Is Your Business Cyber-Secure?
In today’s world, nearly every action you perform involves some form of computer technology, which is why cyber security is such a hot topic these days. Cyber threats await you all across the Internet. At the time of this writing, the entire Internet—along with the very foundations of society—are in distress. An invisible enemy, COVID-19 has forced businesses, large and small, to navigate rough waters as people transition to remote work. The pressure to keep their businesses alive by going online almost overnight finds countless managers and business owners working around the clock.
Even a company that has spent months planning this transition will come face-to-face with all sorts of obstacles when they migrate to the world of virtual commerce and professional services. Every company will have to overcome the largest of these obstacles: the lack of a secure remote workplace environment, far beyond the safety zone of the secured computers in the office.
Fortunately, we have a cheat sheet that will save you many, many hours of searching the net for the “must-knows” that will shorten your time to implementation. Check out our 12 Cyber Security Tips for Going Remote, which we wrote for just that reason. We have listed what you need to know to set up the right configurations and environment for your employees’ home workstations.
Meanwhile, we will continue to open more and better digital opportunities for our customers in security-sensitive technology domains. As software developers for IoT, Smart Home, Robotics, Retail, Healthcare, Finance, and Banking, as well as a wide array of Enterprise Solutions, we realize the critical nature of cyber security issues. Since these spheres so often require the user to set up credentials and give personal information such as bank and credit card numbers, ID numbers, and so on, they can be of particular interest to cyber criminals. Lurking around, looking for holes in your security is a full-time job for many of these blackhat hackers. They are eager to steal and exploit your private information. This is why, at Waverly, we have experts in the field of cyber-security. Software development is just one face of Waverly, we are also your go-to source for security audits, consulting, incident handling and fixing.
Often, customers turn to us after the fact when they feel the sting of a malicious attack. They urgently need help to mitigate the immediate consequences and quickly up their game to ensure their security in the future. Our cyber security experts take a deep dive into the source code and conduct malware analysis to figure out the reason for the breach and plug the hole. In the process, we educate our customers and help them identify the best way to prevent security breaches in the future.
Here is our list of various security measures protecting your computers and systems from software failures. You can handle some of these in-house, as long as you check them on a regular basis. The others might need professional third-party assistance. Nevertheless, all of them are highly advisable:
1. Don't forget to update your operating systems and libraries as soon as known software vulnerabilities get documented and patched. We strongly recommend to run the updates in a testing environment beforehand, to make sure they are safe.
2. Disable, block and remove any system component you don't use or don't need - reduce your exposure to possible attacks.
3. Secure your network by means of endpoint restrictions, continuous monitoring, and penetration testing, as well as network and micro-segmentation.
4. Carefully check your system’s default security configurations and make custom settings, as soon as it is deployed or even purchased.
5. Introduce automation into your operations to avoid man-made mistakes.
6. Inspect and monitor your computer service providers' security policies to detect possible security threats for you.
7. Use trusted and reliable resources of external dependencies you use to build software.
8. Make sure your staff is aware of the basic cybersecurity practices and measures.
9. Write your code and design architecture with security in mind: make it clear and easy to read.
10. Devise a back-up plan in case of an emergency situation to quickly recover, mitigate the consequences, and learn from your mistakes.
11. Stay up-to-date with the latest news and useful articles related to cybersecurity issues.
12. Never postpone fixing your bugs, especially before moving on with the project.
13. Consider turning to cybersecurity companies for security risk assessment, audit and security consulting services.
14. Don't hesitate to contact professional cybersecurity providers for attack mitigation and incident handling when in need.
Of course, the best and most important way to protect yourself is to avoid a breach in the first place by conducting regular security audits. We recently designed a test you can use to conduct a self-audit and get a jump on the project of proof-testing your company’s cyber security shield. We asked our field experts to come up with a list of questions you’ll need, to pre-assess your cyber security protection level. Our Cyber Security Test is free to take and find out which parts of your security systems need improvement.
If you think your systems need a more thorough checkup, Waverley’s certified cyber security professionals are always ready to perform a comprehensive cyber security audit, including white-box and black-box penetration testing and social engineering examination. Unlike cybersecurity agencies, our full-cycle software engineers are of huge benefit to you when it’s time to address your software engineering weak points. If you’re interested, contact me and I’ll arrange a free consultation for you with our team. Stay Safe!