How to Achieve Strategic Cyber Risk Management With NIST CSF
Keeping sensitive data and critical tech safe from cyberattacks is crucial for businesses like yours. Your survival and growth depend on how well your organization can withstand cyberthreats. That's where cyber risk management comes into play.
Businesses with solid cyber risk management strategies can build formidable cyber defenses and reduce risks without compromising business growth. Besides enhancing security, it also ensures your business stays compliant.
In this blog, we'll share the core principles of cyber risk management and show you how integrating it with a simple but effective security framework can help you achieve strategic success.
Key characteristics of risk-based cybersecurity
Risk-based cybersecurity helps organizations focus their efforts and resources on the most critical risks. This approach aims to reduce vulnerabilities, safeguard what matters most to you and ensure you make informed decisions.
Here are the key characteristics of risk-based cybersecurity:
Risk reduction: By proactively identifying and neutralizing threats, you can reduce and minimize the potential impact of a cyber incident.
Prioritized investment: By identifying and assessing risks, you can concentrate your investment efforts on areas that need your attention most.
Addressing critical risks: Dealing with the most severe vulnerabilities first can help you strengthen your business security.
Cyber risk management frameworks
Cybersecurity risk frameworks act as a guide that helps businesses achieve the full potential of a risk-based approach. Here are several ways frameworks can help you enhance your current cybersecurity posture:
- Frameworks take away the guesswork and give businesses a structured way to assess their current cybersecurity posture.
- Frameworks help organizations systematically focus their investments on addressing the most critical and relevant risks.
- Frameworks provide organizations with the right guidance that helps build security, which is crucial for building customer trust.
- Frameworks are built using controls that have been tried and tested. They essentially help businesses implement effective security controls.
- Frameworks are designed to help organizations achieve compliance with government and industry regulations.
NIST cybersecurity framework
The National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) is a popular, user-friendly framework that empowers business leaders like you to boost organizational cybersecurity. Think of it as a valuable tool created by top security experts to help you protect and secure your digital assets.
Here’s how the NIST CSF supports a risk-based approach:
- It helps you understand your risk by identifying what is most valuable to you.
- It gives you a high view of people, processes, technology, information and other business-critical aspects that need to be secured from threats so your business can operate successfully.
- It helps you prioritize your risks based on their impact on your business.
- It helps you allocate your resources where they matter most and ensures you maximize your investment.
- It promotes continuous monitoring and helps you adapt to evolving threats.
Secure your future
Safeguarding your business from cyberthreats is critical for the survival and growth of your business. Don’t leave your business security to chance. Consider partnering with an experienced IT service provider like us. Contact us now!
What to Look for in an Outsourced IT Partner
What to Look for in an Outsourced IT Partner
In today’s digital age, most businesses rely heavily on technology to streamline their operations and stay ahead of the competition. However, managing an entire IT infrastructure in-house can be overwhelming and costly.
That’s where outsourcing IT services comes into play. By partnering with a reliable and efficient outsourced IT provider, you can offload the complexities of managing your technology infrastructure and focus on your core objectives.
However, with a myriad of IT service providers in the market, how can you ensure that you choose the right one for your business? In this blog, we’ll take you through a few important things you should consider when browsing for an outsourced IT partner. By clearly understanding what to look for, you can make an informed decision and find a partner that aligns with your organization’s goals and requirements.
Factors to consider
Here are a few key factors to keep in mind before you commit to an IT partner:
Cultural alignment
Choosing an IT service provider that aligns closely with your organization’s culture is crucial for a successful partnership. Cultural alignment means the IT service provider shares values, work ethics and communication styles with your business.
With a strong cultural fit, the collaboration becomes seamless and both parties can work together more effectively. This alignment enhances communication, trust and mutual understanding, leading to smoother project implementation and better results.
By selecting an IT service provider that understands and respects your organizational culture, you can foster a productive working relationship and achieve your IT objectives more efficiently.
Vested interest and industry knowledge
A reliable IT service provider should demonstrate a vested interest in your organization’s success. This means they are genuinely invested in building a long-term partnership and are committed to understanding your business goals and challenges.
The IT service provider should also possess industry knowledge and experience relevant to your specific sector. This understanding allows them to provide tailor-made IT solutions that address your unique needs.
