Many of us are looking forward, and thinking of resolutions to set some good habits and improvements for the coming year. If your organisation could improve its cyber security defences, then these 12 cyber security New Year’s resolutions are for you.
1. Keep an eye out for increased DDoS attacks.
Even with Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the way, this is still a busy time for online shopping. Particularly if your organisation deals in online retail, watch out for DDoS attacks. A website outage in this vital period could have an outsized effect on your end of year revenue. Make sure your cyber solution has robust DDoS protection.
2. Watch out for an increased amount of phishing attacks.
Especially those themed around Christmas and New Year. Phishing emails are constantly improving and evolving, making it harder to separate the real from the fake. This time of year, we always see an increase in the number of attacks and advancement in the tricks being used. It is also easier to trick unsuspecting users into handing over their details or access to their network, as people tend to be in a rush so they can enjoy the holiday season. Remember to pause and take your time.
3. Avoid unsecured WiFi networks.
Out doing some last minute shopping and need to jump on some WiFi? Be careful which network you connect to, especially if you have to create an account with a provider you’ve not heard of. As always, don’t use the same password for all your accounts, particularly business accounts! It only takes one password being leaked to compromise the lot.
4. Beware when buying online.
With so much shopping done online, that means an increase in e-commerce fraud. Be sure that the website you are buying from is official and is secure, look for the ‘https’ at the start of the URL, many browsers will also display a padlock symbol to signify a secure website. Be extra careful of your employees shopping online on work devices, but more on that later.
5. Be suspicious of online ads.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Top end tech toys and designer clothes are unlikely to be heavily discounted this time of year, don’t rush to grab deals and forget basic online cyber security practices.
6. Don’t forget social engineering.
All year round, this is a significant threat. Some studies have found as many as 90% of cyber incidents arise from human error. In many ways, the biggest threat to your organisation is your employees, or even yourself.
7. Never BYOD!
Bring Your Own Device is a massive cause of data breaches. Allowing employees to use their own unregulated, unmonitored and unstandardised devices to handle confidential work-related business is an accident waiting to happen.
8. Never use your work device for personal use.
By sticking to the usual uses for work laptops and mobiles and avoiding shopping, streaming and downloading when unnecessary, you can minimise the risk of a breach.
9. Don’t delay software and device updates.
Make sure you always update as soon as is practical. That doesn’t mean you need to drop everything you are doing as soon as an update is available, but it’s important to carry out updates and patches as soon as is reasonably possible, these updates often carry vital fixes to recently found vulnerabilities.
10. Check that your cloud storage is secure
Be aware that your data is only as safe as the weakest link in the chain. It’s no use spending on an impenetrable network for your organisation if you’re going to store vital information with the cheapest cloud provider you can find. Research the security of third party suppliers.
11. Use multi factor authentication.
This one’s a no brainer and is often the first thing we will recommend to an organisation looking to improve their cyber security. MFA makes brute force password attacks no longer viable and improves your security exponentially for very little effort or cost.
12. Don’t forget the basics – passwords!
Make sure your organisation is using a robust password system. A long password featuring upper and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers is best. Randomised passwords are tough but very hard to remember, use a series of words or a phrase and swap out and add some characters:
Bad – newyearseve123
Good –H@PP7NewY3@r£!
One final tip…
Think of your data and applications like your life savings – what more can you do to protect them?
That’s a wrap on our cyber security New Year’s resolutions! Need to speak to someone about your cyber strategy? We are here to help!