How to secure the company form cyberattacks?

The losses caused by a hacking attack may not only have a financial dimension, but also an image impact, and in the darkest scenario it may even lead to the liquidation of the company.

How to defend against cybercrime?

Departments dealing with broadly defined protection against cyberattacks should continuously identify possible threats, define associated risks, and select appropriate resources to protect against hacking attacks.

In this material, I would like to focus on three, in my opinion, fundamental issues that every organization should consider in order to effectively protect from cyberattacks.

Threats at the network edge

“The edge of the network,” the point where a company’s network meets the Internet, is a very sensitive area from the perspective of protecting the business continuity of any business. A popular DDoS attack may result in the unavailability of websites for hours or disable a company’s day-to-day operations. Running a business based on our own server resources, as well as protecting the link with our own edge devices, we have no possibility of so-called attack mitigation.

The effectiveness of the hackers depends on the size of the attack and the performance of the device at the network edge. So how do you protect yourself from such a cyberattack? As I wrote earlier, it is impossible to completely avoid online threats, but it is possible to look for solutions that minimize the risk. One of them is using professional data centers. Data centers provide a range of services related to protection against cyberattacks, including link protection against DoS/DDoS attacks.

System upgrades – effective protection against hackers

A very important issue that should be a priority in every IT department in the organizations is updating systems. Non uploading patches published by vendors vendors of virtualization systems, operating systems or business applicationsmay result in cybercriminals exploiting the vulnerabilities and be a gate to launching a cyberattack.

 The purpose of the attack is not necessarily to “cripple” the organization, but to steal data, which may cause much more serious problems, even legal ones. It is important that IT departments responsible for business systems set a high priority in their duties for “upgrading” systems.

In my experience, it is very common that migrating key business systems to a professional data center provides the opportunity for 24/7/365 specialist support and increases the level of such security. What is worth noting, at the stage of agreeing on terms of cooperation with such suppliers, companies are able to include a requirement to take care of ongoing “updates” of systems, which proves to be useful in the long-term strategy of taking care of IT security.

Education for employees and system users

No system and no safeguard can prevent the unwitting – by design – actions of an employee. Despite the many news stories about notorious cyberattacks, many people are still susceptible to the various types of manipulation used by cybercriminals. Often the unwitting employees become instruments for them. Popular phishing or Trojan horse attacks are likely to become an effective way for cybercriminals to achieve their intended purpose, for which the use of hardware and application security is often not sufficient obstacle.

This is why constant training and making employees aware of the possible threats, the levels of data sensitivity they are dealing with, and the possible legal consequences, such as the leakage of personal data, should be part of every organization’s security policy. We can assume that the greater awareness about the types of cyberattacks, the lower is risk of an employee unwittingly participating in a cyberattack.

This is just the beginning

An effective protection against the hackers and minimizing the risk of cyberattack is SOC as a service. Using Security Operation Center in a company increases the efficiency of the security management process and facilitates compliance with legal requirements and security standards (including the FSC, PCI-DSS, GDPR, the Cyber Security Act).

According to the proverb “The more you get into it, the more complicated it becomes” – there are many areas of how to defend against cybercrime in the era of digital transformation. Above examples are just an introduction to thinking about protecting your company from hacking attacks. However, in my opinion, certain is the fact that without implementing in the organization the above-described basics, it is difficult to think about more advanced solutions, which, given the development of cybercrime, may prove to be crucial for ensuring business continuity.