Your IT Solutions: Uncovering Your Path to Improved Security

NASA got a D in their cybersecurity preparations, the EPA a C-. While many organizations might reference the importance of IT solutions, the failure of major governmental organizations highlights the shortcomings that businesses across the country have when it comes to cybersecurity management. The Colonial Pipeline shutdown and the Solar Winds strike both illustrate the risks created by a breach.

You know that your business can do better and you want to keep prepared for a cybercriminal strike. Let’s explore the steps you can take right now to improve your cybersecurity posture.

Build Your Framework: A Better System of Data Loss Prevention Is Possible

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) comprises a significant priority for many businesses when it comes to cybersecurity. Knowing how to protect your data so that no one can gain access to your confidential information is crucial. However, it is important to keep in mind that 77% of data breaches occur because of employee accidents. Even if you set up ample protections to keep criminals out, you also have to make sure your employees do not accidentally let them in.

While many DLP strategies take into account identifying and categorizing data, some solutions can take your strategy a step further. If you have a quality DLP system, you will also have a risk-adaptive tool at your fingertips. By adjusting strategies based on the risk a particular individual poses to the organization at a given time, businesses will find it easier to prioritize their data security strategy and take their information technology a step further.

To see true success with DLP, business’ need to completely understand their data protection needs. They want to know how to prioritize their highest-risk activities and balance that with their businesses protection.

Improve Your Tools: Define Your Toolbox With SIEM

Your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) helps to provide an overarching look at the information technology you already have in place. It brings together the information, logs, security actions and events gathered from your environment so you can gain a more complete picture of the state of your security posture.

The ability of your SIEM to bring together data and information from a range of sources can help establish a baseline of activity. The administrator can label policies so that they can quickly identify when activity is normal and abnormal, allowing the system to trigger alerts when anomalies occur, so that your cybersecurity team can stop bad actors in their tracks.. 

Adopt Optimal Protocols: A Zero Trust Policy

Gartner estimates that 75% of global organizations will use containerized experiences by 2022. Using this type of security can help businesses better restrict users to only the information they use and stop criminals if they access the system, denying them to access all your business’ data. Given 1 in 4 companies using public cloud services report they have had at least some of their data stolen and 83% of all organizations store sensitive information in the cloud, understanding how to create a Zero Trust policy and restrict access can be critical.  

Without a Zero Trust policy, businesses focus on keeping intruders out. However, very few protections will keep the criminals from moving laterally and accessing other confidential information once they get past the initial guards.

A Zero Trust policy requires strict identification for every user and their devices, even if they are within the boundaries of the network. In other words, the security system requires users to verify their identity when they need to access sensitive information or the network, so that even if a nefarious actor accesses the system within a workstation, they will not be able to steal protected sensitive information.

Creating these compartments helps businesses catch attackers faster. Even if they steal passwords or hijack a workstation, the business restricts what they can access. This allows businesses to easily expand and scale their security to meet their unique needs. 

IT Solutions To Guide You Through

Updating your cybersecurity strategy requires you to balance many different considerations and individualized priorities. For many businesses, this creates a situation where they have to master a variety of different cybersecurity protocols they might not have a solid understanding of. Knowing how to implement and maintain these different protocols, setting up the appropriate rules and alerts, and having the staff to monitor them can be more than your organization can manage. You want to focus your time and energy on growing your business, not on staffing the expertise needed for cybersecurity best practices.

Learn More About the 5 Rings of Cybersecurity

However, as criminals become increasingly successful in their ability to steal customer information, businesses need to improve their cybersecurity strategy and establish partnerships with the companies that can help them maintain their data security.

For tech companies in Portland, Compass Computing Group provides the expertise you need to manage all of these different information technology components so that you can focus on growing your business while knowing your company is secure. 

Reach out today for your complimentary IT analysis and see how you can better protect your business and position yourself for success.