- November 14, 2024
- Catagory Security
Improve Your Cybersecurity Through Better Collaboration
Cybersecurity cannot be siloed off, whether itâs from the rest of information technology or from the executive suite â itâs a risk management exercise that spans the organization and requires collaboration.
In smaller organizations, cybersecurity may be the responsibility of your IT team, or you may have dedicated personnel or a virtual chief information security officer (vCISO). Regardless, giving cybersecurity its due can be challenging for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs), as members of your IT team may wear many hats.
If you do have dedicated cybersecurity roles, itâs critical that they are integrated into your IT team â collaboration is critical for both efficiency and effectiveness. Collaboration requires both best practices and technology.
Because the members of small IT teams tend to be multi-functional, itâs essential that everyone is clear on their responsibilities. You need to have a shared vision for your cybersecurity strategy that clearly defines goals and roles related to assessment, protection, and response.
Itâs extremely easy to fall into the trap of thinking that adding more technology tools will make your organization more secure, but when you are resource constrained, it you must reduce complexity by streamlining security tools and employing a network management platform that centralizes visibility and control.
Centralizing data and automating alerts give you the agility to quickly and more effective identify threats, respond to any incidents, and mitigate risk, even if you have few in-house IT staff dedicated to security.
Cybersecurity collaboration should extend to the C-suite by keeping executive management in the loop as well as to every employee through regular security awareness training so they can play their role in preventing incidents caused by social engineering attacks such as phishing scams.
You should also conduct regular security drills that simulate cyber attacks or other disruptions to business operations to keep everyone on their toes and ensure that everyone can respond to a security incident smoothly and collaboratively.
Collaboration on cybersecurity is especially critical for SMBs but can be challenging given the inherent resource constraints. Working with a managed service provider with a focus on security that can provide a vCISO can help your inhouse IT and security staff collaborate more effectively.
Phishing attacks are not just a threat to large organizations. Like all cybersecurity threats, itâs just as much as concern for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), who can pay a high price if they fall victim.
Phishing is a social engineering tactic â threat actors use deception to trick employees into sharing sensitive information or access credentials to critical systems through emails or messages that look as though they are coming from a reliable source and requesting the user to act.
Because SMBs face resource constraints when it comes to cybersecurity, including training that helps employees spot phishing scams, they are more likely to fall prey to these tactics, and the price tag for the business can be high.
Among the immediate, direct consequences of a successful phishing attack for SMBs are monetary loss, reputation damage, and the recovery costs.
Bad actors use phishing to get users to share sensitive financial information that can lead to unauthorized and fraudulent transactions to steal company funds, which puts the stability of the business of risk â perhaps to the point of being insolvent. In addition to money, a phishing attack can steal valuable intellectual property, which is also a financial loss, and can lead to a loss of competitive advantage.
Depending on the nature of the breach caused by the successful phishing attempt, the business could be subject to legal and regulatory fines.
Phishing attacks are also used to demand ransomware payments by holding business systems or critical data hostage through encryption â payment terms can be high if the business wants to get the data back.
Investigating and mitigating the costs of a phishing-related breach also cost time and money, as do the indirect costs such as disruption to business operations â if you canât serve your customers, you canât make money.
Another indirect cost of a phishing attack is higher insurance premiums if it results in a data breach or financial loss because the business is now viewed by their insurer as a higher-risk client.
Depending on the length of the interruption, a disabling phishing attack can harm your reputation and damage your relationship with your customers and even prevent new customers from trusting you with their business. Suppliers and partners may also reconsider whether they can continue to do business with you.
A successful phishing attack can have both immediate and long-term consequences for SMBs. A managed services provider with security expertise can help you make the right upfront cybersecurity investments to prevent phishing from costing you a lot more money as well as your reputation.
- July 25, 2024
- Catagory Risk Management
Robust Cybersecurity Needs More Than Tools and Technology
If money is no object, you can implement as many cybersecurity tools as there are available to secure your organization. But having the latest and greatest security technology doesnât guarantee your data and applications are safe â you need to manage risk, not rely on cybersecurity tools alone.