By partnering with an IT service provider with a genuine interest in your success and industry expertise, you can benefit from their insights, strategic guidance and proactive support. Their knowledge of industry best practices can help you navigate technological advancements and make informed decisions that drive your business forward.
References and value demonstration
When evaluating potential IT service providers, it is essential to seek references and ask for evidence of the value they have provided to their clients. Speaking with their current or past clients allows you to gain valuable insights into their performance, reliability and customer satisfaction.
Requesting real metrics and use cases enables you to assess the IT service provider’s track record and evaluate how their services have benefited other businesses. This information gives you confidence in their capabilities and helps you gauge their suitability for your organization.
By choosing an IT service provider with positive references and a demonstrated ability to deliver value, you can minimize risks and make an informed decision that aligns with your business goals.
Round-the-clock service
Technology disruptions can occur anytime, and prompt resolution of IT issues is crucial to minimize downtime and maintain business continuity.
An IT service provider offering round-the-clock service ensures that technical support and assistance are available whenever needed. This 24/7 support can be crucial if you operate across different time zones or have critical operations outside regular business hours.
By partnering with an IT service provider that provides continuous support, you can have peace of mind knowing that any IT issues will be addressed promptly, reducing the impact on your operations and enabling your business to run smoothly without interruption.
Act before it’s too late
Ready to find the perfect IT service provider for your business? Don’t wait any longer — reach out to us today and schedule a no-obligation consultation. Our team of experts is eager to understand your unique needs and discuss how our services can help your organization thrive.
To take control of your technology infrastructure and ensure it aligns with your business goals, download our complimentary checklist “Top Warning Signs Your Technology Is Holding Your Business Back.” This resource will provide you with valuable insights on the primary tech red flags to keep an eye on. Empower yourself with the knowledge needed to make an informed decision.
Why Your Business Needs a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
Even on a good day, being a business owner is challenging. Apart from dealing with and effectively solving multiple problems, you also need the foresight to arm your business with the right tools and solutions to tackle any issues that might arise later.
One issue you should always prioritize is data loss/data corruption and business disruption that cause downtime and productivity dips. Remember that data loss/data corruption and business disruption could happen due to various reasons, such as:
- Natural calamity
- Hardware failure
- Human error
- Software corruption
- Computer viruses
Adopting a comprehensive backup and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy is the best way to tackle this problem.
What is a comprehensive backup and BCDR strategy?
A comprehensive backup and BCDR strategy emphasizes the need for various technologies working together to deliver uptime. It even highlights technologies associated with cybersecurity. A robust strategy:
Protects all systems, devices and workloads
Managing all systems, devices and workloads efficiently, securely and consistently can be challenging. Mistakes, errors, mishaps and outright failures across backup and recovery systems could happen at any time, leading to severe downtime or other costly business consequences. That’s why it’s essential to have a reliable and secure solution to back up and protect business data as well as business systems, devices and workloads.
Ensures the integrity, availability and accessibility of data
The complexity of IT, network and data environments that include multiple sites — cloud, on-premises and remote — makes monitoring and protection difficult. It negatively affects the integrity, availability and accessibility of information and all IT network assets. That’s why it’s a best practice to simultaneously deploy tools or systems that cover all IT and network infrastructure (remote, cloud and on-site) with the same level of protection and security.
Enables business resilience and continuity
A comprehensive and realistically achievable backup and BCDR strategy prioritizes, facilitates and ensures the continuity of business operations. It represents a business’ resiliency against downtime or data loss incidents.
Prioritizes critical protection and security requirements against internal and external risks
No backup or BCDR solution can be effective if your business does not proactively identify and mitigate internal and external risks. You need tools that focus on internal and external threats through constant monitoring, alerting and tactical defense to empower your backup and BCDR strategy.
Optimizes and reduces storage needs and costs through deduplication
With the amount of data skyrocketing day after day, it poses serious storage and budgetary challenges for businesses. What makes things worse is the existence of multiple unnecessary copies of the same files. Therefore, adopting the deduplication process can identify data repetition and ensure that no similar data is stored unnecessarily.
Manages visibility and unauthorized access and fulfills data retention requirements
Your business data must never be visible to every employee in the same way. There must be policies and tools to ensure that an employee accesses only data essential to completing their tasks. Also, unauthorized access must be identified and blocked immediately. This is crucial not only for the success of backups and BCDR but also for maintaining compliance with all regulatory mandates related to data protection and retention.
