How To Protect Your Business Assets From Cyber Attacks – Do’s and Don’ts

Protecting your business and finances from cybercriminals is crucial in today’s ever-advancing world, where cyber threats are evolving on an everyday basis. Just following simple cybersecurity measures are not enough. Businesses need to understand that even amateur cybercriminals are able to inject high-level malicious software these days.

So, are you able to provide a secure and well-structured digital workspace to your business? Let’s check out some do’s and don’ts which can be followed for the safety of your personal assets and business.

Do’s of Cybersecurity

Maintain Asset Inventory & Identify Assets For Cyber Protection:

Maintaining Asset inventory is the first logical step for any organization starting to manage their cyber and privacy risks, because we cannot protect what we can’t see. Organizations should track all technologies, software and data in their asset inventory.

A typical inventory sheet may include Hardware (systems & network devices), Software & Licenses, Internal network segments & Public IPs, Privilege & Service IDs, Sensitive Information, Crown Jewels, owner of the assets and assets criticality. Having this information handy, enables you to make key decisions about your risk posture and to ensure that all assets are covered by security considerations.

Use Of Complex Passwords

It is a challenge to remember multiple complex passwords and due to this challenge, people usually keep short and weak passwords. Easier the password, the greater the risk. A password which is difficult to figure out makes it extremely difficult for cyber criminals to break into the system. The more complex the password, the lower the risk that one’s system and infra will fail victim to cyber-attack. To reduce the risk, make sure that you must use strong and long passwords of at least 12 to 15 characters, including the combination of capital, lowercase letters, special symbols and numbers. Always remember to use hard-to-guess passwords or passphrases

If you still feel that you can’t remember all the passwords, implement a password vault and store all your critical passwords in the same. But, never compromise with the strength of the password.

Change The Passwords Frequently

Use distinct passwords for all the accounts. This ensures that other accounts will not get affected if one of your account passwords is compromised. Dont forget to change the passwords regularly and make sure the strength of your password is strong as mentioned above. If you are thinking how you can change the passwords without breaking the routine, then we advise you to implement the right set of password management tools and if implementing a tool is not possible then set a reminder to avoid any miss

Implement Two-Factor Authentication

Using complex passwords to protect your important information is not enough. Cyber Criminals guys are active to find out your passwords. They can easily guess the usual passwords once they know your birthplace, birth date, school, college, pets name, siblings and more by using social engineering. So, it is very important to implement two-factor authentication for the increased protection of the information, it adds an additional layer of protection.

Limit The Administrative Rights

The administrator accounts get the rights to install and remove the software and applications from the computer. Most personal computers consider you as an “administrator”, and most cyberattacks rely on your activities. The time you land on any site affected with malware, it infects your computer directly. However, chances of saving your computer increases, if you are not a computer’s administrator.

Keep Backup Of Everything

As stated earlier, whatever controls and technology you implement but there is nothing called absolute security and backup is the last thing that helps in the worst case scenario of recovery. As a best practice, to ensure the safety of your data, one should follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy. It simply states to keep 3 copies of data, which is production data and 2 backup copies on two different media with one copy in off-site storage for disaster recovery scenario. These days, many affordable off-site backup systems are available which allow you to save your data and update the changes automatically in the background.

For the local copy, you need an external hard drive or a separate storage device to maintain it. A comprehensive backup and recovery process that evaluates recovery point and recovery time objectives uses multiple mechanisms, including snapshots, replication, and full backups, to ensure that you can recover data with a minimum of effort and data loss.

Educate Your Employees

As the saying goes “Security is only as strong as the weakest link”. Awareness of your each and every staff is very crucial to safeguard your business assets. Educate your employees, so that they also follow the cyber security best practices and if they find any suspicious activity in the environment, then they can contact the respective stakeholders as soon as possible. Implementing the awareness for basic controls like “locking your computer and mobile phone when not in use and following clear desk and clear screen policy” helps tremendously in achieving the security and protecting the data from unauthorized access and use.

Don’ts of Cybersecurity

Don’t Do Anything Without Thinking

Cyber criminals know how to use your familiarity with family, friends or businesses to make you a victim of cyberattacks. Whenever you receive an email from your close one / Colleagues / Seniors with some link in it, then give it a quick thought – “Do you expect this email?”. Other than this, many times, Cyber Criminals create and send the email that looks from a trusted source, including the bank or corporate logos and some description in it. Banks and reputed organisations never send an email asking for a password change request or your account details. So, never respond to these emails, and you can also report them spam if you don’t find them genuine.

Don’t Click On Random Links.

A single random click on a malicious website can ruin your whole reputation and business. Clicking a malicious link can initiate an automatic download of malware into your computer / device. Downloaded malware creates a path for the cyber criminals to compromise and gain access to your device. Best way to protect against this is to avoid clicking on any link, which seems suspicious.

Always verify before clicking on any link. Always pay attention to phishing traps in email and watch for tell-tale signs of a scam. DON’T open mail or attachments from an untrusted source. If you receive a suspicious email, the best thing to do is to delete the message and report it

Use Of Public Wi-Fi And Posting Of Private Or Sensitive Information On Public Sites:

Never post any private or sensitive information, such as Identify card numbers, passwords or other private information, on public sites, including social media sites, and DONT send it through email unless authorized to do so. DON’T be tricked into giving away confidential information. It’s easy for an unauthorized person to call and pretend to be an employee or business partner. DON’T respond to phone calls or emails requesting confidential data in an unusual manner with urgency. Always use privacy settings on social media sites to restrict access to your personal information.

Don’t Rely On Antivirus Programs.

Antivirus programs safeguard you from most of the cyber-attacks but still, it doesn’t give complete protection from threats. Antivirus programs provide a way to protect against known threats. The effectiveness of an antivirus program is majorly dependent on how often it is updated. Instead of relying on traditional antivirus, cybersecurity today demands the use of endpoint security solutions that combine antivirus with host firewalls, intrusion detection systems, behaviour response and other technology to provide comprehensive protection.

If you don’t have an in-house team, you can hire top cybersecurity consultants in Delhi NCR or in your region.

Many experts and Penetration Testing in Delhi NCR are available in the market nowadays, and you just have to find the best. We (Cybersec Knights) are also one of them, protecting our customers from cyber-attacks. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information.

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