More tools bring more complexity, which can be challenging to manage. Youâll have the illusion of being secure, but if you canât make the most of your cybersecurity tools, you can still fall prey to the latest and greatest vulnerabilities and threats, which are constantly evolving. The best cybersecurity tools can still be misconfigured, underused or not even switched on.
Human error and inside threats can thwart even the best security technology, and the complexity that comes with excessive cybersecurity tool deployment can make for a bad user experience that hinders employee productivity or even spurs them to find workarounds that can put your organization at risk.
Overcompensating by spending a lot on cybersecurity tools that arenât properly configured or fully used are especially risky for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) because it creates the illusion of robust security â if they arenât fully optimized, applications and data arenât protected.
Your risk management strategy should inform you cybersecurity tool investments.
Assess Your Risks First
Itâs not a matter of if your organization will fall prey to a cybersecurity threat or data breach, itâs a matter of when. By understanding your risk factors, you can select the right tools and deploy them more effectivity without bogging down the organization with unnecessary complexity that does more harm than good.
The key to establishing and maintaining robust security is to adopt an âassess, protect and respondâ mindset. Your cybersecurity tools should be chosen based on an assessment of your organizationâs risk, understanding what your critical assets are, and identifying vulnerabilities.
Rather than trying to protect everything, you should do a thorough assessment of your critical assets â mission critical applications, sensitive information and intellectual property, and essential data.
Buying an elaborate cybersecurity platform and telling it to protect everything doesnât guarantee it will protect your most critical assets. Once you identify them, you can assess how they might be threatened, how you can best protect them, and how you can mitigate any cybersecurity incident through a well-thought out response plan.
The reality is most SMBs canât afford to deploy elaborate cybersecurity solutions, which means they must prioritize protecting their most critical assets from threats and vulnerabilities.
Risk-Based Cybersecurity Is A Continuum
No matter what cybersecurity tools you opt to deploy, managing security risk an ongoing affair â you canât set and forget your security platform. Protecting your organization must also include ongoing security training for employees, keeping all applications and systems updated and patched, and continuous assessment and monitoring.
Taking a balanced approach also includes planning for the worst â you must have a response plan in place when a disruption occurs. Having great cybersecurity tools can help bolster your security posture, but they wonât safeguard your organization on their own.
By evaluating and managing risk first, you can deploy the right cybersecurity tools that can help you to assess, protect and respond to any threats.
- May 30, 2024
- Catagory cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is an Executive Management Concern
Cybersecurity hasnât been just an IT management issue for a long time, but executive management canât afford to sit on the sidelines when data breaches continue to threaten the reputation and financial stability of the organization.
The executive management of many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often make the mistake of thinking the organization isnât of interest to threat actors, when in fact their cybersecurity risk is just as significant as large enterprises. They assume their IT teams have put in place the necessary technology and resources to protect the organization, and that the cloud-based applications they run are completely secured by the vendors and service providers.
Cybersecurity is also a line item in a budget, and executive management may feel as though they cannot justify the necessary spending given the pressure to manage wages, shareholder expectations and other costs while keeping the prices of their own products and services competitive.
It can also be difficult for executive management to understand the return-on-investment (ROI) of strategic cybersecurity spending, but the upfront and ongoing costs of robust security are cheaper than the financial consequences of a data breach.
The disruption caused by a cybersecurity incident will cost your business money because it invariably leads to the inability to operate at full capacity â your business can be completely unable to serve customers for not only hours, but days or longer.
This inability to serve customers not only leads to a loss of business and revenue due to the disruption itself, but also due to loss of reputation, which is damaged in the eyes of customer and suppliers. Depending on your regulatory obligations and your industry, you may face audits, investigations and even fines, which are far more expensive than investing in strong cybersecurity.
