Businesses today face a barrage of daily cyber attacks, from spam and phishing to ransomware and malware. With an increasing number of high profile organisations making headlines due to significant data breaches and security failures, businesses who previously believed they were too small to be targeted, are now realising that they have never been more at risk.
When it comes to cyber security, it is important to understand your organisations vulnerabilities, and most importantly how this can be prevented. Let’s take a look at 4 key areas you should consider;
Penetration testing is the best way to ensure that your network is secure from external attacks, and that your cyber security is able to withstand this. The purpose of a penetration test is to simulate a cyber attack to access your current security and highlight any vulnerability. After each penetration test a technical report will be issued, highlighting issues and any routes that may be exploited by attackers, as well as making security recommendations.
Once cyber vulnerabilities have been identified, there are a number of security prevention technologies that can be implemented, providing real-time protection against network threats, as well as offering the latest and most advanced filtering and anti-spam systems. Prevention technology includes traditional methods such as firewalls, antivirus and intrusion detection, as well the use of private cloud environments, off-site backups and data management.
Unfortunately staying secure is not as easy as simply purchasing security technology. Employees are often the weakest part of your security, from leaving passwords or devices unsecure to opening suspicious emails.
Educating employees in cyber security should be the first step in tackling this, providing on-going training to ensure they are aware of the threats to your business. Training can be as simple as ensuring good password management, being cautious with unknown attachments or learning not to perform business tasks on unsecured networks. Further more, measures can be put in place that will limit privileges to employees and visitors, meaning they can only access the data they need
Even with the best cyber security in place, a determined hacker may still find a way in to your systems. A robust Disaster Recovery or Backup plan can ensure you still have access to your data and systems, even in the event of a successful attack. A Backup system will periodically save your data to a secure location (on or off-site) bringing it back when you need it, whist Disaster Recovery will replicate your entire computing environment, including data, systems, network and applications making it available even when your primary environment is not.
For more information about EBC Group’s cyber security services, please contact 0121 585 4400 or hello@ebcgroup.co.uk, or download our free Guide to Cyber Security.
