Solutions for These Cybersecurity Threats

So now you know about five vital categories of cybersecurity threats, but knowing about them isn’t enough. You also need to know how to avoid them!

Strategies can get nuanced and complex, but there are simple steps that every business, team, and executive can take right away. Here are quick tips for each category.

Phishing

The big thing here is education. Usually these messages have some tells: the urgency is odd and seems out of step with how the (legitimate) business tends to communicate. These messages push you to take unusual action and threaten grave consequences if you don’t (again, in a way that Microsoft or Apple would never do). Maybe the graphics aren’t quite right or there are obvious typos.

Training your people (cybersecurity awareness or phishing awareness training) is the best defense here. We can help with that!

Malware and Ransomware

Education is a big component here as well: just don’t open that attachment or click that suspicious link. Moving away from email as a main way to move files around helps, too. Cloud storage is far less likely to let this stuff through than email spam filters (though you should definitely have a good one of the latter, too.)

A broader review of your network security can also help. Successful ransomware attacks tend to require vulnerabilities that go beyond someone opening a malicious attachment.

Insider Threats

Comprehensive access control policies go a long way here: that entry-level employee should never have access to highly sensitive documents. Without access, he can’t steal them or even expose them through incompetence.

Strong password management and insistence on multifactor authentication reduces the threat of in-person cybercrime, too: stealing a password off a sticky note sounds cliché, but it happens. Better policies and MFA make that virtually impossible.

Vulnerabilities

Lastly, keep those systems updated. It’s a chore, but it’s vital to your security.

Thankfully there are tools and systems that can help.

You might’ve heard the term “endpoint protection” and wondered what exactly that’s all about. Essentially, endpoint protection gives your IT group (or your managed IT services partner) the ability to control parts of each user’s computer: what’s installed, what users can and can’t install themselves, and when/whether system and software updates are installed.

If you’re interested in exploring endpoint protection for the first time, we can help you roll it out in a way that keeps everyone protected without disrupting their work.

We Know Cybersecurity

These tips are a good place to start in avoiding cybersecurity threats. Below we have the services that we can provide to be even more thorough in protecting your valuable information, along with the threats that each service can prevent or resolve. (Network Intrusion and Data Loss/Extortion are more like consequences that are borne of the other threats we discussed, but we still show which services resolve those problems.)

Ultimately the best cybersecurity strategy is a robust, holistic one that addresses all these threats and more. It considers the needs and risks unique to your business and formulates a plan that provides both flexibility and protection.

For many companies, creating this kind of cybersecurity plan in-house just isn’t feasible. If you could use help developing and implementing a cybersecurity strategy, we’re here to help. Reach out to our expert team today to get started.