Executive management must stay in the loop and understand where the organization stands when it comes to its security posture. They must demand regular assessments, so they have confidence in what cybersecurity defences are working well, which ones need improvement, and which ones are non-existent.
By having clear visibility into the cybersecurity strategy of the organization, executive management can understand how investments can be made to improve security and how they align with business uptime objectives and regulatory compliance obligations.
Developing your own internal cybersecurity risk assessment will allow you to tailor it to the realities of your business, but you should consider aligning with well-established cybersecurity frameworks and the seek the input of outside experts. A managed security services provider can help assess your current state of security and help you implement protection and response strategies will give everyone peace of mind, including executive management.
- May 14, 2024
- Catagory IT management
Human Factors Threaten SMB Cybersecurity Efforts
Small and medium-sized businesses may be spending more on cybersecurity, but human factors still pose a significant threat.
A recent survey by password manager provider LastPass found that although SMBs have become proactive with security investments, a survey of more than 600 business and IT security leaders from companies with fewer than 3,000 employees found that human factors continue to make them vulnerable to attacks by cybercriminals.
The LastPass survey found there was a gap between how SMB leaders were tackling cybersecurity and employee behaviours.
The good news is that SMB executives have increased their attention and investment when it comes to cybersecurity. The LastPass survey found that 90% of IT leaders and 80% of non-IT leaders reported an increased focus on cybersecurity measures over the past year, with 82% of businesses boosting their cybersecurity budgets.
The bad news is thereâs a disconnect between executives and their employees. Most executives and IT leaders said they feel confident about their cybersecurity measures, with only 30% of leaders believing their company faces a high risk of cybersecurity threats.
However, among the rank and file, only 78% of non-IT leaders believe employees understand the security expectations of their jobs, the survey found. More troublesome is that 1 out of 5 non-IT leaders admits to circumventing security policies, while 1 in 10 IT security leaders admits to circumventing security policies.
The LastPass survey suggests that despite increased investment in cybersecurity, their efforts are being undone by employee behavior. To get the most from their security budget, SMBs need to be mindful of the human factors that make the organization more vulnerable to an attack and subsequent data breach.
Small steps go a long way, and LastPass makes five key recommendations to encourage employee behavior that mitigates human factors that might put the organization at increased risk:
Ramp up cybersecurity education: SMBs should develop clear communication strategies and regular training sessions for all employees so they understand their role in maintaining robust cybersecurity, and every part of the organization must understand and commit to security policies.
Create incentives: SMBs should have stronger incentives for security compliance, balanced by stricter consequences for violations as well as policies for when itâs acceptable to bypass security measures to get work done. A culture of for reporting violations must also be fostered.
Embrace threat intelligence: SMB leaders must be able to identify and protect valuable and critical business information and know where the threats are coming from by investing in a threat intelligence-led security program.
Mandate password managers: Password management requires critical attention, according to the survey, so password managers combined with continuous education on password security are essential.
Brace for AI threats: Phishing attacks, cloud vulnerabilities, and the potential for business data loss due to ransomware attacks or malware are getting help from AI, so itâs important to fight fire with fire and adopt AI-driven security tools that provide advanced threat detection and response capabilities.
Cybersecurity is a continuum, and SMBs canât be complacent even with increased investment. Human factors must be continually addressed through education, policy, and technology adoption.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are not much different than larger organizations when it comes to sensitive data or IT infrastructure, which makes them a popular target of cyberattacks.
Often, threat actors use the same methods to attack SMBs as they do enterprise organizations.
Viruses
Viruses and malware remain a popular tool for threat actors who want to hinder an organizationâs IT infrastructure. Once a virus finds its way through one endpoint, such as a business workstation, it spreads through email messages or sharing of infected files across the network.
Ransomware
A ransomware attack involves a hacker taking control of computers and servers and then locking authorized users out. Access can only be regained by paying the hackers a ransom. Worse yet, control may not be given back even after the ransom is paid.
