Your business can’t afford to suspend operations due to a supply chain shortage, a natural disaster, or a power outage in your warehouse. And it certainly can’t afford to be a victim of a cyberattack either.
Unfortunately, as technology evolves to deliver more connectivity and convenience, it also introduces new ways for nefarious individuals, organizations, and even countries to disrupt your business.
Even while the COVID-19 pandemic slowed or shut down many businesses, cyberattacks continued to increase. In fact, Interpol has recorded many instances of criminals developing new ways to launch attacks by leveraging the pandemic.
During the height of the pandemic, many scams were tied to information about the ailment or vital supplies, and although the worst of the pandemic may be in past, vulnerabilities remain, according to Interpol.
Related content: How To identify Risks & Vulnerabilities In Your Network Security
What’s Most At Risk?
At particular risk are systems, networks, and applications used by remote workers. The security measures put in place prior to the outbreak are potentially strained by the sheer (and growing) number of people relying on the tools helping them work from home.
As workers are becoming more decentralized, so is their data. Organizations are increasingly moving information to the cloud, which presents additional threats from both within and without, from breaches to poorly governed data.
These vulnerabilities compound traditional risks such as phishing and malware, as well as more recent kinds of threats including:
- Ransomware, which netted just six criminal groups more than $45 million after attacks on nearly 300 enterprises in several industries
- Attacks on connected devices within the internet of things (IoT), such as AI voice assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home
How to Prepare and Plan
What does this mean for your business? Benjamin Franklin noted that those failing to plan are planning to fail, and this rings true if you haven’t developed a business continuity plan (BCP) for a cyberattack that includes:
- Preventative measures that can thwart an attack
- Recovery systems to ensure you can maintain operations — and your clients and customers — in the event of a successful attack
A thorough BCP not only saves your business money and time, but it protects your brand and reputation. The International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants (EC-Council), a cybersecurity certification organization, suggests a five-step approach to developing a BCP:
- Conduct Business Impact Analysis & Risk Assessment – Where is your organization particularly vulnerable, and how can a cyberattack impact your operations?
- Develop Recovery Strategies – Prepare your IT infrastructure to effectively recover from a disaster with clear instructions to be followed to ensure continuity.
- Solution Implementation – This includes selecting a secondary site where you can store data in the event of a cyberattack.
- Testing & Acceptance – You’ll determine whether all your needs are met, as well as gain adoption and establish communication channels between your incident response team and the rest of your organization.
- Routine Maintenance – Assume that review and updates will be needed to ensure the plan is current and equipped to handle the latest threats.
For best outcomes, the cybersecurity team should also work in tandem with other disaster recovery efforts across the enterprise.
Wrapping Up
Contact us to learn how you can safeguard against security threats from the public internet, improve network and employee performance, and be ready for unforeseen challenges with a cloud connect solution from Astound.
