Security

3 Things to Consider When Creating the Perfect Cyber Security Strategy

3 Things to Consider When Creating the Perfect Cyber Security Strategy

Hackers are getting better and more aggressive, and that is bad news for many businesses. Companies that lack strong cyber-security strategies can find themselves suffering almost unfathomable amounts of attack-induced damage.

The only way to stay safe in today’s hostile digital environment is to plan and prepare carefully. Think about the following three issues when developing your own cyber-security strategy, and you will be better off for it.

1. Detection is Just as Important as Prevention

The overarching goal of any worthwhile cyber-security strategy should be to harden a company’s IT assets against attack. Most businesses that correctly invest in developing their own strategic plans do spend plenty of effort on making sure that appropriate preventative measures will be put in place.

Unfortunately, hackers have become so resourceful and dedicated that successful attacks can never be ruled out entirely. With new vulnerabilities and exploits being revealed every day, companies can hardly hope to keep every conceivable gap plugged at all times.

Because of that, it is just as important to be able to detect an effective attack or intrusion as to be able to guard against the many others that will be attempted. As those who read more from kansascityit.com will see, many businesses come up short in this crucially important respect.

In fact, cyber attackers often end up having months to explore and infest corporate networks before their nefarious activities get detected. Allowing so much leeway for hardened attackers will inevitably add to the damage a company is forced to confront.

While preventative measures like patching and access control should be taken seriously, detection should never be overlooked. Any cyber-security strategy worth considering today will make rapid, accurate detection of illicit activity a top priority.

2. Redundancy Makes Recovery More Likely

Scorched-earth techniques like the encryption of valuable files can leave cyber-attack victims in truly dire straits. Being able to recover quickly and completely after a breach of any kind will always be desirable.

Just as companies need to be able to detect successful attacks, so must they always be positioned to fall back on backed-up data. Surprisingly many businesses, though, do a poor job of backing up even their most valuable, closely-held digital information.

Keep the current backup best practices in mind when developing a cyber-security strategy. That will include making multiple, redundant copies of especially important data, to ensure that an attacker will not be able to do truly unrecoverable amounts of damage.

3. Human Beings are Often the Weakest Links

It takes a lot of technological support to keep a company’s systems free from software-level vulnerabilities. Human beings ranging from entry-level workers to C-suite executives, though, can just as well make an entire network vulnerable.

Even simply recognizing that human-derived vulnerabilities exist will generally help make a cyber-security strategy more useful. Reacting effectively to such weaknesses will typically involve both careful training and the use of technological safeguards.

In any case, no corporate network can be considered properly secured until the vulnerabilities that people can introduce have been addressed. Whether that means limiting the damage that can be done by opening an attachment or something else entirely, such issues always need to be accounted for. While making sure all of your employees follow safe online practices, as a business you should consider endpoint protection. This will ensure all devices on your company’s network are secure. You can find endpoint protection software options here.

Keep all three of these tips in mind when developing your own cyber-security strategy, and you will get off to a good start. While it inevitably takes a lot of hard work to protect a company against digital attackers, that has become part of the cost of doing business.