Phishing
Phishing attacks are a little subtler than viruses, malware, and ransomware in that they trick users into sharing sensitive information, including credentials, financial information, and valuable intellectual property through social engineering techniques. Your employees are misled by professional looking emails and slick websites that look like the real deal but were designed to deceive and collect sensitive data.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
The server that hosts a companyâs website gets many requests from other computers that it responds to. Threat actors launch a DDoS attack by sending millions of fake requests which overwhelms the server â all its focus and processing power is trying to respond to each of these phony requests and it becomes unable to provide access to real users.
Your Own Employees
Unfortunately, your own people can present a threat to your cybersecurity, most often through human error. If an employee fails to practice adequate security hygiene by neglecting to properly protect their credentials by connecting remotely via an VPN, threat actors can weasel their way in and gain increasing levels of access to more sensitive areas of your network and key systems.
Sometimes breaches can be physical because someone accidently leaves their device unattended while working on the road or leaving a door open to a server room. Worse yet is when a disgruntled employee decides to misuse their credentials for their own profit and steak intellectual property, customer data or financial information.
Assess, Protect and Respond
SMBs must mirror their larger counterparts if they want to avoid cyberattacks and be proactive. Itâs critical that you assess your security posture, implement the capabilities to protect users, customers and data, and be prepared to respond to any threat to mitigate it and reduce the risk to your business operations and your reputation.
- September 14, 2023
- Catagory Security
SMBs Must Confront Cybersecurity Challenges Head On
If youâre a small or medium-sized business (SMB), youâre a prime target for threat actors who want to poke holes in your cybersecurity.
While enterprises are valuable targets due to the wealth of data they transmit and store, todayâs digital landscape means size doesnât matter â every business is storing information that is worth stealing. However, SMBs face greater resource constraints, not only in terms of cybersecurity, but IT in general, even though they still handle plenty of sensitive customer data, including financial and health information, as well as valuable intellectual property.
If youâre an SMB, you probably work with bigger companies, which means youâre part of a supply chain. And while you think youâre too small to matter, you can be a vector for bad actors to attack your business partners.
Todayâs cybersecurity landscape means SMBs must be aware of the common threats to their business, as well as understand how to contribute to a more secure supply chain.
What SMBs are up against
Viruses and malware remain the most common threats to your cybersecurity. Keep in mind itâs not only external threats that SMBs must be mindful of â your employees can help to open the door to threats through human error by opening a suspicious email, clicking on an attachment, or not taking more care to select unique, strong passwords.
Insiders may even intentionally compromise your cybersecurity by using their credentials to access data they shouldnât. Even an honest mistake by an employee can open the door to sensitive information, leading to a breach or even a ransomware attack that cripples your operations and damages your reputation. Social engineering in the form of phishing attacks trick employees into divulging information or allowing unauthorized access to applications and systems.
The most common approach threat actors use to disrupt business and cause SMBs downtime are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which flood your web servers with fake requests as to render them useless to everyone, including your employees and your customers.
As new technology emerges, the cybercriminals find new opportunities. As SMBs move the cloud, so do threat actors by âcloud jackingâ â they target vulnerabilities in the cloud infrastructure. Hackers are also using the latest technologies to launch their attacks, such as networks of botnets to distribute spam and steal data. Advances in artificial intelligence and deepfake technology make it even easier for SMBs to be tricked by fake content that might cause an employee to share privileged information or their access credentials.
No matter the technique, a data breach can lead to a disruption of your business or downtime â both of which always lead to lost revenue.
Cybersecurity essentials
Itâs easy for SMBs to get overwhelmed by todayâs cybersecurity requirements, but you can better protect your business from the many threats lurking in the digital landscape.
- Assess: You need to know where your vulnerabilities are, especially when it comes to remote work, which should be enabled by a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
- Educate: Your employees play a key role in securing your organizations through awareness training and good security hygiene, including the use of strong passwords, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and access management technologies.
