With the world relying on technology, it is more important than ever to improve cyber security. Furthermore, there are thousands of businesses that not only rely on technology but also on the internet. We use the internet to store important information about ourselves, employees, clients and many other details.
Ukraine has been vulnerable to cyber attacks for a while, way before Russia invaded the eastern European country. There were so many cyber attacks that targeted the Ukrainian government that it made the war with Russia a cyber war.
This isn’t new to Ukraine though as Russia was behind the attack on the power grids back in 2015. Furthermore, it is believed the Russians were behind another cyber attack and one of the biggest in history, NotPeya.
Due to these attacks, Ukraine has desperately been trying to improve their technology in keeping data breaches away from the Russians.
Ukraine has been an example that technology needs to be improved across the world, not just in Ukraine. These attacks show the vulnerability of other nations which is why they are also making improvements to their cyber security.
Cyber security has been around for a long time however, as technology advances, it becomes easier for cyber attackers to access private and confidential data. The question is, how do you improve your cyber security? Do you need to worry about cyber security if you are a small business? The short answer is yes because they are targeted more by hackers.
Here are several tips to help your company improve your business cyber security to keep your company’s data protected.
Keep Systems Updated and Apply Patches
If your company contains a lot of private data, it is important to keep all systems updated. If you don’t, it can leave your software vulnerable. The main reason why you should keep everything updated is that these updates are to improve your software. Not only do they make changes and fix problems, but they also improve the security of this software.
If your organisation uses Microsoft software or relies on the Google cloud, you must keep everything updated. There was a very famous cyber attack in the past which targeted those that didn’t keep their systems/ software. History repeats itself but don’t be a part of that history and keep your systems updated.
Strong Passwords
Strong passwords are essential for keeping your data protected. Some websites won’t let you create an account unless your password is considered “strong”. The question is, what makes a password strong?
There are a few things that you need to consider when making your password strong. The password needs to include a symbol of some sort. These symbols include; £,$,&,@,# and any others that you can see on your keyboard. We also suggest you have a range of upper and lower case letters. Another thing that you must include in these passwords is numbers but none of which are in order.
When creating your password, you need to ensure it is memorable. If you lock yourself out, you could lose all of the information that you have stored. Make sure your password is memorable and complex so people can’t access your private data.
Multi-Factor Authentication
You may have seen this already for your Google and Sony accounts. Companies are now asking you to create a multi-factor authentication, which is more secure on top of your password. It creates another barrier for those cyber attackers to get through.
Creating another barrier may slow down your logging-in time but it keeps all of your data secure. The more complicated you make your account, the more secure it will be and delay anyone who tries to access your account.
Another positive about this type of security is that it will usually notify the account holder that someone is trying to gain access. A good example of this is Gmail. Once you have entered your email and password, it will tell you to remember a number. This email will then get sent to another email address to ensure that you are logging in. You then click the number and then when you go back to the original screen, you will then be logged into your account. Yes, it delays you getting into your account but, it also delays those cyber attackers from gaining access to important information.
Educate Your Employees
It is crazy how little people know about cyber attacks. There is some key information that your employees may not be wary of which is why you must teach them. A lot of cyber attacks, arguably the most common, begin with emails. If an employee does not know how to identify a questionable email, it can leave your company very vulnerable.
How do you identify a phishing email? Firstly, it starts with the email domain. If anybody wants information from your company, they will not approach you with a public domain such as @gmail. If there is a private email domain, ensure you research it to check the characters are correct.
Another way to identify that an email is incorrect is the poor grammar within the email. These types of emails will consist of poor spelling and incorrect grammar. One final tip we can give to identify phishing emails is that they contain infected attachments or any suspicious links.
Once you have educated your employees on how to identify these phishing emails, it will reduce the room for error. Finally, you need to tell your employees that if they have been involved with any types of phishing emails, they should notify everybody at work. This is to make sure the right practices are put in place to deal with cyber attacks.
Incident Response Team
The chances of falling victim to a cyber attack are quite high due to so many being out there. A lot of businesses are vulnerable because of the key practices that they are missing. There are going to be some key things that your business is missing as well which is why you have a plan B.
Your plan B is an incident response team. If you or any of your employees become a victim of a cyber-attack, you need a backup plan. Having a cyber incident response team is essential for your company. These teams are trained to deal with cyber-attacks and have probably done it many times before. You should always have a backup plan to keep yourself covered in situations like cyber attacks.
Summary
Cyber attacks are more common than ever due to the world being so reliant on technology and the internet. These cyber scams are there to manipulate data, steal information and, maybe get some form of financial gain. Either way, you need to ensure that your company sticks to these tips which we have given you to keep you and your company protected.
