Best Practices for Your Cybersecurity

One overall goal your company should have is to create and update a cybersecurity plan. This plan should include remediation protocols in case of an attack. You should also address the best practices for your company and the way your office works. If you don't currently have a plan, right now is a great time to put one in place. Start with an assessment of your current processes. Employ a cybersecurity expert to help or assign an internal team.

Here are a few other best practices you should be following.

• Regularly scheduled backups. Recovery can't happen if you don't have backups of your recent data. Your backups should be scheduled at regular intervals so that, even in the worst-case scenario, you won't lose too much. You should also have a plan for how to keep that data secure. 
• Schedule training initiatives. Most data breaches occur because someone made a mistake or fell for a phishing / malicious ploy. With good training initiatives on best practices, you can head off some of these threats.
• Develop a device protocol. Employees use their personal devices for work at a high rate, which means your data is only as secure as your least conscientious employee. Develop a device protocol and make it mandatory.
• Segmentation. Segmentation is the way that security teams grant access to workers. For your company, this means that you should be able to control which employees have access to sensitive data and be able to log which employee has accessed files.
• Mandate strong passwords. Password protection is a simple step but one a lot of people miss. Make sure your employees are re-using company passwords on their personal accounts. Make sure everyone is using secure passwords and that devices and applications are not left unlocked.
• Second step authorization. Another good practice is to enable second step authorization on devices and platforms. This adds a second layer of defense in case passwords are ever compromised.
• Update all programs regularly. Don't wait to apply patches and updates. Software only works well when it has the latest update. This is especially important for your security programs.
• Remote work security. If you have employees working from home, it's important that you develop a security plan for this environment. Like personal devices, you can't rely on your employees' cybersecurity protection at home to protect your company data.
• Secure Networks. Make sure all of your networks are secure and protected and that your employees know best practices for using secured networks whenever they access company data.

Cybersecurity will continue to be a significant concern in the upcoming years. While there are some experts who believe cybersecurity concerns will eventually be taken care of by AI, we are not there yet. The best plan is to stay informed and vigilant.