Breach Prevention Best Practices

Data breaches cost global organizations $3.86M on average in the past year— and $8.64M in the United States— according to IBM. Lack of security automation, misconfigured cloud environments, compromised credentials, and third-party software vulnerabilities led the pack in enabling malicious breaches. As the value of personal data grows, and hackers develop more advanced methods to steal it, organizations of all sizes, in every industry, must make concerted efforts to bolster breach prevention measures.

The following are high-level best practices for preventing breaches.

1.      Invest in security automation. Companies that leveraged artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, and automated orchestration were able to cut $3.58M from their average breach cost.

2.      Properly configure the cloud. Cloud environments often come preconfigured for a specific purpose and must be tailored to each utilizing organization. Companies should continuously review and monitor identity policies to ensure they follow the principle of least privilege.

3.      Develop and test an incident response plan (IRP). Security incidents can lead to catastrophic network or data breaches. Developing a thorough, detailed IRP will help IT staff identify, halt, contain, and control incidents with maximum efficiency. With IR teams and IRP in place, companies decreased their breach cost by $2M.

4.      Create a strong password policy and enforce it. Weak passwords sink ships. An effective password policy defines the makeup of a strong password, the timeline for changing it, and how to manage multiple credentials for multiple devices or systems.

5.      Use multi-factor authentication. Having two or more levels of security makes hackers jump through multiple hoops to penetrate a network. Security questions, biometric data, or login verification sent to another registered device will make things much more difficult for malicious actors.

6.      Encrypt data at rest and in transit. With proper encryption, data can remain safe, even in the event of a breach. Encryption is inexpensive and can protect organizations from having to pay costly compliance fines.

7.      Develop and test a security awareness training program. Users are the largest threat to data security and must be properly trained to be aware of the threats that face them, the organization, and the sensitive data to which they have access. Adequate training prepares users for social engineering attacks, which are modern hackers’ number-one attack method.

8.      Implement a data discovery and classification system. Knowing where sensitive data resides and why it is sensitive will help an organization keep data safe. With this information, data can be classified with a risk score, its security can be prioritized, and compliance requirements can be more easily fulfilled.

The best way to avoid being a victim of a breach is to prioritize data security. Developing policies and procedures and implementing best practices will, at the very least, diminish the potential cost of a breach considerably.

For a more in-depth discussion about your organization’s breach prevention strategy, contact Securance for a free consultation.