Is cyber security a top priority in your organisation? With the shift for many companies from in-office to mostly remote working – cyber security has become even more important to keep our businesses safe.
Before businesses likely had a higher level of control over these threats, but now there are more potential vulnerabilities due to the shifting nature of work. When teams work in the office, you can often rely more on security measures such as company-managed devices, limiting remote access to specific business applications, and restricted access to your physical offices.
When the pandemic hit, there was a spike in cyber attacks with hackers trying to take advantage of businesses having to adapt how they work and people’s uncertainty around the situation.
A recent report from Microsoft spoke to nearly 800 business leaders to uncover what impact the pandemic has had on cybersecurity long-term. But what does all this mean for your business?
Digital empathy
It’s essential to think about your users and how to make their digital experience a positive one – particularly when dealing with remote teams. While teams may be working apart, they still need to be able to easily and productively work together. When you extend your security processes to let more apps be used for remote work, you can promote collaboration and a positive user experience, which creates a healthy workforce no matter where they work from.
How can you achieve this?
Your first step is to identify which business apps can help your teams work at their best. Look into the apps that will enable different processes you need – such as Microsoft Teams for communication, SharePoint for secure document storage and collaboration, Power BI for analytics, or Power Apps to enable specific line of business processes. Additionally speak with your teams to see what roadblocks they face when working remotely and what they need to help them work better. Implementing trusted business apps with their own in-built security measures helps keep your organisation protected while also providing the business continuity you need.
Cyber Security: Zero trust
When it comes to security, people are our biggest vulnerability. Zero Trust security is based on the belief that no one inside or outside the company is trusted by default – so verification is required from everyone at every possible step when dealing with company data and networks. With the quick shift to remote work over recent months, 94% of companies report they are in the process of putting in place zero trust capabilities.
How can you achieve this?
Some of the biggest data hacks happen because once hackers gain access to your systems, they can move through them without much resistance and little further security verification needed. To fight this risk, you should make sure your organisation’s data is available on a need-to-access basis only. Limit what each user or team can access, and require authentication at every possible access point to minimise the risk of data breaches. All this helps ensure if someone was to somehow gain access to your network, then there is only a small amount of data they can access – and minimal damage can be done.
This doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice usability; having the right digital strategy in place, considering the different needs of your users, the user journeys and how your users consume data means you can achieve security whilst still delivering a bespoke and targeted user experience.
Threat intelligence
Hackers are opportunistic – and this pandemic has given them plenty of chances to try their hand at more attacks through phishing scams and other exploits. Microsoft found 54% of security leaders experienced a higher rate of phishing attacks when COVID first took hold. Using diverse and far-reaching data sets helps provide better threat intelligence, with Microsoft reportedly tracking more than 8 trillion daily threats.
What does this mean for you?
With hackers becoming ever more sophisticated and seizing on any opportunity to infiltrate organisations to breach data, you need to use both automated tools and human insight to identify potential new threats before they become an issue.
A combination of your own in-house IT security team, data security strategies, security technology, and trusted applications will help you put processes in place to spot where issues can arise and cut them off before it’s too late. All of this should be part of an overarching digital strategy that has security at its core, as the organisations who are best able to handle security threats are the ones that place security front and centre of their digital strategy.
Cyber resilience
When it comes to your business operations, it’s all about resilience. Your security is what lets your business be resilient in the face of any adversity and allows you to have teams working remotely in a secure fashion. If a breach was to happen, is your organisation still able to operate? Currently, 19% of companies rely mostly on technology on-premises and do not have a cyber-resilience plan in place.
How can you achieve this?
If you want to be a cyber resilient business, you need to regularly look at your risk threshold and think about whether you have the right processes in place to keep your business running if an attack happens. Developing a cyber resilience strategy helps you put together the right combination of technology and human intervention to ensure your organisation is prepared for whatever comes your way.
The cloud
Security isn’t all doom and gloom. A cloud can be your silver lining. Microsoft has found phishing attacks are more successful in organisations who use mostly on-premises technology, rather than the cloud. No matter the size of your company, you need integrated cloud-based security on top of your existing infrastructure to keep your business secure, particularly if you are going to have people working remotely and out of office hours.
What does this mean for you?
If you’re not already using the cloud for your business, it’s time to make a change. Cloud security helps you reduce the risk of breaches and is crucial in protecting your organisation against threats. There are many well-established cloud security providers you can work with that are reliable, cost-effective, and straightforward to implement. Take it a step further and combine your cloud security with anti-phishing tools and a strong data security strategy to add an even higher level of security for your business.
Cloud/Cyber security doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive – many of the best cloud applications come with inbuilt security that you can easily customise based on your organisational requirements. When you look at any cloud provider, it’s important to understand what they can provide in terms of information security.
These past few months have without a doubt sped up the digital transformation of cyber security. So it’s important your business keeps up and is able to stay protected no matter where the future takes you. Taking advantage of the high grade security provided by trusted applications and technology gives you confidence your business is secure. Combine this with strong security strategies and a knowledgeable IT security team – and your organisation can be at the top of the cyber security game.
If you’d like more help or guidance in getting your organisation to the highest security level possible, speak to Pi Digital today. Our team of experts are here to help you with creating overall digital strategies that also include developing your Cyber Security strategies. We also help by working with you to choose the right technologies and apps for your business, and implementing all your new security measures.
