Moving From Reactive to Preventive Cyber Security

February 15th, 2017

With cyber security changing almost daily its a fast paced world. Being prepared by putting preventative measures in helps reduce the risk to your business. In this article we'll look at a few areas for consideration.

Understand the threats you’re facing

Before any small- or medium-sized business can work toward preventing cyber-attacks, everyone involved needs to know exactly what they’re fighting against. Whether you’re working with in-house IT staff or an outsourced provider, you should review what types of attack vectors are most common in your industry. Ideally, your team would do this on a regular ongoing basis.

Reevaluate what it is you’re protecting

Now that you have a list of the biggest threats to your organization, you need to take stock of how each one threatens the various cogs of your network. Map out every device that connects to the internet, what services are currently protecting those devices, and what type of data they have access to (regulated, mission-critical, low-importance, etc.).

Create a baseline of protection

By reviewing current trends in the cyber-security field, alongside an audit of your current technology framework, you can begin to get a clearer picture of how you want to prioritize your preventative measure versus your reactive measures.

Before you can start improving your cyber-security approach, you need to know where the baseline is. Create a handful of real-life scenarios and simulate them on your network. Network penetration testing from trustworthy IT professionals will help pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in your current framework.

Finalize a plan

All these pieces will complete the puzzle of what your new strategies need to be. With an in knowledgeable in-house resources, or experienced technology consultant on-board for the entire process, you can easily parse the results of your simulation into a multi-pronged approach to becoming more proactive:

  • Security awareness training that teach everyone -- from receptionists to CEOs -- about all risks from password management to mobile device usage and more
  • “Front-line” defenses like intrusion prevention systems and hardware firewalls that scrutinize everything trying to sneak its way in through the front door or your network.
  • Routine checkups for software updates, licenses, and patches to minimize the chance of leaving a backdoor to your network open.
  • Web-filtering services that blacklist dangerous and inappropriate sites for anyone on your network.
  • Multi layered endpoint security, that specializes in the threats most common to your industry.

As soon as you focus on preventing downtime events instead of reacting to them, your technology will begin to increase your productivity and efficiency to levels you’ve never dreamed of.

If DNS-layer security, intrusion prevention systems, and encryption aren't your strong points get in touch, we can asses your current systems, plan a better infrastructure, make improvements and ultimately reinforce your defenses against cyber attacks.

Originally published by TechAdvisory.org, edited with permission