With just a few weeks left of National Cyber Security Awareness month, this is a great time for organizations of all sizes to take a good look at their security posture and consider what can be done to strengthen your IT environment.
National Cyber Security Awareness Month aims to better educate businesses, individuals and organizations alike by raising awareness of common cyber security threats and what can be done to stay safe online.
Today’s technology is constantly advancing, and with that comes elaborate cyber-criminals who’re looking to take advantage of those who are vulnerable. Everything from our cars, phones, doorbells to fridges has become effortlessly connected but has also put our privacy at risk in ways that have never been imagined.
For too long now, cyber security has been seen as the responsibility of a company CISO, when the reality is that everyone needs a sound appreciation and understanding of cyber security best practices. Not holding accountability for securing data or even worse, breaching data, will not help protect an organization's sensitive assets, yet this trend has become more and more common within information security roles.
Whether that be with extensive training and education or by implementing security solutions that will help mitigate the vulnerabilities found in your environment, it all starts with strong leadership. And please, let’s not get implementing security solutions confused with simply throwing money at the problem till it goes away.
Remember, even though organizations are investing record amounts of money into cyber security, the number of security-related incidents is still increasing. If high spending levels are reaping your organization low levels of success, take a step back and evaluate whether you need new security defenses, or need to better educate your staff on how to stay safe online in the workplace.
Cybersecurity is now a shared responsibility- one that we each play an important role in. From an individual standpoint, there are so many areas that need to be better understood:
- Staying safe on social media
- Best practices for creating a password
- When to use public Wi-Fi
- Making safe mobile banking payments
- And so much more!
From an enterprise standpoint, businesses need to stop preoccupying themselves with this idea of stopping every breach, and instead shift that focus to being able to identify how and what can be done once they have been breached. If history has told us anything, it’s that every organization will eventually be breached, but how prepared that organization is to handle the breach can make a small situation a complete disaster if not taken seriously.
NNT CTO- Mark Kedgley, explains, “Modern IT environments need to start operating Security Best Practices- remove vulnerabilities then maintain hardened system integrity through change control. It is only by spotting the breach in time that an organization has any chance of effectively managing security.”
New Net Technologies (NNT) is now part of Netwrix