Many people think they can get all the needed cybersecurity solutions for their business by grabbing the latest security tools from popular companies. While top-rated security solutions can be quite helpful, choosing an ideal cybersecurity solution for your organization requires more than recency and virality.
So, how can you ensure you make the best data security decision for your company?
Like many life decisions, choosing the perfect cybersecurity solution for your enterprise requires carefully sifting the less-performing ones — a task that can be overwhelming! But with the rising frequency of cyberattacks and breaches in the last few months, it is essential to get it right!
So, What is Cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is the effort invested in defending your network resources against cyber threats and every other form of attack. Hackers are consistently looking for ways to infiltrate your finance, customer data, and identity to carry out various cybercrimes.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust are prominent solutions most modern companies are deploying. SASE vs. Zero Trust comparison often involves dynamic policies for user access.
SASE helps users to monitor complete user sessions and analyze for risk based on user activity on a network. Zero Trust also grants a timely user access to data based on identity only when such access is required for specific resources.
What are Cyber Threats?
A cyber threat is an act carried out by a prospective attacker to cause damage, disrupt digital life, and steal data in general. It includes directing computer viruses to a system, conducting Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, data breaches, and other attack vectors.
Cyber threats can also be referred to as the process of gaining unauthorized access to data or a system to cause damage or steal information or any intellectual property that can be used to commit further crimes. It can either be directed by an external attacker from a remote location or by an insider who already has certain admin rights to company resources.
Where Do Cyber Threats Come From?
Cyber threats and attacks can be generated by different unexpected threat actors within or outside the organization. Some of them include the following:
Spies and Organized Crime Organizations
Organized crime organizations and spies have the capacity to conduct industrial espionage to steal sensitive information or carry out monetary theft. In addition, these attackers are often interested in getting unreserved profits from their activities by either attacking competitor infrastructure, gaining access and blackmailing material, or stealing trade secrets.
Hackers
People intending to gain undue access to data may even exploit technological flaws to carry out their purposes. Hackers may also access information systems for a challenge or to brag. In the past, people usually needed to be highly skilled to hack. Still, today, automated attack scripts and protocols are available on the internet, which can be easily accessible by anyone.
Disgruntled Insiders
A prevalent attack source comes from insiders who are either angry or dissatisfied with the system. Usually, these people do not need to be tech gurus. They only need to be authorized to access sensitive data or have admin rights to some resources. They may include third-party vendors and employees who may cause data breaches by downloading company content and sharing it online, introducing malware into the systems, or logging into a secure S3 bucket.
Accidents by Authorized Users
One reason to always be prepared for the most unexpected data breach is that even accidents can occur either from you or other parties in the company. For instance, an authorized user may not remember to configure S3 security correctly, resulting in unexpected data exposure. Many data breaches have been due to poor configuration.
How do I Choose the Ideal Cybersecurity Solution for my Company?
In the case of a data breach, the level of damage can hardly be predicted until it has entirely been done. And since getting the ideal solution for your business can seem quite overwhelming, especially when you are unsure what to go for, you can follow these tips in making the right decision about the ideal cybersecurity solution for your organization.
1. Evaluate Your Data Security Situation — Risks and Vulnerabilities
Your first decision is to evaluate your security situation. Find out the risks and vulnerabilities, and be sure what you need to protect. And when the protection fails, what can be the possible repercussions before a solution is provided?
You can do this in three steps as shown below:
Perform Asset Audit
Implementing an asset audit means you’ll look at the different network components to find your network endpoints. For example, what software programs and data are available on the endpoints? What is the state of the whole network?
Assess Potential Risks
At this point, you’ll need to assess what’s available on your network to understand the risks. For example, you may want to ask questions such as, “What will happen if an unauthorized user accesses your database?
When you can understand what your cybersecurity risks are and their potential impact on your network, it will help you prioritize your security strategy and efforts.
Evaluate Vulnerability in Your Security Posture
Once you have determined the significant risks and vulnerabilities in your system, it is crucial to assess the current posture of your network security. Consider running penetration tests and out-of-date security patches in software, and check out the level of cybersecurity awareness among your workforce.
With these comprehensive evaluation approaches, you should have a solid understanding of how vulnerable your network is, what should be given prompt security attention, and others.
2. Set Growth Plans
Look into the future of the business and evaluate what you plan to have achieved in like five to ten years. Consider short-term goals, and see how they might affect your cybersecurity posture before choosing a solution.
3. Find Out How Your Regulatory Burdens Might be Affected By Your Choice
Regulatory standards may differ from company to company. However, most retail organizations have to follow the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which provides guidelines to:
- Create and Ensure a Secure Network and Systems
- Maintain an Information Security Policy
- Protect Cardholder Data
- Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
- Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
- Implement Strong Access Control Measures
4. Check Out How User-Friendly Your Choice of Cybersecurity Is
Bringing a new cybersecurity solution to your network will significantly affect your network. It could either make your tasks more rigorous and time-consuming or easy. Consider this new solution regarding every aspect of your organization, including how it affects employees.
