6 Key Questions to Ask Yourself When Scaling Up Your Cybersecurity
Reading Time: 3 minutesLooking to beef up your security? Whether you’re on a budget or just don’t know where to start, here are the questions you need to ask yourself first.
If cybercriminals haven’t attempted to hack your account, system, or network, it isn’t because you are invisible—they just haven’t got round to you yet.
Gone are the day when organizations and public figures are the only targets of cyberattacks. Anyone with an online presence can be a victim. You need to anticipate cyberattacks to create strong defenses against cyber threats. Answering the following questions will help in scaling up your cybersecurity.
1. What Are Your Most Valuable Assets?
An average hacker aims for the most valuable assets in a system. That’s because they understand that the victim would be more willing to cooperate when they strike where it hurts the most.
While it’s advisable you secure all your digital assets, you may not have the resource to do so. Instead of trying to secure all your assets at once and failing at it, it’s best to prioritize your most valuable ones. Throw your full security weight behind whatever would cost you the most should you lose it.
2. What Are Your Weakest Links?
Having secured your most valuable assets, you must focus on other assets that are lagging in security. This is very important, especially as hackers can take advantage of the weak links within your system to compromise your most valuable assets.
Identify the reasons why you believe a particular area makes your system vulnerable and tackle it head on. This will prevent you from making generalizations that may not hold water in the grand scheme of things.
3. How Do You Respond to an Attack?
You might have a mental note of what to do during an attack, but when push comes to shove, your plan may not be so effective. Many victims of cyber breaches and attacks are distraught; they aren’t in the right frame of mind to come up with a good plan at that moment.
Adopt a proactive security approach by documenting an incident response plan to contain the damaging effects of an attack. All you have to do is execute your plan if hackers come for you.
Depending on the effectiveness of your incident response plan and your swiftness, you may recover your compromised or stolen data assets.
4. What Compliance Standards Do You Need to Follow?
If people engage with the content on your account, network, or website, you must comply with regulations that protect their privacy, safety, and general well-being. This might seem like nothing to worry about, especially if you have a small platform, but the size of your platform wouldn’t matter if you broke the law.
Take the time to find out the compliance requirements in your area and implement them to the letter to avoid regulatory sanctions. The most common requirement is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for online platforms in the European Union. Other privacy laws apply to non-European outlets.
5. Do You Have an Effective Solution for Updating Your Assets?
Failure to update your applications can lead to sensitive data exposure and other cyber threats because cybercriminals will exploit the security loopholes in older versions.
There’s only so much you can remember to do, especially if you have a lot of responsibilities on your hands. You might want to automate the updating process or set up a schedule for repetitive updates. Updating your digital assets regularly also helps you resolve misconfiguration issues and spot accidental and unapproved changes.
6. What Is the Scope of Your Access Control System?
Keeping tabs on the people and devices that access your network will save you from cyberattack-related issues, and you can do that with an effective access control system.
Monitoring access to your network helps you screen your traffic sources. Based on the metrics you have in place, you can detect malicious or suspicious elements and deny them access. You can also grant access to users on a need-to-know basis. That way, they will only be able to access areas of your network that concern them. You get to protect your valuable digital assets from indiscriminate exposure.
Taking Responsibility for Your Digital Assets’ Security
The security of your digital assets should be your primary responsibility. Even if you want to outsource it to cybersecurity professionals, you need to understand the basics; otherwise, you’ll be in the dark, and your ignorance could make you fall for cyberattackers’ tricks.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/questions-scaling-cybersecurity/