staff Cyber risk is a critical issue for businesses of all sizes and types. Defending against threats requires a strong team of security professionals with extensive knowledge of best practices and industry regulations.
Despite this, many organizations still struggle to manage cyber risks effectively. To help you develop a more robust cyber risk management strategy, we’ve put together six best practices that will guide you in building your cybersecurity framework.
Identify and Prioritize Threats
The first step in managing cyber risk is identifying and prioritizing threats. This process can help ensure the most critical security flaws and threat trends are addressed before they cause harm to your business or customers.
In addition, this process can help you minimize the likelihood of a cyber breach or data loss and ensure a secure mobile device. This can save your company time, money, and resources.
To do this, you must start by identifying and documenting all assets within your cybersecurity assessment scope. This includes physical and logical systems and devices. Engaging in thorough assessments, such as those provided by FRSecure Cybersecurity Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Services, for example, can help to ensure vulnerabilities are identified and addressed quickly, keeping your business secure.
Next, you need to determine the likelihood of each risk scenario actually occurring and its impact if it did. Using a risk likelihood model is the best way to do this. Technology Risk, as part of IT Advisory, provides assurance and advisory services to clients to assist them in identifying risks and establishing appropriate controls and security measures arising from information systems and technology. Technology Risk Consultant raises boardroom awareness of technology risk while assisting clients in ensuring that their technology selection supports their strategy and operations – safely, securely, and consistently.
Develop a Continuity Plan
A continuity plan is essential for ensuring that critical business processes continue operating during and after an incident. This helps to keep employees working and minimize the impact of a disruption on your company’s reputation and brand image.
To develop a continuity plan, identify all of your business’s risks. This will allow you to determine the recovery strategies most critical to your operations.
IT administrators often create a continuity plan, but executives should also be involved. This will ensure that the projects are regularly updated and include all the critical elements your company needs to survive a crisis.
Implement Secure Boot
Secure Boot ensures that only validated programs run at computer start-up. This prevents unauthorized programs from running and bypassing antivirus software detection.
It also protects systems against firmware rootkits that attackers can use to hide malware from the operating system.
The microcontroller must have a secure memory that stores the essential information required to verify the software signature. Depending on the implementation, this fast memory may need to be read-only or read-and-write protected.
The microcontroller can then sign and verify firmware modules, Options ROMs, OS Bootloader code and other devices. Then, it can authorize the components to load and run.
Create a Disaster Recovery Plan
A cybersecurity disaster recovery plan is the best way to keep your IT infrastructure and digital assets operational in case of a cyberattack or other business disruption. This plan should include a detailed description of the systems and technologies your company relies on and how they can be backed up and restored.
In addition, it should outline how your organization would recover from a natural disaster or another unexpected event that threatens to destabilize your operations and disrupt customer relationships.
Create a disaster recovery plan for each significant system or technology your organization depends on and determine how long it will take to restore those systems or technologies in the event of a cyber-attack or other business disruption. It’s also essential to define what privileged credentials and system admin rights team members can access during an emergency.
Educate Your Employees
Educating your employees about best practices for managing cyber risk is essential to ensuring your business’s security. This includes educating them about common cybersecurity threats such as phishing attacks and social engineering.
Employees should also be educated on how to protect their personal information. For example, they should keep login credentials, credit card numbers, or other personal information private via email.
They should also be taught how to identify a suspicious email or web link and what to do if they notice that a message seems too good to be true.
Cybercriminals are savvier every day and will increasingly try to trick your employees into divulging personal or confidential information. They can do this through phishing or social engineering scams, as well as through email spoofing and malicious links.
