WHERE SHOULD WE TARGET CYBERSECURITY UPGRADES IN 2021?

WHERE SHOULD WE TARGET CYBERSECURITY UPGRADES IN 2021?

The cost of not addressing cybersecurity properly is high. Without the appropriate safeguards in place against new and emerging threats, companies can face severe outages due to ransomware or major breaches of sensitive information.

The average cost for a small or mid-sized business to restore normal operations after a successful cyberattack is $955,429. This is more than many businesses can bear, causing some to have to close permanently.

The best business IT defense against that happening is a strong and evolving IT security strategy, which includes standard best practices along with upgrades to match the newest threats.

Looking towards 2021, we’ve put together a listing of the most important areas you need to focus your cybersecurity upgrades to ensure your network and data are protected.

IT SECURITY FOCUSES TO KEEP YOUR BUSINESS SAFEGUARDED

ADVANCED ACCESS & IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

Cloud login credentials are now a major target for hackers. As a majority of businesses data is now in cloud workflows with large SaaS providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, it’s harder for hackers to breach network defenses.

So, their easiest way to breach a company’s account is through a user’s password. This allows them to bypass security and gain access to email, cloud storage files, and more.

To keep up with the credential theft tactics being taken by hackers, it’s necessary to go beyond just creating strong passwords. Using single sign-on (SSO) technologies and advanced multi-factor authentication can help you strengthen your defense against credential breach.

This includes using tactics like additional authentication policies that look at where a user is signing in from, what their system privileges are, and implementing additional challenge questions according to preset policies.

ZERO TRUST THROUGH APPLICATION WHITELISTING

Millions of new malware variants are created weekly, it’s nearly impossible for a signature-based system of antivirus/anti-malware protection to keep up, because threats can’t get added to databases fast enough.

There’s also been an emergence of fileless attacks. These are attacks that are particularly difficult to detect because they don’t involve any malware code, rather they send malicious commands to a legitimate system program, like Windows PowerShell.

This has led to the approach of Zero Trust. This means instead of trusting programs by default and only blocking them if there is a reason to, a system is set up to only trust certain programs and distrust all others by default.

This significantly improves defenses against new and unknown threats because an advanced threat protection program doesn’t need to know what they look like, they’re blocked by default by not being on a whitelist of approved programs.

MANAGED CYBERSECURITY SERVICES

Companies are experiencing the high costs of trying to self-manage their IT security. They can experience malware infections, costly phishing attacks, cloud account breaches, and more.

The increasing sophistication of cyberattacks makes it necessary to have a professional that’s handling cybersecurity as well as continually monitoring your network for any threats.

60% of data breaches in 2019 were the result of unpatched system vulnerabilities.

Managed cybersecurity services include things like patch management for all employee devices, managed antivirus/anti-malware, and continuous system monitoring. This helps ensure attacks are identified and repelled immediately, significantly reducing the risk of a successful breach of your network.

ENDPOINT DEVICE MANAGEMENT

Mobile devices have taken over most offices in Tennessee and beyond. Business mobile apps are often used instead of desktop apps by employees, but mobile devices are generally not as well protected as computers.

If you don’t have one now, it’s important to put an endpoint device management strategy together and implement it in 2021.

Endpoint device management programs help companies control all the various computers, smartphones, IoT devices, and tablets connecting to their network and data and gives them centralized management control.

And endpoint device manager, such as Microsoft Intune, allows businesses to:

  • REMOTELY UPDATE DEVICE SOFTWARE
  • REMOTELY LOCK OR WIPE A DEVICE
  • REMOTELY GRANT OR REVOKE DEVICE ACCESS TO COMPANY ASSETS
  • MANAGE COMPANY WIDE SECURITY POLICIES ACROSS ALL DEVICES
  • TRACK AND MONITOR DEVICE ACCESS TO COMPANY DATA

MESSAGING SECURITY

Both internal and external business communications are increasingly happening over applications like Slack, SMS, or WhatsApp. Instant messaging is faster and often more efficient than email and can also be used for sending files.

But these messaging systems can get out of hand if you don’t have restrictions in place on what applications can be used for company communications, which cannot, and ensure data protection policies can be used.

It’s important to look at the systems your team uses for business communications and put together a standard policy to ensure you don’t end up with data leakage due to use of unsecure applications.

WORK WITH UNBOUND DIGITAL TO PLAN YOUR IT SECURITY THIS YEAR

Unbound Digital can help your Johnson City, Tennessee business with a full IT security assessment to identify vulnerabilities and help you prioritize upgrades for 2021.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Call 423-335-2461 or reach us online.