- Update and patch: Make sure you are using anti-virus software and keeping it updated, as well as applying any patches to applications and systems.
- Secure your networks: Aside from VPNs, be sure deploy robust firewall security along and intrusion detection systems, and regular network monitoring.
- Back up critical data: Itâs not a question of if a disruption will occur, but when. Being able to restore data allows you to recover from an attack quickly and avoid downtime.
The most important thing to remember is that your cybersecurity posture is never assured â you must continue to run regular audits, as well as update incident response and disaster recovery plans.
Given the resource constraints commonly faced by SMBs, consider turning to a managed service provider with cybersecurity expertise. They can help you conduct an assessment and maintain a state of ongoing readiness that allows you to handle the whatever threat comes your way.
- July 26, 2023
- Catagory Security
Your Next Data Breach is Going to Be More Expensive
The cost of a data breach is going up.
Thatâs according to IBMâs annual survey that found the average breach cost of 553 organizations studied over the course of 12 months ending March 30, 2023, tallied US$4.45 million â a 2.3 per cent increase compared to a year earlier. Itâs also a whopping 15.3 per cent since IBMâs 2020 report. (Research for the study was conducted by the Ponemon Institute.)
Although Canadian companies are faring better than last year with the cost of data breaches at the 28 organizations included in the study dropping a bit from C$7 million to $6.9 million, Canada was the geography with the third highest breach costs behind the U.S., which was first, and a grouping of Middle East countries, which placed second.
Itâs important to note these costs donât include any ransomware or extortion payments organizations may have made, or the cost to recover from an incident.
As reported by IT World Canada, Canadaâs breaches were more expensive â double that of Australia, for example. In the article, a partner in IBM Canadaâs security consulting and delivery practice speculated that many of the Canadian organizations included the study were regulated industries, where recovery costs are higher, while noting the overall trend is heading in the wrong direction.
A notable data point in the IBM study is that two thirds of breaches were report by an outsourced / third party rather than their own security team discovering the breach. This indicates many Canadian organizations donât have the right level of monitoring and insights to provide the network visibility necessary to prevent and mitigate breaches.
Another interesting stat was that organizations with high DevSecOps adoption had less costlier data breaches. Aside from getting your application development teams to âshift leftâ with DevSecOps, the best strategies for lowering the average cost a data breach according to the IBM study were employee awareness training, a regularly tested incident response plan, and leveraging artificial intelligence or machine learning insights.
IBM recommends following the âbasicsâ as they are most effective tools for preventing data breaches â user threat intelligence, robust identity and access management, employee awareness training and setting up a zero-trust IT architecture, as well as leveraging AI and automation to reduce the burden on security teams. These should be complemented by a strong incident response plan, so the organization is ready to mitigate and recover quickly in the event of a breach.
Given the dynamic landscape security teams must navigate, as well as the pressure to retain talent, organizations should consider looking to a managed service provider â they can help to evaluate your current security posture and provide ongoing staff and resources to complement your IT staff.
- March 28, 2023
- Catagory Human Resources
Employee Burnout Threatens Cybersecurity Resilience
Attracting IT talent, especially cybersecurity experts, remains a challenge even amid layoffs, but so is keeping them. The last thing you want to do is contribute to employee burnout.
Itâs just as big a threat as the growing number of cybersecurity threats as your IT teams struggle to do more with less after a tumultuous three years due to the waning pandemic. Employees of all stripes are experiencing burnout, which as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) is the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
The solution can be found in the WHO definition; employee burnout can be managed, even when it affects your cybersecurity staff.
Detect the signs of employee burnout
In the same way you want your cybersecurity to be proactive and detect anomalies before they become a major incident, employee burnout can not only be managed, but also prevented so that IT teams can remain engaged and avoid exhaustion.
For cybersecurity professionals in particular, workplace stress stems from the nature of the work â their environments are always active because the organization is constantly under threat. It means handling alerts throughout out the day to prevent and mitigate threats while also ensuring that long-term strategic security initiatives are met. Just making sure the security operation center is adequately staffed off hours causes stress and contributes to employee burnout. You need to make sure you have people available on-call while also giving everyone enough time to wind down if youâre to prevent burnout.
