Cyber-attacks are becoming more common and increasingly sophisticated, which increases the risk for businesses in every industry.
Luckily, investing in some basic precautions isn’t expensive or time-consuming, and it will pay dividends down the road. To keep your business from becoming a target for future attacks, follow these 6 cybersecurity risk reduction strategies.
What is cybersecurity risk mitigation?
A cybersecurity threat mitigation strategy reduces the overall risk or impact of a cybersecurity incident by employing security policies and procedures. There are three components to risk mitigation: prevention, detection, and remediation. As cyber criminals adapt their methods to stay ahead of your organisation’s security risk mitigation strategies, your organisation’s cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies must likewise adapt.
6 cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies
Organisations now have little choice but to embrace proactive cybersecurity risk mitigation as the chance of experiencing a cyber-attack is virtually assured. These are 8 critical techniques for reducing cyber-attacks across your IT network:
1. Risk assessment
Before you start your risk mitigation strategy, your IT security team should conduct a cybersecurity risk assessment, which will identify potential gaps in your organisation’s security controls. Your organisation’s assets can be identified through a risk assessment, along with the security controls currently in place. A risk assessment can also help your IT security team identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited and which should be prioritised for remediation first. Security ratings are a quick way to look at your company’s cybersecurity posture and that of your third-party vendors. You can also see real-time security ratings.
Cyber Security Risk Assessment
2. Establish network access controls
Once you’ve identified high-priority problem areas and assessed your assets, the next step is to establish network access controls to help mitigate the risk of insider threats. Many companies are turning to security systems such as zero trust, which assesses trust and user access permissions on an as-needed basis depending on each person’s job role to minimise both the likelihood and impact of threats or attacks that occur due to employee neglect or lack of cybersecurity best practices. This minimises both the threat and damage of a security breach or attack that occurs as a result of employee carelessness or lack of cybersecurity awareness. As the number of connected devices on a network increases, endpoint security has also become a growing concern.
Network Access Controls (Source: Ins and Outs of Network Security)
3. Continuously monitor network traffic
Cybersecurity risk can be effectively minimised through the use of proactive action. Every day, there are approximately 2,200 cybercrime attacks, necessitating constant monitoring of network traffic as well as an organisation’s cybersecurity posture. Rather than trying to manually detect and address emerging threats, using tools that provide a comprehensive picture of your IT ecosystem at any moment in time can provide a comprehensive view of your IT ecosystem. Security personnel can then identify and deal with new threats in a timely manner.
4. Create an incident response plan
An incident response plan is one of the most critical aspects of an organisation’s cybersecurity strategy. It must be comprehensive enough to allow all portions of the IT security team and non-tech staff to understand what to do if a data breach occurs or an attack occurs. With the increasing difficulty of preventing data breaches, your organisation must have an incident response plan in place. Staying proactively prepared through an incident response plan helps your organisation take action quickly and efficiently when confronted with a breach.
Cyber Security Services and Solutions for Modern Business
5. Minimise your attack surface
A business’s security posture and threat landscape can be identified by surveying all of its entry points, vulnerabilities, or sensitive information. The attack surface of a company can be anything from firewalls, software updates, web applications, and employees. The proper interpretation of entry point intelligence can assist businesses to identify and reduce any vulnerabilities throughout their business.
6. Stay on top of patch updates
Threat actors can quickly exploit vulnerabilities that remain unpatched. Because many software providers release patches continuously, today’s cybercriminals are aware of that. An effective patch management schedule can help your IT security team stay ahead of attackers by providing them with an idea of the patch release schedule among your service or software providers.
Guarantee your cybersecurity risk mitigation with the experts
Since new threat actors are entering the scene at a rapid pace, organisations must continue employing proactive cybersecurity risk mitigation to ensure that threats are detected and remediated as quickly as possible. To keep your digital environment safe from cyber threats, talk to the cybersecurity experts at Virtu about the best security solutions and services for your business.
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