Cybersecurity Best Practices To Keep Your Organization Safe

In today’s interconnected world, security is one of the top requirements for a company to succeed. A dramatic increase in remote work environments, cloud computing, and mobility have expanded Cyber Criminals’ attack surface, giving them more opportunities to penetrate organizations’ systems and data. This leaves businesses more vulnerable to breaches, data thefts, or ransomware attacks. By working with a trusted Cybersecurity partner like eMazzanti and adhering to best cybersecurity practices, you can minimize these risks and protect your data, customer trust, and business operations.

1. Strong Passwords / Multi-Factor Authentication

Secure passwords are vital. Long, at least 12 characters. Mix letters, numbers, and symbols, and do not use something that can be easily guessed. Even a longer password can fall to social engineering (phishing) or can be outsmarted by a brute force attack.

However, an extra layer of security like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) can be a big help. For example, MFA in simple terms will ask if the user has something (a device) and knows something (like account information). So, if an attacker managed to steal a password, this would go some way towards preventing the bad actor from getting into your account.

2. Keep Your Software Up to Date

Cyber Criminals tend to have an existing database of the most popular exploits for getting into applications that have yet to be updated. To mitigate these risks, organizations must set up a process of regular updates and patches. This includes:

• Operating Systems: including Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
• Mobile devices: like OS and Hardware Security components, Firmware Routers and Firewalls
• Patching: Automated patch management solutions perform necessary updates quickly, and with minimal disruption to a user’s workflow.

3. Data Security Measures to Implement across Networks

You also need secure network software. Key practices include:

• Firewalls: Make sure that your firewalls are set up to filter inbound and outbound traffic. Use next-generation firewalls with intrusion protection and detection.
• Encryption: This is used for sensitive data at rest and in motion. This way, even if your data is intercepted or stolen, it will be unreadable by non-authorized people.
• VPN: Establish a Virtual Private Network to let remote employees securely connect to your corporate network.

4. Training the employees on cybersecurity awareness.

At the end of the day, human error is still a top reason for breaches. Periodic cybersecurity training will help keep your employees up to date on threats, and what to do in case they are targeted.

• Phishing attacks: Train employees to know the signs of a phishing email, so they will not click on suspicious links or attachments.
• Social engineering: Educate employees about schemes like pretexting or baiting, where attackers trick victims into giving away confidential information.
• Password Management: password management tool will automatically generate secure passwords.

5. Enable the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)

This means reducing the privileges to only what is only required for the user to do their task. Key steps include:

• User account isolation: Limiting the number of people who have admin privileges, and having a separate account for admin duties vs. regular computing
• Role-based access control (RBAC) – Permissions are not given with a universal key that grants overall access to world systems or data.
• Audit trails: Enable logging of usage information, including what each user has done and when, so all actions from any person can be traced.

6. Back Up Data Regularly

Ransomware attacks that encrypt certain key files may disrupt business continuity and recovery, but frequent data backups can let your business quickly recover. Some best practices around backup are:

• Frequency: Enable an auto-backup on a daily or weekly basis, depending on your business operations.
• Redundant: 3-2-1 Backup Strategy – Have three copies of your data: store two on devices on two different media types, and keep one backup offsite/ in the cloud.
• Testing: Test your backup system frequently, to ensure the operations are working and do not corrupt files.

7. Be Alert and React to Threats

Cyber Security is not only about prevention. Being continuously aware of things such as network traffic, systems, and endpoints helps find malicious behavior at an early stage. Key practices include:

• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)- Both of these tools help in monitoring the network activities, and will send alerts to Admins if anything abnormal or malicious is noticed.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): SIEMs provide a centralized solution for logs, and data from systems to analyze alerts as well as visualization.
• Incident response plan — all organizations need to have an incident response plan that contains procedures on what should be done in case of a breach, such as containment, eradication, and recovery.

Bad actors never take a break. But experienced, trained eMazzanti professionals can help to safeguard your organization.