Top 5 Cybersecurity Projects for Your Business

Cybercriminals are always looking for ways to steal your business data and use them to cripple your business or obtain money from you. According to research, Four billion data records were stolen in 2016. And a whopping sum of $32K average cost of cyber-attack has been recorded for small businesses.

So, how do you ensure your business is well-protected? How can you quickly detect any data breach? Statistics show that US companies take an average of 206 days to detect a data breach. So, the right step is to strategically invest in cybersecurity tools and best practices that will mitigate the risk of suffering a data breach and also secure those points with sensitive data that may harm your business.

Although cybersecurity projects can be quite overwhelming, especially if you’re just starting out, taking the right steps with the help of an expert in the field will guarantee your business is very well-protected without much hassle on your part.

To make things a little easier, we’ve outlined the top five cybersecurity projects for any business in 2023. With these top tips, you can easily kick-start your cybersecurity project and incorporate those you don’t already have into your business immediately.

1. Cybersecurity Awareness Training

A simple act, such as the clicking on a link from a phishing e-mail from an employee, is all it might take for a cybercriminal to get hold of your business data.

So, create an atmosphere of cybersecurity awareness for your employees through adequate training and real-life testing, and let them understand how their actions, especially simple ones like the above example, can make or break your business security.

2. E-mail Security

E-mail phishing is one of the easiest ways cybercriminals can get your data. An e-mail with a tempting offer with a phishing link might probably lead an employee astray.

To prevent this attack, you’ll need to have strong e-mail security in place — one that’s more than the traditional spam filter. There are lots of e-mail managers out there, but not all are effective.

Securing your email environment is essential to protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of intellectual, customer, and personal information stored in the cloud. Microsoft 365 can be beneficial to your business in helping you stay protected from email phishing attempts with built in security controls. 

A good e-mail manager should at a minimum be cloud-based, give you the ability of end-to-end encryption to secure your sensitive data, and be able to analyze all e-mail attachments and links to phishing before entering or leaving an employee’s mailbox.

3. Password Managers

Password Managers are some of the latest additions to the cybersecurity armory. They allow you to create complex passwords for your various accounts, store them with strong encryption, and, then, sync them across all your devices.

Password Managers can help you overcome the problem of complex passwords in cybersecurity. With password managers, you don’t have to make your password easy to remember, which then anyone can guess. You can create complex passwords and make it hard for anyone to guess while you are syncing them across all your devices.

Since password managers contain lots of personal information, they are also subject to attacks. So, you might want to find a good one, such as LastPass, which uses very powerful encryption technology to store your data and meets stringent standards such as SOC 2 Type 1 compliance. In addition, it is best practice to use multi-factor authentication so that only authorized users access their accounts.

4. Cybersecurity Audit

The role of a cybersecurity audit is to evaluate your business’ foundational cybersecurity practices across technology, people, and processes and determine your ability to prevent, identify and respond to incidents.

At a high level, a cybersecurity audit will look at: Network security, data security, security response and contingency planning, social engineering (how prone employees are to fall for phishing attacks and scams) and physical access security.

Cybersecurity audits can be performed internally if there are in-house resources and expertise are available. External third-parties are good for businesses looking for cost-effective and objective options.

You might be interested in our post: Is It Time for Your Business to Get an IT Security Audit?>>

5. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Operations Center (SOC)

Traditional firewalls, antivirus and other malware detectors are not as effective as they used to be. This is because traditional tools and appliances depend on being updated with the latest virus/malware definitions to detect intrusions. Plus, these tools are not designed to correlate data across the network to detect suspicious activity.

With that said, companies with more robust security needs and compliance requirements such as NIST 800-171, DFARS, PCI or HIPAA should consider using a Network Monitoring/Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). A SIEM gives your business enhanced capabilities to analyze, aggregate, and correlate network data and immediately alert you when there is a danger to the organization.

A SIEM solution is often combined with human oversight by an expert Security Operations Center (SOC) which reviews activity logs and alerts to identify active threats and initiate response.

How Can Envision Help?

Managing cybersecurity services is increasingly complex for businesses of all sizes and having field experts to implement adequate, layered security tools and best practices is the most cost-effective way to get it done.  For the last 20-years, Envision has focused on helping small and midsize organizations strengthen their defenses against malicious actors through a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity.

If your organization is looking for expert advice to implement any of these cybersecurity projects or manage your security altogether, you can contact us for a complimentary consultation with a member of our team.

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Top 5 Cybersecurity Projects for Your Business