How secure is your data? Find out if you avoided these fatal security mistakes.
Making mistakes in your company’s data security can be deadly — the average cost of a breach is $3.9 million. And cyberattacks are increasing in frequency and scale each year. 2019 was labeled the worst year on record for breaches as early as November. 2020 is looking to be even worse — now cybercriminals are exploiting the pandemic chaos to carry out attacks. So, what are the most common cybersecurity mistakes you should look out for?
- Thinking it won’t happen to you
Believing that criminals won’t come after them is an especially prevailing myth among small and medium-sized companies. After all, why would they, when there are so many bigger fish in the sea?
This brings about more problems — less stringent security measures, a lack of employee training, no plan in place for a possible breach. Yet it’s exactly what draws hackers. SMBs make up 43% of data breach victims, according to Verizon. Furthermore, the average cost of a breach is higher for smaller organizations than large enterprises.
2. No data classification
You can’t keep your data protected without first keeping track of it. To implement any effective security measures, you first need to map out and classify the information in your organization. Ensure that you have a basic data classification policy ranging from most to least sensitive, so you can start managing access privileges.
3. No privilege management
Do all of your employees need access to the most sensitive information in your organization? Probably not, so make sure you restrict it. Criminals often try to break into work accounts, and if they succeed, their bounty depends on the access privileges of that employee. You can control their access levels based on your organization’s data classification.
4. Forgetting about encryption
Sensitive data in your company must be protected both in transit and at rest. Where you store the data depends on your organization, but if you opt for storing it in the cloud, don’t forget to encrypt it beforehand. Your cloud data security does not solely rely on the provider — it also depends on you.
So how does encryption keep data secure? Encryption works by scrambling data to the point where it’s unreadable. It ensures that only those with permission can actually decrypt it. To any other third party, even if they manage to get a hold of the data, it will look gibberish.
5.Using unsecured Wi-Fi
This is especially relevant amid the coronavirus pandemic with remote workers accessing company data from various networks. While preventing your coworkers from connecting to unsafe networks is out of the question in these cases, protecting their data traffic is not.
Make sure your employees encrypt their data traffic. Even if the Wi-Fi they’re connecting to is not safe, the encryption will add a robust layer of security.
6. Ignoring software updates
Postponing software updates is a very common yet dangerous mistake. Don’t overestimate the importance of keeping your systems up to date. Many of them contain crucial vulnerability fixes that can be otherwise exploited by criminals.
7. Forgetting about the basics
Don’t underestimate the importance of following basic safety measures. Investing in the latest cybersecurity tech is meaningless without a strong security foundation. Are your passwords strong and kept securely? How often are they updated? Make sure your former employee can’t simply enter a five-year-old password to access the company’s most sensitive data.
8. No backups
This is another basic yet quite common and potentially disastrous mistake. Regular backups of the data in your company are key in ensuring its security. Whether an unforeseen glitch messes up the system, or a ransomware attack strikes, without backups, your organization can be crippled.
9. Oblivious staff
It’s not just the IT department in your organization that needs to be aware of the digital threats your company is facing. Skipping employee training is one of the biggest mistakes organizations can make as the workers often become the targets of criminals.
Teaching employees about what data security is and the cyberthreats they may encounter can boost your organization’s safety. Ultimately, no matter how tough the security protocols at your company are, it won’t work if your employees don’t comply.
10. No security incident response in place
Even if you patch up all the data security mistakes above, it doesn’t make you immune to cyberattacks. Criminals are always looking for new ways to attack organizations, and mistakes sometimes happen.
A proper incident response plan will help you respond quickly and minimize the fallout of the security breach. Time is of the essence — the faster you detect and react to it, the lower the damage will be.
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