Organizations have found it rather simple to create websites and other digital services in recent years. Unfortunately, that ubiquity hasn’t translated to digital security and the overarching digital life security protocols.
As it stands, the duty for website security is your responsibility. Yet many website owners are unaware of how to keep their sites secure.
Customers need to know that their data is secure when they utilize an online credit card payment processor. Visitors worry about their personal information falling into the wrong hands.
Users demand a secure online experience regardless of whether you operate a small company or a large corporation. The same rule applies to your internal cybersecurity for your employees. Keep on reading for our full breakdown of the key eight methodologies you can apply today to enhance your digital security controls.
1. Digital Security 101: Support Your Cyber Security Employees
The first step is to guarantee that your cyber security team has the resources they need. Security teams often complain that they aren’t provided enough money. Or, that top management ignores their demands.
These issues arise from top management’s lack of technical knowledge of cyber security. This would otherwise enable them to comprehend why the team is making these demands.
As a consequence, board members often see cyber security as a cost of doing business and ignore the advantages of doing so.
It follows that an organization that has an effective security program also has fewer data breaches. However, things will go more smoothly as long as employees follow best practices and don’t make mistakes.
Consider the fact that the IT department is often linked to cyber security. However, it has a wide-ranging effect throughout the company.
Your security measures affect every department and location – whether it’s the company’s headquarters, servers, or remote workers.
As a result, you won’t be able to make any meaningful progress unless your board recognizes the importance of cyber security and allocates enough funding.
2. Educate Your Regular Employees
Phishing and ransomware, both of which rely on human mistakes, are two of the most serious dangers that businesses face. Employees who get phishing emails and are unable to recognize them as frauds put the whole company in danger.
Internal mistake, privilege abuse, and data loss are all examples of workers failing to grasp their information security responsibilities.
These are problems that technical solutions alone will not solve. Instead, businesses should assist their IT departments by providing regular employee awareness training.
Workers aren’t receiving the training they need, with 53% of IT managers stating that employees need a better knowledge of cyber risks.
Cyber security training has a number of advantages in addition to preventing data breaches.
We’ve addressed some of those reasons have already. But, in general, it comes down to making your company more efficient. This applies to both in terms of day-to-day operations and in terms of your interaction with data protection authorities.
You should offer your employees training sessions at their introduction and then again every year.
3. Make Risk Assessments a Top Priority
When creating a cyber security program, one of the first things an organization should perform is a risk assessment. It’s the only way to ensure that the controls you select are suitable for the risks your company confronts.
Without a risk assessment, your company is more likely to overlook risks that may have disastrous consequences.
Similarly, you may spend time and effort dealing with occurrences that are unlikely to happen or will not do substantial harm. After all, it’s pointless to put in place safeguards against occurrences that are unlikely to occur or won’t have a significant effect on your business.
Following the criteria provided in ISO 27001, the worldwide norm for information security management is the best approach to perform a risk assessment.
Its best-practice approach is centered on the risk assessment process, which assists organizations in identifying risks and solutions related to people, processes, and technology.
4. Keep Track of Who Has Access to Your Systems
Originally, you may feel more comfortable granting access to your website to many high-level workers. You give them administrative rights in the hopes that they would take good care of their sites. This is the ideal scenario, but it isn’t always the case.
Employees, however, do not consider website security while entering into the CMS. Instead, they’re focused on the job at hand. If they make a mistake or miss an issue, it may lead to a serious security problem.
It’s critical to thoroughly screen your workers before granting them access to your website. Check to see whether they’ve used your CMS before and if they know what to look for to prevent a security breach.
Every CMS user should be educated on the significance of passwords and software upgrades. Inform them of all of the ways they may contribute to the website’s security.
Make a record and update it often to keep track as to who has permission to your CMS and their administrative settings.
Employees are hired and fired on a regular basis. Keeping a tangible record of who does even with your website is one of the greatest methods to avoid security problems.
When it comes to user access, be cautious.
5. Review Policies and Processes on a Regular Basis
Policies and procedures are the papers that define how an organization handles data. Procedures define how, what, and when things should be done, while policies give a general overview of the organization’s values.
ISO 27001 can assist in this aspect as well. The Standard includes a detailed set of measures that organizations may use if they feel they need to address a known danger.
We’ve already covered several policies that businesses should adopt, such as those governing remote access, password generation and maintenance, and acceptable usage guidelines.
Organizations may guarantee that workers understand their security responsibilities and solidify the lessons learned during staff awareness training by establishing rules and procedures.
The more technically oriented policies also provide critical support for IT’s security solutions.
You may, for example, security test third-party software, but if workers make simple mistakes, such as misconfiguring a database, their efforts will be undermined.
6. Maintain Up-To-Date Software and Plugins
Every day, a large number of websites are harmed as a result of obsolete software. Sites are being scanned for potential hackers and bots to attack.
Your website’s health and security depend on regular updates. Your site is not secure if it is software or apps are out of date. Take all requests for software and plugin updates very seriously.
Security improvements and vulnerability fixes are often included in updates. Check for updates on your website or install an update alert plugin. Automatic updates are another method for ensuring website security on certain platforms.
Your site will become less secure the longer you wait. Make it a top priority to keep your website and its components up to date. Using a VPN would be an added way to secure your internet access. You’ll want to select a high-quality one like this one provided by Secure Thoughts.
7. Evaluate and Improve Your Current Security System
The actions described in this article are just the beginning. Because cyber security is a constantly changing area, your company should evaluate its procedures on a regular basis to ensure they are up to date.
By following our advice, you’ve built a foundation that allows you to make adjustments quickly and without drastically altering your business model.
Defending against a new danger, for example, maybe as easy as drafting a new policy or modifying an old one. Similarly, your IT staff may be required to deploy new technologies in order to combat a growing danger.
You should already have a communication channel set up between IT and the board to address this, as well as the team should have a budget set aside to implement any modifications that are required.
8. Make a Backup of Your Website and Data
Having a solid backup solution is one of the greatest ways to keep your site secure. It’s a good idea to have a few. Each is essential for restoring your website after a severe security breach.
You may utilize a variety of methods to restore lost data. Keep the information from your website off-site. You shouldn’t store backups on the same server as your website; they are just as susceptible to hacking.
Keep a backup of your website on a personal computer or hard drive. Find a secure, off-site location to store your data and keep it safe from hardware failures, hacking, and viruses.
Another alternative is to make a cloud backup of your website. It facilitates data storage and provides access to information from any location.
You should consider automating your website backups in addition to deciding where to store them. Make use of a service that allows you to plan your site backups. You should also make sure that your solution has a solid recovery mechanism.
Make your backup procedure redundant by backing up your backup. This allows you to recover data from any point prior to the breach or infection.
Digital Security Controls: Simplified
If you’re new to the world of digital security, things can be rather overwhelming when you want to upgrade your digital security controls or enhance them.
Hopefully, our guide has shed some light on the key eight ways you can improve or even implement your network security from scratch.
And, if you liked reading our article, then you’ll love checking out our additional tips and tricks. All of them and much more will be available in our technology section.
