Top cyber security best practices to prevent a breach
Cyber Security Incidents
A cyber incident may alternatively be referred to as a “incident” or a “cyber security incident,” but the concept is the same: “A cyber incident is an occurrence that has harmed an organisation in a way that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an IT system.”
cyber attack is often seen as the precursor to a cyber incident. As you may recall from another ACT post, a “IT system” is a collection of interrelated IT assets. These IT assets could include servers, cloud computers, laptops, phones, or even power station control devices. An IT system could be an accounting system, a social media app, or a collection of medical gadgets in a hospital.
You might also wonder if there are other types of events. Without a doubt. All incident types, including cyber, should have a plan, from physical security to financial security to personnel.
Data Breach
So, what exactly is a data breach? It’s similar to a cyber incident, but with one important distinction: “A data breach is a cyber incident that leads in the confirmed disclosure – not simply possible exposure – of data to an unauthorized party.”
What exactly does that mean? This confirmation could occur in a variety of ways, but it is most likely to occur as a result of comprehending the consequences of a cyber attack, or, eventually, the public disclosure of the stolen material.
The second most noticeable distinction for firms between a cyber event and a data breach is how they respond. While there are just a few laws and regulations governing when to report cyber incidents, there are a plethora of laws and regulations governing data breaches, some of which carry severe penalties.
Finally, a data leak can occur on paper rather than electronically.
Responding
If your company has been the victim of a cyber event or data breach, you must activate your company’s “cybersecurity incident response strategy.” This plan should define the actions and communications required to respond swiftly and effectively.
- Preparation;
- Detection and analysis;
- Containment, eradication, and recovery; and
- Post-incident analysis
11 Top cyber security best practices to prevent a breach
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Provide cyber security education and awareness
A robust cyber security strategy will fail if personnel are not trained on
- cyber security,
- corporate policies,
- and incident reporting.
Lets know your business needs cyber experts then click on hire cyber security experts. Employees‘ unintended or intentional malevolent activities can cause even the finest technical safeguards to fail, resulting in a costly security breach. The greatest strategy to prevent ignorance and the possibility of a security violation is to educate staff and raise understanding of corporate policies and security best practises through seminars, lectures, and online courses.
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Conduct risk evaluations
Organizations should do a rigorous risk assessment to identify all important assets and prioritise them depending on the effect of a compromised asset. This will assist firms in determining how to best allocate their resources for securing each valued asset.
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Maintain vulnerability management as well as software patch management/updates
To limit threats to their IT systems, it is critical for corporate IT teams to execute vulnerability discovery, classification, remediation, and mitigation inside any software and networks that they employ.
Furthermore,
- security researchers and attackers
- discover new vulnerabilities
- in diverse software on a regular basis,
- which are subsequently disclosed
- to software vendors or made public.
Malware and cyber attackers frequently exploit these flaws. Software providers release updates on a regular basis to patch and mitigate these vulnerabilities. As a result, keeping IT systems up to date aids in the protection of organizational assets.
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Apply the least privilege principle
The idea of least privilege states that both software and personnel should be given the fewest rights essential to carry out their responsibilities. This mitigates the impact of a successful security breach by preventing user accounts/software with lesser rights from affecting important assets that require a higher-level set of permissions. In addition, all high-level user accounts with unfettered rights should employ two-factor authentication.
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Implement safe password storage and regulations
Organizations should require all employees to use strong passwords that adhere to industry standards. Additionally, password storage should adhere to industry best practices such as the use of salts and strong hashing algorithms.
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Put in place a solid business continuity and incident response (BC-IR) plan
Having sound BC-IR plans and policies in place will allow an organization to respond to cyber-attacks and security breaches more effectively while also ensuring essential business systems stay operational.
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Conduct regular security audits
Having all software and networks undergo periodic security inspections aids in finding security risks early and in a secure environment. Application and network penetration testing, source code reviews, architecture design reviews, red team assessments, and other security evaluations are examples.
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Backup data
Backing up all data on a regular basis increases redundancy and ensures that no sensitive data is lost or compromised during a security breach. Data integrity and availability are jeopardized by attacks such as injections and ransomware. Backups can be useful in such situations.
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Encrypt data both at rest and in transit
Data encryption ensures confidentiality. In addition, effective key management and rotation rules should be implemented. SSL/TLS should be used by all web applications/software.
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Create software and networks with a focus on security in mind
When developing applications, writing software, or designing networks, always design with security in mind. Remember that the expense of rewriting software and adding security measures later is significantly larger than the cost of integrating security in from the start. Security-designed applications assist in reducing threats and ensuring that when software/networks fail, they fail safely.
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Use rigorous input validation and industry standards to ensure secure coding
In many cases, strong input validation serves as the first line of security against various sorts of injection attacks. Strong input validation helps filter out harmful input payloads that the application would process because software and apps are meant to receive user input, which puts them up to assaults. Furthermore, when designing software, secure coding standards should be implemented to avoid the majority of the common vulnerabilities described in OWASP and CVE.
