Businesses need to prioritize data security especially these days when high profile information security breaches are almost always making the headlines. Organizations today face a one in four chance of having an information data breach that would cost about $2.21 million over the next two years. The aftermath of a data breach includes distrust, revenue loss, decreased loyalty among customers, and a negative reputation for your brand.
Prevent Information Security Breach
Asset Inventory
Visibility of what software and hardware assets you have in your network, as well as physical infrastructures, would help you get a greater understanding of the security posture of your organization. An asset inventory could also be used to create ratings and categories around the vulnerabilities and threats your assets may come across with. Ratings and categories for these vulnerabilities could assist you in prioritizing the remediation efforts that would occur on these assets.
Information security breaches add emphasis to endpoint protection. It’s not enough to have an antivirus installed to prevent a major breach. As a matter of fact, if you depend only on your antivirus software, you’ll be leaving your endpoints such as your laptops and desktops, widely exposed. Your devices would become the entry points for breaches.
An in-depth endpoint solution would utilize encryption to stop data leaks and loss, implement unified policies to protect data across all your endpoints, networks, servers, thereby lowering the possibility of a data breach.
Vulnerability and Compliance Management
Using a VCM or vulnerability and compliance management tool or at least completing a vulnerability assessment can help you pinpoint weaknesses, gaps, as well as misconfigurations in the security within your virtual and physical environments. VCM could check your IT assets and infrastructure continuously for compliances, vulnerabilities, as well as configuration best practices. An effective VCM lets you develop an action plan for remediating such vulnerabilities and designate them to the appropriate employees.
Audit Security Posture Regularly
Undergoing audits on a regular basis to determine potential new openings in governance and compliance would help in your security posture validation. A security audit would be a more comprehensive assessment of your business’ security policies compared to the penetration testing or vulnerability assessment. A security audit will take into account the dynamic nature of the business and how the company deals with information security Myrtle Beach.
Common Questions During A Security Audit
- Does your business have documented policies about information security?
- Did you set up escalation profiles, management processes, and processes document and monitored, and a playbook in case there’s a breach?
- Did you prepare network security mechanisms?
- Did you set up a log and security monitoring?
- Did you come up with a Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plan?
- Did you test your applications for security flaws?
- Do you have a change management process set up at each level within the IT setting?
- How do you back up your files and media? Who can access the backup? Have you tested your restore procedures?
- Have you reviewed the auditing logs? When do you review them?
Employees Must Be Trained and Educated
Once you have completed your security policy audits, you can now implement a written employee policy that involves data security and privacy. You need to conduct security training regularly so that all of the staff members know about these newly created policies since they won’t comply with policies they are not familiar with. When you are setting up your security policy for your staff, you should take into account training on these things:
- Using different unique passwords on devices that are used at work
- Enforcing a documented system for employees, contractors, or vendors who are set to leave your company (laptop access, key cards, passwords, etc.)
- Training staff on the importance of reporting data security leaks or information security breach
- Developing a policy that will describe how your staff should deal with, get rid of, restore, and even send data
Your staff requires training on the kinds of phishing attacks that take place these days. Phishing is a common method used by cybercriminals to spread ransomware in an organization. If you could train and educate your staff about the signs to search for in a dubious email, your business will be well served.