Comprehensive backup and BCDR for your business
By now, it must be clear to you that adopting a comprehensive backup and BCDR strategy is not an option but a necessity. An occasional, severe data loss incident or disruption even could open the gates for your competitors to eat into your profits and customer base.
You must do everything possible to bring all the right tools and strategies together so your business can operate seamlessly, even in the face of chaos. Are you ready to approach the concept of comprehensive backup and BCDR practically?
It isn’t as difficult as you might think. Collaborate with an expert partner like us with the knowledge and experience to take care of your backup and BCDR needs.
Get in touch with us today to learn more.
A Deep Dive Into Phishing Scams
Phishing scams remain one of the most prevalent and successful types of cyberattacks today, so being aware of the danger they pose to businesses like yours is extremely crucial. Your business could easily be the next victim if you don't clearly understand how threat actors leverage phishing emails.
In this blog, you'll learn the intent behind phishing emails, the various types of phishing attacks, and most importantly, how you can secure your email and business.
The goal behind phishing emails
Cybercriminals use phishing emails to lure unsuspecting victims into taking actions that will affect business operations, such as sending money, sharing passwords, downloading malware or revealing sensitive data. The primary intent behind a phishing attack is to steal your money, data or both.
Financial theft — The most common aim of a phishing attempt is to steal your money. Scammers use various tactics, such as business email compromise (BEC), to carry out fraudulent fund transfers or ransomware attacks to extort money.
Data theft — For cybercriminals, your data, such as usernames and passwords, identity information (e.g., social security numbers) and financial data (e.g., credit card numbers or bank account information), is as good as gold. They can use your login credentials to commit financial thefts or inject malware. Your sensitive data can also be sold on the dark web for profit.
Be vigilant and look out for these phishing attempts:
- If an email asks you to click on a link, be wary. Scammers send out phishing emails with links containing malicious software that can steal your data and personal information.
- If an email directs you to a website, be cautious. It could be a malicious website that can steal your personal information, such as your login credentials.
- If an email contains an attachment, be alert. Malicious extensions disguised to look like a document, invoice or voicemail can infect your computer and steal your personal information.
- If an email tries to rush you into taking an urgent action, such as transferring funds, be suspicious. Try to verify the authenticity of the request before taking any action.
Different types of phishing
It's important to note that phishing attacks are constantly evolving and can target businesses of all sizes. While phishing emails are a common method used by cybercriminals, they also use texts, voice calls and social media messaging.
Here are the different kinds of phishing traps that you should watch out for:
Spear phishing — Scammers send highly personalized emails targeting individuals or businesses to convince them to share sensitive information such as login credentials or credit card information. Spear phishing emails are also used for spreading infected malware.
Whaling — A type of spear phishing, whale phishing or whaling is a scam targeting high-level executives where the perpetrators impersonate trusted sources or websites to steal information or money.
Smishing — An increasingly popular form of cyberattack, smishing uses text messages claiming to be from trusted sources to convince victims to share sensitive information or send money.
Vishing — Cybercriminals use vishing or voice phishing to call victims while impersonating somebody from the IRS, a bank or the victim’s office, to name a few. The primary intent of voice phishing is to convince the victim to share sensitive personal information.
Business email compromise (BEC) — A BEC is a spear phishing attack that uses a seemingly legitimate email address to trick the recipient, who is often a senior-level executive. The most common aim of a BEC scam is to convince an employee to send money to the cybercriminal while making them believe they are performing a legitimate, authorized business transaction.
Angler phishing — Also known as social media phishing, this type of scam primarily targets social media users. Cybercriminals with fake customer service accounts trick disgruntled customers into revealing their sensitive information, including bank details. Scammers often target financial institutions and e-commerce businesses.
Brand impersonation — Also known as brand spoofing, brand impersonation is a type of phishing scam carried out using emails, texts, voice calls and social media messages. Cybercriminals impersonate a popular business to trick its customers into revealing sensitive information. While brand impersonation is targeted mainly at the customers, the incident can tarnish the brand image.
Bolster your email security
Emails are crucial for the success of your business. However, implementing email best practices and safety standards on your own can be challenging. That’s why you should consider partnering with an IT service provider like us. We have the resources and tools to protect your business from cyberattacks, helping you to focus on critical tasks without any worry. Contact us now!