At the end of the day, employee burnout within your cybersecurity team can pose just as big a risk to your security posture as threat actors trying to compromise your IT infrastructure.
Cybersecurity resilience depends on people
Just like potential security risks, employee burnout has warning signs. Chief among them is the phenomenon of quiet quitting â thatâs when staff experience depersonalization and increased cynicism. They will also feel emotionally depleted and feel as though theyâre being less effective.
Employee burnout can affect the entire cybersecurity team, regardless of their role, and lead to actual quitting. A single, small incident can be the tipping point after prolonged periods of stress on the job â cybersecurity staff are constantly in âfight or flightâ mode, and itâs ultimately unsustainable.
Just as you mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities, you want to prevent employee burnout â prevention is worth a pound of cure. You need to build up psychological resilience among your team by ensuring your team is confident they can handle what comes there way and being able to adapt to changing situations.
And no matter their job role, your employees need to have a clear sense of purpose as well as adequate social support â trust and relationships are especially important for cybersecurity team if they are to avoid burnout. It also started from the top â if youâre leading your IT staff or a security team, you need to take care of yourself â if youâre depleted, everyone else will feed off of that. Building up your own psychological resilience and instilling the ability in others will boost morale â preventing employee burnout is both about personal responsibility and team effort.
Technology does play a role, too. If your cybersecurity team doesnât feel they have the right tools for the job, it will contribute to their disengagement. And if they feel theyâre understaffed and doing more than their fair share, theyâre going to look for greener pastures rather than work harder to compensate for the staffing shortage.
Exploiting automation as much as possible will allow your employees to focus on more rewarding activities and will reduce their stress â they will feel as though they are spending time on projects that that truly matter. Turning to a managed service provider who can take on some responsibilities and complement your cybersecurity team can also alleviate the pressure and further reduce the likelihood of employee burnout.
- January 17, 2023
- Catagory remote work
Remember the basics of remote work security
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, remote work isnât going away, so you need always be mindful of some core security measures that protects what looks to be a perpetual hybrid workplace.
These measures are both technical and cultural in nature â your people are just as critical as the security technology you deploy to accommodate remote work.
The most obvious step you can take on the technology front is to regularly update and monitor your network security. This includes applying the latest security patches and upgrades to all devices, including updates to operating systems as well as keeping your antivirus and antimalware programs current. Donât forget hardware updates such as those for your routers and switches, either.
A strong technology foundation is critical to remote work security and should also include secure VPN access for any employee working outside the office, as well as multi-factor authentication (MFA), both of which lay the groundwork for creating a Zero Trust environment. Also essential are tools for monitoring your environment so you have a complete understanding of whatâs connected to your infrastructure, whether itâs devices that support remote work or other devices and services, including internet of things (IoT) devices. You should be able to interrogate the network so you can know for certain how every connected device behaves at the packet level.
In the era of remote work, MFA is a must have, and illustrates how critical the intersection of technology and people is to security. Employing MFA recognizes that even the best passwords can be broken and that the users who select and use them make mistakes. This is where employee education comes into play so all users, remote or otherwise, understand good password etiquette and the benefits of adding another layer of security with MFA.
User education is also the best defence against phishing emails, which remain the most common threat to your sensitive data. The upheaval of the pandemic has made for good cover for threat actors who send convincing emails that open the door to malware and ransomware.
The culture of your organization has always been critical for maintaining robust security, and the sudden switch to remote work was a stark reminder of that. Even as many employees return to the office, itâs a great time to remind your entire team that remote work requires the same level of attention to best practices around storing and security mission critical data.
The return to the office should also be seen as an opportunity to take another look at your entire security strategy â consider tapping into the expertise of a managed service provider to help you re-evaluate and refresh your technology and best practices.
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