Many things are easier said than done. Businesses all over the world will tell you that cybersecurity is more important than ever, and that any self-respecting company, regardless of its size or sector, must be alert and ready for the risks that they could face.
But does this actually mean that these companies are reinforcing their corporate cybersecurity and implanting the measures needed to avoid those risks? Not necessarily: in fact, beyond mere rhetoric, it seems clear that there is still a lot to be done.
Cyber-resilience: unfinished business
This is something that is highlighted in IDC’s report, The State of IT Resilience, which gives an overview of the current situation. Among its findings is the fact that, although companies see cyber-resilience as vital to their digital transformation processes, only 10% believe they have managed to become cyber-resilient.
As such, the remaining 90% still have unfinished business: implementing, increasing or improving their IT security processes in order to make their corporate cybersecurity more robust and, in this way, steer themselves towards a comprehensive and effective digital transformation. This is the only way to avoid security incidents with irreparable data loss (49% admit to having suffered this an incident of this type in the last three years).
The keys to corporate cyber-resilience
We could put this lack of adaptation down to a certain corporate laziness. However, the reality is that, if every company wants to be cyber-resilient but few have managed it, the problem may lie in the fact that they haven’t designed an ordered, integral plan to reach this goal. This leads to some alarming statistics. For example, as we can see in the IDC report, 77% of companies admit to having been a victim of an attack carried out by cybercriminals over the last 12 months.
Having a cyber-resilient company is vital these days. Therefore, it is worth going over the keys to completing this transformation. They can be found in the report Cyber-Resilience: the Key to Business Security, written by Panda Security.
1.- Cybersecurity as a business strategy Traditionally, in a significant proportion of large companies senior management didn’t get involved in corporate cybersecurity, and instead left it entirely in the hands of the technical department. However, in this day and age, the exponential increase in cyberattacks has forced businesses to place cybersecurity right at the heart of their corporate strategies, forming a vital pillar in the smooth running of the whole organization.
Companies must therefore be aware of the risks they could face on a daily basis. They also need to identify any material that must be kept from falling into the wrong hands, locate possible threats, and know how to work continuously so that cybersecurity can occupy an essential part in the company’s daily work. The key is, in essence, for companies to include corporate cybersecurity in their master plans and business strategies.
2.- Action protocols. Once cybersecurity occupies an appropriate position, it’s a good idea for companies to prepare for possible threats, and to design a series of action protocols so that, rather than improvising – an unwise course of action –, they follow a series of internal procedures in order to minimize, or even avoid, possible damage.
These protocols must be divided into four separate phases: prevention (before a possible attack), detection and proactive threat hunting (when an attack knocks at the door), containment and response (when an attack is underway, and you need to hinder the cybercriminal’s work), and reduction of the attack surface (when the attack is done and the effects need to be minimized). Companies that have action protocols divided into these four phases will be cyber-resilient and therefore will have visibly reduced the risks they face.
3.- Cyber-recycling. Any cybersecurity expert knows that no protection can fully stand the test of time. New threats increase at an exponential rate, which means that cyber-resilient companies must be up to speed with not only the current threats, but also those that could appear in the future, knowing how to identify new trends and the new strategies that are constantly being adopted by cybercriminals.
4.- Eliminate risks at all levels. As we mentioned before, corporate cybersecurity is no longer just a matter for technical departments, but is something that must concern every layer of the company, including management. And there is a particularly fragile layer of the company who are very often the targets of a large number of cyberattacks: employees. To keep this from being the case, it’s vital that companies provide cybersecurity awareness training, so that their workers don’t contribute, even involuntarily, to an increase in the number of risks.
But it is also a good idea for these tasks to be carried out using technology. To do so, companies must make use of technological solutions such as Panda Adaptive Defense, which not only acts against possible cyberattacks that are already underway, but also gets to work beforehand, cataloging existing threats and analyzing new trends. Thanks to a combination of all these factors, it is able to automatically predict new threats. At Panda Security, we have at our disposal the latest technology as well as the most highly skilled team of experts to help your company to become cyber-resilient, with a new security model that has all the answers.