How can I protect my business from cyber attacks? 5 Ways To Improve Business Cyber-Resilience

The ability to recover from adverse events – such as a ransomware attack – and return to normal operations is referred to as “cyber-resilience.” Achieving higher levels of cyber-resilience is a priority for any business that relies on access to data. Here are five tips for improving cyber-resilience based on a defense-in-depth approach.

Tip #1: Fortify your weakest link – people

Phishing attacks continue to be the primary vector for malware distribution. Deceptive emails, attachments and web links dupe employees into downloading malicious code. As methods become more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important to educate employees about what to watch out for and what behaviors to avoid. Ongoing security awareness training ensures employees are trained with phishing simulations, IT and security best practices, and data protection and compliance requirements. These courses are designed specifically to reduce the risk and rate of infections.

Tip #2: Advanced threats require advanced antivirus

There’s no doubt, cybercriminals are getting smarter. As businesses become more effective at identifying potential threats, hackers have adapted their tactics to evade network firewalls. These evasion techniques have made it necessary for businesses to deploy advanced antivirus with threat intelligence to identify malicious attacks that otherwise look benign. An advanced antivirus uses innovative technology to detect, block and remediate (by quarantining) malicious attacks that evade other, less sophisticated antivirus solutions.

Tip #3: Create backup copies of all business data

Businesses owe it to their customers, partners and stakeholders to have a plan in place for a malware attack circumventing outer defenses. Since detecting and remediating malware infections can be time-consuming, it’s essential to have copies of files and data for business continuity. Scheduled backup with file versioning is essential for mitigating specific types of malware, like ransomware. With backup and file versioning, you can recover a clean version of a file as it existed before the infection took place. The scheduling feature is important since leaving it up to users will eventually lead to data loss. Scheduled backup with file versioning can mean the difference between paying tens of thousands of dollars in ransom and full recovery with no ransom payment.

Tip #4: Use the cloud to ensure remote file access

Keeping backups on-site accelerates recovery in most disaster scenarios. As an additional measure of resilience, however, it’s also important to keep backups in the cloud. With so many employees working from home these days, having remote access to files has proven to be essential for business continuity. By keeping backup copies in the cloud, it ensures users can access files remotely if there’s ever a disruption to the local network or a local site disaster.

Tip #5: Test recovery strategy regularly

It’s often said that there’s no backup without recovery. To make sure you can recover files and systems when it really matters, it’s important to test disaster recovery practices and procedures so you know you can achieve the recovery objectives for the business. Disasters can be small or large. So, it’s important to test simple file and folder recovery as well as large-scale system recovery. Some systems are more critical than others. For ultra-critical, tier-one systems where disruptions can be catastrophic, there’s disaster recovery as a service, which offers a secondary environment that allows for frequent testing of disaster recovery protocols. Whichever technology you deploy, a good testing guideline is once every quarter or, at a minimum, once a year to ensure the business can be cyber-resilient when necessary.