How to Take Care of the Company's Cybersecurity Through Automation

Automation is coming! Automation is coming!

Are you ready for it?

Small business owners know that technology is worth using for virtually everything - from increasing efficiency to managing day-to-day operations. What about security?

Statistics show that not only large companies with IT departments and high incomes fall victim to cybercriminals. Over 43% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. Does yours have enough money to fight off a ransomware attack or survive a data breach?

Most of them don't.

Before you set up your own start-up or expand your business, security automation should be an integral part of your plan.

What are the biggest threats facing small and medium-sized businesses?

Threats are all around us, but many of them remain hidden in malicious code and dubious attachments. To know how to protect your business and customers, you need to know what threats you are facing and where they come from.

It turns out that the most common cyber threats do not come from outside. More than 64% of them are sometimes the result of simple human error that occurs within the organization. These include lost or stolen devices or the use of weak passwords by employees.

Here are some of the most common risks your business may face.

The "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) trend. The increasing mobility of workers is causing risks to flow from home to work and vice versa. As a result, more and more companies are facing the need to establish rules for managing their employees' mobile devices (MDM).

Phishing and other social engineering schemes. Malicious code in e-mail attachments and e-mail scams are arguably the two biggest external threats faced by small businesses.

Vulnerable access points. From data breaches to the lack of encryption and the use of weak passwords - too many companies and their employees leave the door open to cybercriminals.

Blackmailing software (ransomware). Weak access points and phishing exploits have left many networks open to ransom-for-data-recovery attacks.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. These types of attacks can crash your network and lead to downtime, which in turn can result in a loss of customers. And as more and more companies move to the cloud, the number of these threats will increase.

Malicious software (malware). From spyware to annoying pop-up ads. Malware includes both malicious and intrusive, annoying software.

Internet of Things (IoT). As systems become more and more interconnected, new areas of vulnerability arise that threaten network owners and administrators. We turn a blind eye to many of these threats, not seeing the problem in them. Who would have thought hackers could access your customer base via a thermostat?

Knowing where these threats are coming from eliminates one of the greatest threats: lack of awareness. However, the problems of the 21st century require 21st-century solutions.

Here's how automation can be used to do this.

How to Include Automation in Your Corporate Security Policy

While cybersecurity automation is nothing new, advanced technologies are becoming increasingly affordable for companies of all sizes. Small and medium-sized businesses are also increasingly using artificial intelligence to adapt their defense mechanisms to the realities of the information age.

Intelligent Technology

It is not only companies that benefit from automation. Cybercriminals index data and use other practices to intensify their activities. In this situation, traditional firewalls and encryption may not be enough.

Smart Firewalls

Rather than restricting access based on a case-by-case analysis, these interfaces detect threats in real-time and intuitively update system responses. This kind of automation can also be used to detect problematic messages. Using machine learning technology, which is based on artificial intelligence, these applications can even analyze the content of emails and filter suspicious messages and attachments.

As with a smart firewall, the ability of smart filters to use data to learn and predict is more effective than the old system of compiling lists after the fact and blocking emails or IP addresses of known or suspected attackers.

Deploying smart technologies for security purposes is slightly different from implementing them to manage different areas of your business. The whole concept of machine learning and large data analysis requires systems to access historical data in order to perform analysis. This makes exploits such as zero-day that target unknown or new vulnerabilities are a bit more challenging.

Therefore, the best type of protection is a combination of automation in the field of studying, predicting, and isolating threats, traditional barriers to blocking brute force attacks with the supervision of employees who have received cybersecurity training.

If you use tools to automate your monthly expenses, make sure they are secured with passwords. Criminals who manage to gain access to the code associated with your network accounts or cloud services can make changes to your account or steal money from it. Using password managers, two-factor authentication, and other digital tools for protection will block access to those accounts that require a password.

Automatic updates: boring but effective

The current automation tools are more advanced but may require patches and updates for security. One of the best built-in automation tools is automatic updates. They allow antivirus software to scan and detect viruses regularly, and to update the threat database.

Development of Biometric Technologies and Security

Physical access to buildings is increasingly secured using various technologies such as the face, voice, fingerprint recognition, and other innovations that significantly hinder unauthorized access to buildings. However, remember to keep intelligent IoT systems and components in a different network than business systems, and use different levels of permissions to determine who and what areas of the network, databases, and devices have access.

An increasingly widely used method to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to launch attacks is to encrypt data flow to an open network via a virtual private network or VPN. Although it is not a perfect solution (it does not exist), buying a VPN service costs around $ 5-10 a month, which is a small sum even if it can only prevent one attack attempt. According to SiteLock, every page on the web is attacked on average 63 times a day. If you don't defend yourself against the attacks, they will eventually affect you as well.

Summary

As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, our defenses also need to evolve to meet this threat. From installing the best ad-blocking software to eliminate potentially unwanted applications (PUAs), to implementing E2E encryption, incorporating technology into your company's cybersecurity plan can prevent you from losing money and save your reputation. Is your company prepared for this?