There are three questions that business leaders need to answer honestly if they want to take the issue of cyberattacks seriously and really assess the potential risks to their business.
- How protected from cybersecurity threats is your business?
- Could you withstand a full-fledged data breach?
- Would your brand be able to spring back from the negative press and angry customers?
Now, if you’ve read through the above questions and want to test the confidence of your answers, I encourage you to keep reading.
At present there is so much mission-critical data and sensitive data within any business. So, whether you’re large or small, the risks to your business are real. Believe it or not, just one loophole in your layered security approach can leave you wide open to a malicious attack. In other words, gone are the days of relying on anti-virus protection, encryption methods, and firewalls. The threat landscape has changed. As a result, the need to appropriately, identify and analyse the risks to business and then implement protections against potential threats, has never been greater.
One of the most important things you can do to protect your business in the long-term and help to reduce risks effectively, is to perform a cyber risk assessment . Performing an exhaustive and detailed assessment has been proven to
Firstly, reduce the negative impact and losses of a data breach
Secondly, strengthen security measures to prevent future attacks
Lastly it helps keep your name from ending up in the news or newspaper. In other words, it protects your reputation.
Common Security Threats to Prepare For and Protect Against
We only need to turn on the news to realise the extent of repeated cyberattacks and data breaches that are happening multiple times every day and worldwide. Only today the NSW Department of Education was hit with a cyberattack just as schools are due to go back to school online. Meanwhile as the new state of the art security measures are taken up, hackers move in to spot any loopholes and code gaps in-order to gain access to your systems and networks. An incredible amount of confidential information has been leaked online or otherwise used maliciously. The top 15 breaches of the century are:
Biggest data breaches
- Adobe
- Adult Friend Finder
- Canva
- Dubsmash
- eBay
- Equifax
- Heartland Payment Systems
- Marriott International
- My Fitness Pal
- MySpace
- NetEase
- Sina Weibo
- Yahoo
- Zynga
For the full details on the biggest breaches of the 21st century
Certainly, the list above includes the comprises of the large enterprise companies who make the media. Some of them we know and use. But what about the small companies. They usually have the most to lose and are typically most vulnerable to cyber threats because of
their budget-restrictive nature. Small and medium-sized businesses are generally slow to implement IT security standards or any security at all.
So, this unfortunately opens the door to data breaches and cyberattacks, leaving clients and customers compromised. In other words, it’s equally important for any sized business to have regular security assessments to be able to
- identify threats and minimize risk
- practice data protection
there are some common security threats to be aware of which include:
- Using old and out-of-date security software
Are you in the habit of using your same software applications? If that’s a YES, it is one of the worst things to do for your cybersecurity. As a result of this common habit, businesses leave themselves vulnerable to a- number of networks issues without the frequent updates, license renewals, and other system checks. For instance, when was the last time your Microsoft Office Suite was updated?
2. Freely granting employee access
Importantly, having access to critical accounts can become a serious problem especially in the case of hiring and firing employees. For instance, are you in the habit of making every employee an administrator or forgetting to remove access for key players even if they’ve left your company? In short, how can you manage the- when or even who is accessing your systems and networks.
3. Generating unsecured passwords
Meanwhile, even though security breaches are so common many people still use basic passwords that are so easy for hackers to crack. Similarly, others leave their password out for all to see using post it notes stuck to their PC. Again, easy for visitors or even delivery drivers to steal and gain access to your systems.
So, if you want to better prepare & protect yourself, we recommend performing a security assessment. Importantly, it will help identify and flag any issues and the risks to your business.
How Do You Perform a Security Assessment?
The best way to start is to find a trusted IT partner who specialises in security solutions. That way your business is guaranteed the most up-to-date, effective systems to protect yourself from cyberattacks, data breaches, and more. At Rock IT , we have developed a way to give you a complete look at your existing setup, as well as a full roadmap of how to best move forward, using our cybersecurity assessment tools.
Step 1: Identify System Weaknesses and Potential Threats
Firstly, we need to look at your current system setup before offering advice and suggestions on how to improve. So, by way of getting to know your weaknesses and potential cyber security threats, we can advise you on the best ways to protect your network and systems moving forward.
Step 2: Analyze and Improve Your Network Strengths
Secondly, we evaluate your current IT department we want a full, holistic view of your business’ security strengths. After that we outline the best solutions for building them up to make them even stronger.
Step 3: Develop a Thorough IT Security Roadmap
The final step is all about providing you with a robust security roadmap. Created by working with you to develop security goals that concur with your business objectives. So, you’ll be cybersecurity resilient every step of the way.
When it comes to the vulnerabilities of cybersecurity, including how to mitigate risk, a completed full security assessment will mean your better informed and therefore better prepared. Importantly our network security risk assessments are customised to suit the needs of each business.
Your business will be assessed across 54 standards from 4 global security principles. These 54 standards fit into the 5 categories below:
- Identify – how the organisation understands the relevant Cyber security risks
- Protect – develop and implement appropriate safeguards
- Detect – ensure the organisation can identify a cyber event
- Respond – implementing the appropriate activities regarding a cyber event
- Recover – restoration of capabilities and services that have been impaired
The Rock IT experts are available to ensure your business is better protected against digital harm. And as a reliable partner in your IT security, we’ll work past the initial security assessment to develop the all-important plan of action, and ongoing IT roadmap.
If you want to learn more about a cybersecurity assessment from the cybersecurity experts, get in touch with the team at Rock IT today.
