The growing number of cybersecurity attacks is a big worry for businesses but more so is the increasing complexity of those attacks. This forces businesses to invest in expensive cybersecurity tools and services, which increases the cybersecurity cost.
Most businesses do not prioritize security and follow a reactive approach to cybersecurity, which leads to their downfall. What is even worse is that most businesses lack the incident response plan as a result they do not know how to respond to cyberattacks. This makes them more vulnerable to cyber attack damages. The best way to overcome all these challenges is to create a comprehensive cybersecurity plan for your business.
In this article, you will learn about seven steps you can take to create a cybersecurity plan that your employees support.
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1. Long Term Planning
“Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent return on energy!”—Brian Tracy
The first thing you need to do is to avoid shortsightedness and create a long-term plan for cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity industry is evolving at a rapid pace with new trends, tools and technologies replacing older ones. Mostly, these new trends, tools and technologies are here to stay so it is better to plan for the long term. Let us say, you want to switch to cloud in future and ditch best dedicated servers hosting, then you should create a cybersecurity plan for securing your cloud.
2. Education Comes First
Darren Guccione, CEO, and co-founder of Keeper Security eluded to the time when hackers strike, “When there is a lot of chaos, that is when they like to strike.” According to him, even a little education and awareness about cybersecurity threats can go a long way in securing businesses from cyberattacks. Tell your employees how common hacking attempts, data breaches and cybersecurity attack work. The more they know about these attacks, the less likely they are to fall victim to social engineering attacks which are quite common.
3. Be Consistent with Trainings
Despite all the automation which is taking place left right and center, there is still a lot of human involvement in cybersecurity. This means that human associated risks will still be there. That is why it is important to follow up education with training sessions. Make cybersecurity training more interesting by gamifying certain elements and associating training to day to day events.
According to Guccione, “Every organization should have an internal control structure and a set of policies to govern their businesses. The software that runs on top of it should enhance, promote and support these internal controls.” He clearly states that, “Companies that don’t train their employees are going to be the most vulnerable.”
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4. Test, Test, Test
You have educated your employees about security and organized training sessions for them, but did you check how much they have learned and improved? Test the cybersecurity knowledge of your employees with mock and simulated attacks. This will give you a clear picture about how good your employees are at detecting and resisting a cybersecurity attack. With so many different endpoints distributed across different locations, you can not afford to leave a weak link in your cybersecurity chain as hackers are quick to pounce on any opportunity that comes their way.
5. Think Like A Cyber Attacker
Once you have evaluated the cybersecurity knowledge of your employees, it is time to instill a hacker mindset into them. Ask them to think like a hacker or cyber attacker. Galina Antova, Co-founder of Claroty, an industrial infrastructure security startup, says cyber attackers do not care about your organization chart. They see a network as a network.
That is why it is important for businesses to take a holistic approach to your company’s digital assets. Put yourself in the shoes of a cybercriminal who wants to target your organization. Where are the vulnerabilities you can exploit? This type of mindset can go a long way in protecting businesses from lethal cyberattacks and data breaches. You start to think differently, and it will help your organization in securing critical business assets. Make cybersecurity a shared responsibility and encourage employees to play their part.
6. Choose User Friendly Tools
The problem with traditional cybersecurity tools is that they have a steep learning curve. As a result, you need technical expertise to take advantage of these tools. Even though they do not skip on features and are powerful enough to keep cybersecurity attacks at bay, its poor usability discouraged people from using these tools. Thankfully, things have changed quite a lot and today we have access to tools which are not only user friendly but also powerful like their older counterparts. In fact, you can choose a cybersecurity tool based on threat response levels.
7. Accountability
Irrespective of how good your cybersecurity team might be, they are human after all. Humans are usually biased. This is the reason why you will see an inconsistency in decision making between people when solving the same security problem. To prevent this, you can hold everyone accountable for their actions and implement processes which can assist your business to resolve this issue. You can also ask other team members to evaluate the performance of one team member. Even experts and highly skilled and experienced professionals can end up making a wrong decision when they are tired, hungry, or angry. Make sure that all your decisions are based on facts.
Conclusion
Whether you follow steps defined in this article or any other process, it is imperative to have a cybersecurity plan. You do not want to be looking at each other’s faces without knowing what to do during or after a cybersecurity attack. Invest in increasing cybersecurity awareness of your employees or training them to deal with emerging cybersecurity challenges. Do not forget to test the capabilities of your employees by launching mock attacks and simulated attacks. Analyze your business needs and choose cybersecurity tools accordingly.
How do you convince your employees to follow your cybersecurity plan? Let us know in the comments section below.
