97% of Breaches Could Have Been Prevented – 7 Great Ways to Prevent Cybersecurity Breaches

No one doesn’t make mistakes. As a matter of fact, making a mistake is part of everyone’s experience – and that is how you grow and learn.

But in cybersecurity, a human mistake is often overlooked. According to experts at Sangfor Technologies a cyber security intelligence report, human errors are the major cause of 97% of cybersecurity breaches.

In simple words, if human errors were somehow dealt with completely, 24 out of 25 cybersecurity breaches would not take place at all.

How Breach of Cybersecurity Happens

A cybersecurity breach can be caused by outside attackers targeting a business organization for specific types of files or data. Hackers usually choose specific people with a targeted cyber threat.

Cybersecurity breaches can also result from deliberate attacks, worker oversight, and vulnerabilities/flaws in a business infrastructure.

What Are the Signs of Breach?

Cybersecurity is one of the things many businesses take seriously. It is the center of their organization and, of course, the key to success.

But it is also vital to constantly be aware of the signs of a breach so that you can determine how the attack took place through network traffic analysis tools and take the right steps to deal with it and avoid them in the future. Some of these signs include:

• Unusual administrative activities
• Distribution of the unknown program/files
• Unused account activities
• Unusual outbound traffic
• Locked accounts
• Network performance issues

Preventing Breach of Cybersecurity

Start counting your blessings if your business organization has never been a victim of cyber threats. But don’t think you will be able to maintain the immunity forever.

Cyber threats are constantly increasing because the perpetrators are highly motivated and have the edge. Organized hackers and individuals take advantage of lax security measures most companies and people use, leaving personal information and billions of dollars ripe for the taking.

While there are some mistakes business organizations regularly make, there are several ways you can use to prevent and reduce cybersecurity breaches. Some of these are:

1. Use VPNs

A VPN (a virtual private network) is among the effective ways of sustaining work from a cybersecurity network. Irrespective of your location, a virtual private network can help you improve the security of transferred data, personal details, financial transactions, and web session.

With a virtual private network, your workers can as well establish a private connection to your organization’s network from the public internet connection. That way, your workers will be enabled with anonymity and online privacy.

2. Limit Access to Valuable Data

In the past, every worker used to have access to the organization’s files through their computers. Nowadays, business organizations have learned the hard way, limiting access to more valuable data.

Besides, there is no reason for mailroom workers to view a client’s financial details. Limiting who is allowed to see certain files and documents will enable you to narrow the pool of workers who can accidentally click harmful links.

As business organizations go digital, you should expect to see records partitioned off to ensure that only those requiring them have access. This is among the best solutions a business organization can use.

3. Create Procedures and Update Them

You may create procedures that are related to cybersecurity standards and update them regularly. This can make it clearer what your organization’s expectations are.

This can as well show your workers that you take cybersecurity seriously and constantly remind them they need to take it seriously too.

In addition, it is important to start using permission and roles when accessing certain files, documents, and data. With modern solutions, you may set users to have varying viewing permissions and access.

4. Update Your Systems and Software

Cyber-attacks often happen because your software and systems aren’t updated fully, leaving them vulnerable to threats. Cybercriminals will use this weakness to have access to your network. And once they gain access, it might be too late to deploy your preventive actions.

Invest in network traffic analysis tools to know how it happened so that you can counter this in the future. But if it hasn’t happened, you may invest in patch management systems to manage all the software and system updates, keeping them up-to-date and resilient.

5. Educate and Train Your Staff

After completing your security policy audit, you may enforce written employee policies around data security and privacy. You might want to hold security training regularly so that your workers become aware of newly created policies.

When coming up with security policies for workers, you may want to consider training on the following:

• Create policies describing how workers need to send, retrieve, and handle data
• Train workers on the need to report suspicious data leakage and data security breach
• Use documented systems for departing workers
• The use of different and unique passwords
• Control end-user privileges and access

6. Set Up MFA

Without MFA (multi-factor authentication) setup, users may access their accounts with only a password and username. However, multi-factor authentication adds a layer of protection. It needs more than one authentication method to verify the identity of users for logins.

One example of multi-factor authentication is when users log in to a site and enter an additional OTP. This OTP is usually sent to the phone or email of the user.

Setting up multi-factor authentication creates a strong line of defense, making it challenging for authorized persons to access your data.

7. Consider Firewall

For any business organization, authorities must keep their customer and business data safe and secure. In today’s modern world, there won’t be a better way to guarantee the security of sensitive and valuable files than a firewall.

Whether you are keeping them away from viruses or want to stop hackers’ unauthorized access, an enterprise firewall is the first line of defense for your business organization in dealing with cybersecurity breaches.

In a Nutshell!

Even the most effective security measures might get corrupted with just a simple cyber-attack entering your business organization.

That is why it is crucial not to be complacent in maintaining your cybersecurity systems, using VPNs, setting MFA, and training your employees.