The security of your business’ digital assets is extremely important, which is why it is disheartening when we see so few organizations taking the steps they need to sufficiently protect them. We thought we would go through some practices that will help you protect these assets and start you on your way to developing a security strategy of your own.
Establish Definitions
The first thing you need to decide is what you consider a cybersecurity problem. Depending on the size and complexity of your business’ IT, you may not consider the same issues to be problems as another business would. Your aims are obviously to keep control over your data, and to have no vulnerabilities. How can you do that for your particular setup? That is the hard part. Identifying the threats you want to eliminate is a good first step.
It’s also imperative that you document every policy, process, and alteration you make regarding your business’ cybersecurity platform. You will need to write this in a manner that will allow your staff--the people that are going to be responsible for keeping threats out--can understand it.
Establish Processes
Once you’ve defined your threats, you will need to start educating your employees. This is when you will want to refer to your documentation and make sure that best practices are in there and easy for your staff to understand. This means making up standards that apply to all types of situations such as:
- Remote and database access
- Bandwidth policies
- Authentication procedures
- Compliance regulations
As you document your cybersecurity policies, you will want to ensure that you have the following information:
- What protections are in place (and what they protect against)
- What backup policies are in place
- What the updating/patching process looks like regarding your protections
You will also need to ensure that you have documented contact information for anyone that relies on your network and data in the case that disaster recovery and business continuity policies need to be enacted.
Establish Accountability
Once all is put in place and completely documented, your next step is to ensure that all people you’ve set up rules and regulations for understands them, and more importantly, understands what practices will put the company in jeopardy. This requires training. You need to be sure that any staff you put your trust in, respects that they have a crucial role in protecting the business.
You will definitely want to review the typical threats they would encounter, such as phishing scams. Most people don’t understand how to build a secure network, and as a result, they are the ones you need to train up to ensure they at the very least understand their role in the organization’s network security.
We've found that many employees will take the cue from their manager who takes these issues seriously. The ones that don’t, and repeatedly put your business in tough situations have to know that there are consequences to ignorance. They need to understand that their negligent actions are putting the whole business in jeopardy.
Are you looking to beef up your cybersecurity; or, do you need help getting your people trained? Let’s get started. Call the professionals at Data Net today at (760) 466-1200.
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