In today’s time, every aspect of our lives, personal, professional, social, financial, etc., revolves around electronic media, smartphones, and laptops. Internet is the medium of their communication and cyber-attacks too.

Compared with the past few years, there's a tremendous growth in the cyber-crime during a pandemic when every business and need shifted to the online platform. It opens the doors for hackers to sharpen their skills. Some hackers act as defenders, and some breach the security for their temptations.

Everything is being digitized, and the rapid growth of remote working has given rise to system vulnerabilities and a major threat to cyber security. Cyber-attacks are the never-ending game of security whack-a-mole.

Security experts apply patches at their best, but another arises after dealing with one problem. These ongoing cyber security crises cannot be cured but can be prevented because, with growing technology, attacks change that needs a different methodology.

For sustainable growth of business and safety from cyber-attacks, we need to improve the methods of cyber security and improvements methods are as follows:-

All devices should be encrypted.

Encryption is a common technique of security that takes information and encodes it. Hackers use encryption to mask their identities and preserve private information. Encryption code can be decoded by the person having a key to decode it and can see the original data.

Attention toward insider threats

Outsider threats can be inside threats that are more harmful than the outside ones as insider threats can be attacked from any side like:

-an employee breaches the security for its temptation
-any fault is done by an employee (knowingly and unknowingly)
-any natural miss happening occurs in the company

Protect the data itself, not just the perimeter

It states that data security focuses on the data, not the perimeters. This can be explained by seeing that a business focuses on establishing security walls around data and securing them by spending lots of money on them, for example, firewall security technology. But still, there are several ways where security can breach, including employees, customers, and suppliers who can misuse sensitive data by bypassing exterior cyber security.

Support cyber security staff

Previously, cyber security is not taken as a primary measure, but it has become mandatory with the growth of internet access. Cyber security experts conduct cyber security. Therefore, these experts should get support from the company personally, financially, and professionally. The company should spend more time and money on cyber security to decrease the risk to the IT infrastructure. Most businesses appoint chief security officers or cyber security agencies to broad-level positions as cyber security is integral to all business processes.

Conduct annual staff awareness training

Staff awareness is essential in maintaining cyber security, so every organization or business must conduct annual staff awareness training. Staffs is updated with all the security measures and applied them in the business.

Delete redundant data

Companies involved in education, finance, the public sector, and healthcare deal with sensitive information essential to their business. Delete or forgotten data should be prevented from being stolen later by ensuring an information disposal mechanism.

Policies and procedures should be regularly reviewed

Cyber security policies and procedures should ne regularly reviewed in business with other policies as technology changes. So, to deal with them, every organization reviews its procedures and policies of cyber security for company benefit.

Regular updation of software to protect from viruses, malware, and malicious code.

Virus, malware, and malicious code are common cyber security threats and have tremendously increased after 2018. Firewalls and anti-virus should be updated to avoid unwanted access to protect the system from them. Wi-Fi password should be secured, and the router password should be selected by the user only instead of the default password. By practicing these key elements, a business can be secured in the long run.

Strong authentication

Users connected to a network must use a strong password and user ID for computers, online accounts, and mobile devices. Beyond ID and password, more information should be required to gain protected access. Additional safety measures such as two-factor authentication should be taken to access the business network.

Arrangement of security training and best practices for employees

Employees should be trained about security issues and limit employees to access the system as per their job requirements (can't access restricted data and any software. Employees should be trained about Dos and Don'ts regarding cyber security.

Regular updation of software

To fix security flaws and apply patches to vulnerabilities, all the software should be regularly updated with its latest versions as soon as they are available for the business.

Secure business smartphones

Smartphones are the easiest method of accessing information (private or personal). It's a great security challenge as they hold confidential information about a company. Employees using the company network require to password-protect their devices. To restrict the criminal's access to public networks, security apps should be installed on the device, and all the employee data should be encrypted.

Backup of data

The backup method is necessary for businesses for security purposes as 80% of the company lost recent data as their recent data is not backed up. Data should be backed up at least once a week. Backing up data uses the encryption method applied to the original data. If there are chances that the main system gets infected, then the regular backup is created to an additional disconnected storage device (USB devices) and virtual storage like cloud storage.

Secured method of doing and handling online payments

The bank and payment process should advise the user to select the validated and most trusted tools and anti-fraud services regarding secured online payments. Payment gateway service providers do confirmation calls and one-time passwords (OTP) before authorizing the electronic transfer securely.

Setting up firewalls in the devices.

More than 90% of business uses firewall security to protect their business data internally and externally. The firewall monitors website traffic, sends alert about viruses, and help in filtering the content.

Network segmentation

Network segmentation is a cybersecurity technique that divides a network into segments (smaller or distinct sub-networks) so that the whole network's security doesn’t compromise. Suppose an attack happens that only a segment of the network is affected due to which attacker cannot get access to the entire organization. Network segmentation helps to detect intrusion activity easily and leads to limited impact.

Deny access of ex-employees

The company should: delete ex-employee passwords, collect their company's ID, delete all its company accounts for ex-employee official computer system and clear all the work of old computer before handling the system to the new employee. Employees hold positions and access to the data according to their designation. Still, once they exit from the company, they should be restricted from accessing the company data, not misuse its data. One employee moves to another company, but the leaking of information is a major threat; therefore, denying access to ex-employees is mandatory.

Destroying of old hardware components

Some of the old hardware of the company, like systems, hard drives, and internal or external storage devices, should be destroyed as for some money company sells them in scrap. Still, the data stealers grab them and collect all the data and misuse it against the public and government. This is one of the major issues for the company, so destroying old hardware is the best preventive measure for cyber security.

BYOD Policy for employee devices

For protecting businesses from cyber-attacks, the BYOD (bring your device) policy must be completely abolished in the company. Due to the pandemic, the company has allowed work from home due to which employees use their devices for official on a public or private network. Some companies allow employees to use their devices (laptops, pads, and mobile phones) to work and access them on their network, resulting in a security breach because personal devices are not highly protected and secured with a strong password to keep business secrets. So BYOD policy for employee devices should be abolished.

Creating security guidelines

A single cyber security breach in a company can cost demolishing of the company in terms of finance. Therefore the company should create guidelines for businesses t minimize the losses, such as limiting work technology, changing passwords, and prohibiting sites.

Install Multifactor Authentication

User IDs and passwords are not enough to protect the system from internal and external threats. So to deal with it, multifactor authentication must be installed in the system where passwords are verified on two different parameters, such as the user's phone number or device attached.

Hire a cyber security service

Data security needs are mandatory for the company, and managing them has become a full-time job. In a company, each step requires security, from installing a small software to the system to training the employees. Every task needs to be done for proper protection. New versions and updates regularly come, so employees must constantly watch it and conduct data back-ups. So to manage all over security, a company cannot depend on a few employees; instead, many businesses take the help of paid cyber security services where cyber security experts are responsible for data security.

Install blocks and filters

Despite the best training for employees, there's no guarantee that one shouldn't slip past, so, for preventive measures best option is to set up filters and blocks. More than 90% of the malware attacks are delivered through email, where the user must apply filters on emails that recognize corrupt attachments and send them straight to spam. Certain data manipulation and extraction sites like social media sites must be blocked.

Contingency planning

All the clever entrepreneurs protect their business and income from cyber damage and recovery insurance in this digital era. If anything else fails, there's expert support left behind in hand and unexpected costs covered from the outset.

Security incident and event management

Business security incident and event management use big data engineers to review security log information and events from connected network devices.

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