Cyber attacks today in the era of Covid occur more and more frequently, and their severity is constantly increasing. While large companies can withstand the devastation of an attack, small businesses can be destroyed. How to defend yourself? Cyber security is a primary concern today for businesses across all industries. There is a dramatic increase in the type and number of attacks perpetrated against companies and organizations.
The Most Common Cyber Attacks
Cyber threats can cause unprecedented challenges for businesses and organizations, including ransomware, phishing, hacking, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Cyber-attacks have caused the loss of personal data, interruptions of various services for shorter or longer periods, and damage to the reputation of companies and institutions, with severe losses on the one hand and significant fines by the regulatory authorities.
Cyber attacks today in the era of Covid occur more and more frequently, and their severity is constantly increasing. While large companies can withstand the devastation of an attack, small businesses can be destroyed. So what should companies do to prevent attacks and prepare for an attack when it occurs? All companies, large and small, must invest in IT “security” and IT “resilience.”
Cyber-Security And Cyber-Resilience, The Differences
Cyber security refers to a company’s ability to safeguard its systems and prevent growing cyber threats. Cyber resilience is about a company’s ability to mitigate damage to its processes, procedures, and reputation, as well as resume operations after its data or systems have been breached. Building cyber resilience will require dealing with malicious threats (from hackers and other malicious actors) and non-antagonistic threats caused simply by human error.
The difference between cybersecurity and cyber resilience is not very pronounced. However, resilience means accepting that all cybersecurity solutions may not be perfect, and therefore you must protect yourself from all possible cyber threats. This concept motivates my analysis, so a company is now required to solve IT security and resilience problems. Companies design a cybersecurity strategy to minimize the risk of attacks reaching their networks. On the other hand, a cyber resilience approach will help reduce the impact of a cyber-attack.
Security Strategies
Cybersecurity strategies will include steps such as:
- Ensure that all devices are running on the latest firmware;
- Running up-to-date antivirus/malware, VPN, and firewall software;
- Provide all correct software and tools with the latest patches;
- All company employees are informed about potential cyber threats and how their actions can help defend their organization.
The Resilience Strategies
Resilience strategies information technology is not as clear-cut and varies from organization to organization. The rule of thumb is to identify where cyber events and incidents can negatively impact your business, particularly where the most sensitive and valuable data is stored and used. It will also be necessary to integrate the vision on how the main functions can be influenced by an attack, with the ability to guarantee continuity to the interrupted service.
The resilience strategy should focus on creating measures to mitigate damage in an attack. Creating backups for all data, including the “old” offline backups and defining procedures – which must be tested “first” – to allow the subsequent recovery due to a possible attack are concrete acts of my concept. An excellent cyber incident response plan greatly aids cyber resilience. The program will clarify the following:
- What needs to be done once a breach or attack occurs;
- Who is the person responsible for carrying out the steps described;
- How to communicate with stakeholders;
- How to report attacks to regulators – done this with purely legal connotations;
- How to evaluate and report the success or failure of resilience measures;
- How the main functions need to be restored quickly;
- How to recover lost data.
A reliable cyber incident response plan will help a company build a response team with representatives from each department. The response team will be responsible for notifying an attack or breach and coordinating a rapid response to stop the attack. Finally, both cybersecurity and resilience require investments in training, time, and resources by each facility. These investments will be fully repaid in due course, particularly whenever your organization repels an attack or efficiently reactivates its functions following a different cyber attack.
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