How Secure is your Business, really…..
- nalenequick
- Aug 25, 2021
- 3 min read
There are many companies that believe they are secure until they are hacked. Or instead of paying the few thousand to secure the business, they wait until they are hacked or have a ransomware situation which not only costs them more money (in lawsuits, and penalties) but also costs them their trust and credibility with their clients. Now the questions start spinning as to how this happened, where was the breakdown, how do we prevent this from happening again? (AGAIN should not exist but it does).......
Then the inevitable will absolutely need to be discussed.
How much will this cost to fix?
How much will this cost to prevent it from happening again?
Will we get fined?
Will we get sued?
Will insurance cover these costs?
Will we lose our customers because they don’t trust they are protected?
How much are you willing to spend or can spend to get your data back from a ransomware attack?
In some instances, an incident can bankrupt your business.
Insurance may not be as helpful in regards to cyberattacks as you would hope.
NO PRODUCT OR PROVIDER CAN GUARANTEE YOU WON’T GET HACKED EVEN WITH THEIR PRODUCTS; HOWEVER, THEY CAN GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL GET HIT AS SOME POINT IF YOU DON’T SECURE YOUR DATA.
Now the benefit of being proactive is that you only have to worry about the cost to be reactive or any of the fees and penalties of not being secure.
Steps to take to secure business:
Low hanging fruit
One quick, easy, and effective way to prevent some of the attacks would be to enforce multifactor authentication for all applications:
Does your security policy include:
Check, scrub, and audit all users and ensure they are still employed with you.
Audit your system and policies to ensure adherence.
Are your patches and updates done?
Are all of the passwords set to expire at 30,60,90 days?
Have you checked your logs to see if you were hacked or have unusual activity?
Are you using multiple security products to ensure you are covered?
How would you know if you have an insider threat (deliberate or not)?
How do you audit your WFA (Work from anywhere) users?
What policies do you have in place for your WFA users?
How often the security policy is updated?
AUDITS
Do regular audits internally and have a third party do an audit as well (periodically) to ensure you are secure.
Audit users
Audit devices
Audit how information is accessed and if was opened, sent, or downloaded? VERY IMPORTANT FOR CUSTOMERS WITH SENSITIVE INFORMATION. Personal (PCI , HIPAA, or HR), client, and business
Audit passwords
Audit Access
Issues don’t just occur at corporate office on the servers, with WFA, Questions will need to be asked about securing devices and connectivity:
What happens when one of your employee’s laptops stop working, gets lost, or gets stolen?
How long are they not working until a replacement is provided?
What data is on that laptop that could put you at risk?
Can you remotely wipe the data from that laptop?
Can the data be recreated if it is not cloud based?
What is the cost of a new laptop?
How long does it take to set up new users and provide access as needed?
How secure is the information when people are working from anywhere?
Do you have VPN for those users working remotely?
How to Create a more efficient, inexpensive, and secure way?
For the above question, the best way is to create a desktop as a service or virtual desktop scenario. This is what it will do:
If the users laptop is gone, the employee can use another device to gain access in a secure way and nothing is ever lost.
Since this is all cloud based, and you have set up multifactor authentication, if your device gets lost or stolen, your data is safe as it is all cloud based and not on the device itself.
Laptops can be expensive, so if you are using a cloud service for their desktop image, you only need a thin client computer to access. Does not need to be expensive.
You can set up multiple desktop images based on your users needs and assign them as needed.
You can ensure your data is not downloaded and sent to someone that it should not go to. Internal threats, whether purposely or not on purpose is a big problem.
You can ensure all of your remote users are set up securely, no matter where they are.
Since Covid, providers have switched to working with the remote user base to ensure everything they need is provided and operates as if they are in the office. Companies quickly adapted to WFA during Covid out of necessity and may have started using products that they did not have time to VET or research out of desperation. Now is the time to start looking for a more permanent solution that works for everyone.
Don't assume corporate is the only one at risk, there are more risks now with remote users.
Comments