Implementing Cyber Resilience Strategies for your Business
A lot of bad actors on the internet target businesses of all sizes. A successful attack on a small or medium business can lead to the loss of a big amount of money. Apart from that, the firm would also have to deal with a drop in customer confidence and fines from regulatory agencies.
Large companies can take a long time to recover from financial and reputational blows. Small and medium firms, on the other hand, may never get back on their feet. It is because of this reason that organizations of all sizes need to implement cyber resilience strategies after boosting cybersecurity.
Difference between Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience
Cybersecurity refers to the measures and techniques taken to prevent cyber threats from breaching the firm’s network. Cyber resilience is a close cousin of cybersecurity in the sense that it is implemented to soften the effect of a hack on an organization’s systems.
Companies use cyber resilience techniques as a contingency plan. A firm is almost certain to get hacked at one point and cyber resilience is meant to deal with the privacy breach. A company that has implemented cyber resilience strategies will still experience the smooth running of operations shortly after a hack. Companies that don’t use cyber resilience strategies, however, shut down activities for a while.
Cyber Risks that Companies Face
- Hack of an Affiliated Third-Party Service
Organizations frequently use third-party services for specific tasks. If such a company gets hacked, every firm using its services, including yours can get sensitive information breached that way. Some companies can even get sued by customers in this instance.
- Ransomware
Ransomware is a malicious program built to withhold information from the owner. It locks you out of access to your device and a threat is made to delete all your data if you don’t meet a payment deadline. There have been cases where the firm makes the payment and still get its data wiped.
The ransom can range from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some ransomware attacks on businesses have left them crippled.
Creating a Capable Cyber Resilience Strategy
- Choosing the Best Plan for your Firm
You need to choose the best cyber resilience plan for your company after examining all of the options. For instance, you have to determine the effect of a longer outage after a hack as opposed to a short one.
Using a strategy that can kick back your system online in a lessened amount of time could be costly. However, based on what your customers want, are they more likely to switch to a competitor when your systems are down, potentially losing you more money? Scrutinizing all of the possibilities will help with choosing the best strategy.
- Create Data Backups
If your business gets hit by ransomware, it translates to losing your access to company data. This means there’s a 50% chance of never getting sensitive company information back. Creating a data backup and frequently updating them will prevent you from paying any ransom to criminals.
Data backups also mean you get to have access to your data in a very short amount of time. Company operations would continue seamlessly as if a privacy breach never happened. Your firm’s backup frequency should be modified depending on how much data your company collects in a specified time frame.
- Utilizing a Cybersecurity Software
There are several cybersecurity software companies can use. However, the one to be talked about here is a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Companies need VPNs because hackers attempt to spy on online traffic flowing out of and into their systems more than ever these days.
What a VPN does is that it encrypts traffic to ensure security. With the app, the office’s network is then fortified, preventing potential spying of its activities by hackers.
A VPN also benefits remote workers in the company. Since they are connecting to the company database through their local network which the company usually has no control over. Securing their individual network is crucial for protection and safety.
- Conduct Hypothetical Privacy Breach Drills
Hypothetical drills prepare people for combating the effects of a potential disaster. Continual repetition of the drill is bound to create a better response to the disaster.
Hypothetical cybersecurity breach drills should imitate that of a real event. During the drill, employees need to understand their roles and actions to be performed. A drill that imitates a likely happening will expose employee performance lapses. Once these mistakes are worked on, the response to a real disaster would be better.
Final Thoughts
Cyber resilience is a measure taken by companies to manage the effect of a cybersecurity breach. A company with a solid cyber resilience strategy can get its system up and running immediately after a cyber-attack.
You can boost cyber resilience for your company by creating cyber resilience drills, using a cybersecurity program, backing up company data, and selecting what works best for your firm.
*Author’s note: Image from Pixabay.com