It has never been more important for organizations to have a comprehensive, well-thought-out cybersecurity program than today.
As organizations continue to combine physical and remote work environments while taking advantage of the cloud, their exposure to cybersecurity threats is increasing.
What’s also increasing is the average cost of a cybersecurity incident. In fact, 2021 had the highest average cost in the 17-year history of IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report,
This article describes 10 mistakes that can hurt any organization’s cybersecurity program and provides recommendations and best practices for avoiding them.
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Mistake 1: Falling Into a False Sense of Security
Large enterprises have equally large targets on their backs, and the only thing that’s keeping them from getting hit is their cybersecurity protection.
Small businesses, on the other hand, often lull themselves into a false sense of security, believing that cybercriminals wouldn’t find them worthy of targeting.
In reality, 43 percent of cyber attacks target small businesses, especially those in the legal, insurance, retail, financial, and healthcare sectors.
The lesson here is clear: all organizations must make cybersecurity their top priority because even relatively minor incidents can cause major business issues if not addressed appropriately.
Mistake 2: Not Formalizing the Cybersecurity Program
A cybersecurity program is, by definition, a written document that describes an organization’s information security policies, procedures, guidelines, and standards.
It then may come as a surprise that many organizations don’t actually have a formalized cybersecurity program. And if they do have one, it’s often outdated.
Having a written, up-to-date cybersecurity program that covers everything from prevention to detection and response helps maintain compliance with best practices and regulatory requirements, making its creation well worth the effort.
Mistake 3: Neglecting Essential Cyber Hygiene Practices
The Giza pyramids have survived for 4,500 years because they stand on a rock-solid foundation—not sand, as is sometimes believed. If only every cybersecurity program stood on a similarly solid foundation, then cybercriminals would find it much more difficult to achieve their nefarious goals.
Unfortunately, it’s still way too common for organizations to neglect essential cyber hygiene practices, such as multi-factor authentication, data encryption, patching, and network monitoring, among others.
Why? Because even essential cyber hygiene practices take some time and expertise to implement, and there are a lot of organizations that can’t afford to hire even a single full-time IT employee.
The same organizations can, however, partner with a managed IT service provider and let its team of IT professionals ensure that all systems run smoothly, safely, and efficiently.
Mistake 4: Not Knowing What Needs to Be Protected
It would be laughable to try to physically secure a building without knowing how many entrances it has, but that’s exactly what organizations are frequently attempting to do when it comes to cybersecurity.
To put together a comprehensive cybersecurity program, it’s paramount to know what needs to be protected, and that means having visibility across the entire information technology infrastructure.
This necessary visibility can be more difficult to achieve when employees are allowed to bring their own devices to work and connect to the company network from remote locations and personal devices, so it’s a good idea to consider if the benefits of such practices are worth the headaches.
Mistake 5: Not Understanding Compliance Obligations
A good cybersecurity program should always reflect business goals and compliance obligations. The problem is that organizations sometimes don’t know that they have compliance obligations in the first place, or they don’t understand them well.
The first step toward achieving and maintaining regulatory compliance should be data identification. Organizations need to know what type of data they’re storing and processing because specific types of personal information may be subject to additional controls.
Many industries, such as healthcare and finance, have their own industry-specific regulations for organizations to follow in addition to sweeping data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Mistake 6: Being Unprepared for the Worst-Case Scenario
Many successful business leaders have cited positive thinking and optimism as a strategy for succeeding in work and life. But the same positive mindset can make it easy to ignore worst-case scenarios instead of planning for them properly.
That’s not acceptable when it comes to cybersecurity because attacks are inevitable. What often separates attacks that cause nothing more than a minor disruption from those that result in extensive downtime is the response to them.
Every organization should make a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy an integral part of its cybersecurity program to resume routine business operations as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Mistake 7: Having No Plan for Ongoing Cybersecurity Awareness Training
In 2014, IBM revealed something alarming in its research report: over 95 percent of all incidents investigated recognized “human error” as a contributing factor.
“The most commonly recorded form of human errors include system misconfiguration, poor patch management, use of default user names and passwords or easy-to-guess passwords, lost laptops or mobile devices, and disclosure of regulated information via use of an incorrect email address, ” explained IBM.
Since then, the situation hasn’t noticeably improved because a large number of organizations still have no plan for ongoing cybersecurity awareness training—something they should fix as soon as possible.
Mistake 8: Not Conducting Regular Risk Assessments
The threat landscape is constantly evolving as cybercriminals continuously come up with new tactics and techniques to commit their crimes. Organizations themselves keep upgrading their IT systems, exposing themselves to new risks.
To accurately identify, estimate, and prioritize information system risks, it’s critical for organizations to regularly conduct risk assessments and update their cybersecurity programs to mitigate the risks identified.
Established organizations that don’t change their IT systems often can conduct risk assessments on an annual basis, while startups and those who are marching full speed ahead on their digital transformation journeys should go with semi-annual assessments.
Mistake 9: Failing to Measure Cybersecurity Effectiveness
Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
If he were a modern-day cybersecurity expert, he would definitely be alarmed because organizations are oftentimes not only doing the same thing over and over, but they don’t even know what results they’re getting because they don’t measure the effectiveness of their cybersecurity programs.
Cybersecurity effectiveness can be measured using a variety of different metrics, including how much time passes between individual incidents and how long it takes to respond to them. It’s also useful to measure cybersecurity performance against competitors & peers, a process that’s referred to as cybersecurity benchmarking.
Mistake 10: Not Learning from the Mistakes of Others
A day doesn’t go by without a data breach or some other cybersecurity incident making the headlines. Sadly, only cybersecurity professionals who are well-aware of today’s threats pay attention to them.
The problem is that organizations that don’t actively strive to learn from the mistakes of others are very likely to make the same mistakes and suffer the same painful consequences.
Of course, not everyone has the time to monitor vulnerability databases, but every organization can partner with a cybersecurity-savvy IT provider and follow its advice.
Prevent Common Cyber Security Mistakes
Despite how common the 10 mistakes described in this article are, they can all be fixed with relatively little effort required.
The pay-off then is a stronger cybersecurity program, one that can prevent even the most dangerous threats from causing irrecoverable damage.
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