How to Protect Against Cybersecurity Threats in 2022

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity can simply be defined as any measure taken by individuals or organisations to reduce the risk of cybersecurity threats or attacks. The main function of Cybersecurity is to protect the devices we all use such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, and computers, and also to make the services we access less susceptible to theft or damage

A business and its pertaining operations are privy to all sorts of personal customer data, company processes, and sensitive financial information. In addition to that, depending on your industry, your company may hold intellectual property, trade secrets, government data, and industry-specific systems that should be protected from prying eyes.

Hence, cybersecurity plays a great role in businesses all over the world, as it helps protect businesses from all sorts of data breaches and theft. 

All businesses should invest in cybersecurity measures to protect their employee, customer, and trade data from cybercriminals. For businesses not familiar with any protective cyber measures, firms such as Cytelligence serve as cyber security advisors and consultants that help leaders make actionable decisions to protect their enterprises and pertaining data.

Given below are four important measures that businesses must take to protect themselves from cybersecurity threats: 

Ensure and Maintain Backups to Reduce Cybersecurity Threats

The very first thing that businesses should do to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats should be to back up all their business and customer data.

A very common cybersecurity threat is ransomware, in which the attacker encrypts the entire system or certain files and hence locks the administrator’s access to them.+

Articles You May Like:

• How to Set Up Instagram Business Account
• Mobile Applications Development
• Mpls in Networking- What it Means!
• Cost of App Development

The hacker then asks for a ransom in exchange for giving the administrator access. Hence, maintaining a backup of your important files and data protects your business from both system failures and ransomware attacks.

Your backup system should include daily backups to a cloud or storage platform, in addition to quarterly server backups.

Enforce the use of two-factor authentication to Reduce Cybersecurity Threats

Two-factor authentication is essentially a security verification process that requires the user to provide two proofs of their identity before allowing them to log in to their system, email account, or work account.

A common two-factor authentication measure is to ask the user for their password followed by asking them to put in a code that is sent to their registered email address or phone number.

Hence, even if your employees’ passwords get compromised, the hacker couldn’t possibly have access to their mobile phones too. This extra layer of security is a basic measure against cyber threats and yet is extremely effective. 

Train and educate your staff 

Your employees and the time they spend on office systems is possibly where the biggest vulnerabilities in your system can creep up. Hence, in addition to making your systems sophisticated, you should educate and train your employees about the importance of cybersecurity measures and about what measures they should be taking.

Your employees need to be communicated with a cybersecurity protocol that covers the use of office systems, how to report a breach, maintaining strong passwords, how to identify basic threats, which networks they should and shouldn’t connect to, and USB or external drive using the protocol. 

Install security software and firewall

Security software and a firewall are the basics of cybersecurity that you absolutely cannot live without. Depending on the size of your organization, either an off-the-rack solution would suffice your needs or you would have to get tailored software for your security needs.

Security software would include anti-virus and anti-spyware modules. If your email client already doesn’t provide them, you may have to install anti-spam filters as well.

A firewall is also important as it acts as a gatekeeper between your computer systems and external threats and is especially important for portable devices.

Conclusion

While ongoing news about businesses suffering due to cyberattacks may prompt you from stepping away from anything digital for your business, it should prompt you towards upping your cybersecurity game. As a leader, you must educate your employees about the most common cybersecurity threats in addition to maintaining regular backups and putting all basic measures in place to counter threats to the best of your ability.