prevent cyberattacks?
The first step to keeping your company safe in the cyber world is to conduct regular backups of all important files. These backups should be stored on a computer that’s not connected to the internet or to any other network. Ideally, the backup computer or hard drive should be stored off-premises.
The next step is to have a security plan implemented at your company. This means that you have to identify your most important assets and security vulnerabilities and come up with strict guidelines on the use of computers, accounts, media, etc. in the workplace for all employees.
The third step is to conduct training for all your employees, as the human factor is the biggest security vulnerability at any organization. This includes social engineering awareness training, information on how to choose secure passwords, what devices and networks can be used to access work-related accounts and documents, etc.
Finally, you should conduct software updates and install security patches regularly to minimize the chances of cyberattacks on your business. Even though it may be annoying that your software needs updates every few days, most of the time updates either improve the performance of the program or fix security vulnerabilities, which can lead to a security breach if they are not patched on time.
