As a business owner, you should be aware that cyberattacks are inevitable and that breaches may occur at any time. It's a motivating factor for companies to plan so that cyber resilience and business recovery become an integral part of their strategy. As CISOs and IT leaders have told VentureBeat, one of the things that saved their businesses was taking action in advance. This was to set themselves up to be more resilient against disruptive and damaging cyberattacks.
Taking practical, pragmatic steps to prevent a breach from disrupting an organization's business is often the first step towards becoming more cyber-resilient for a lot of organizations.
Data breaches can be a serious problem for small businesses, even if they have the most sophisticated security measures in place. When a data breach occurs at your company, your company's response afterward is just as significant as what security measures you have in place. This is because it can prevent future breaches from happening in the first place.
Ponemon Institute statistics show that since the beginning of the year, "the average total cost of a data breach has increased from $3.8 million to $4 million," which is a staggering number. The most effective way for businesses to minimize the damage that can be done to themselves and their customers after a data breach is to take the right steps after the breach.
A Few Steps Every Business Can Take to Avoid Being Breached
In today's IT world, ensuring that breaches are identified, detected, and responded to promptly is not an easy task. There are not enough funds being spent on cyber resilience when budgets are heavily weighted toward detection, identification, and protection strategies.
The following are five steps you can take to ensure that your business is not compromised by a breach. During the presentation, they will focus on the way that organizations can simultaneously prevent breaches in the future while moving forward with their zero-trust security framework initiative.
1. Hire Experienced Cybersecurity Professionals Who Have Played Both Sides of the Fence.
To prevent breaches from occurring, you need cybersecurity leaders who understand how breaches work. In a cybercrime and IT infrastructure, they will be better equipped to identify the weak points and point out where attacks are most likely to compromise internal systems. They will be able to protect them. When a breach is not prevented or handled correctly, it teaches us more about how breaches happen and spread. This is compared to if we were able to stop one. As a result of these cybersecurity professionals' expert insight, business continuity will be achieved or restored more quickly than an inexperienced team could do on their own.
2. Ensure Everyone Uses a Password Manager
This easy decision saves a company's time and secures hundreds of passwords. This will enable users to create stronger and more secure passwords by selecting a password manager with advanced password generation tools, such as Bitwarden. As well as 1Password Business, Authlogics Password Security Management, Ivanti Password Director, Keeper Enterprise Password Management, NordPass, and Specops Software Password Management, several other highly regarded password managers are used by many small and medium businesses (SMBs).
3. Analyze the Breach to Determine its Source and Extent
To stop the breach you will need to identify both the source and the extent, to find the root cause and address it as soon as possible. A robust security system that can automatically log such security events for you would be one that can be used to detect and prevent intrusions (IDS and IPS).
With the help of these logs, you can find the source of the breach. You can also find out what files were accessed, and determine what actions the hacker carried out during the breach. To take the next steps that you need to take, you will need this information.
If you do not have an IDS/IPS system for your network, your IT department will have a much more challenging task collecting this information. This is because it will require more effort and time.
4. You Should Test Your Security Fix Before Deploying it
If you install a short-term security measure to protect your data immediately after performing a short-term security upgrade, you must make sure the update is thoroughly tested to ensure that the attacker will not be able to use the same method to attack your organization in the future.
Conducting this type of penetration testing on all servers/virtual machines in your company will ensure that there are no other vulnerabilities that your company may be prone to.
5. Prepare For the Cleanup and Damage Control That Will Follow a Breach
There is often a loss of consumer confidence after a breach of data, and it can be very difficult to regain the public's trust in the business after the initial breach has been "resolved." An initial data breach can have severe consequences after the initial breach has been "resolved."
To reduce the cost of a data breach, you must neutralize a breach as quickly as possible and minimize its impact as much as possible. Even small businesses can be badly affected by data breaches, and the road to recovery for these businesses can be a long and arduous one.
Although data breach prevention should be a top priority for all organizations, it is critical to note that this must be balanced against other, often conflicting, priorities. This will enable maximum effectiveness. Therefore, enterprises need to align a combination of cybersecurity policies and tools in a manner that is appropriate to their organizational risk appetite, ensuring that the likelihood of a security incident is minimized while maximizing business productivity. Only then will the organization have the right mix of cybersecurity policies and tools in place to prevent data breaches, in a manner that provides the right level of security, speed, and flexibility.
