When you avoid investing time and resources in the topic of cybersecurity, you risk exposing a number of crucial aspects of your business (from your own private data to your customers’ private data) to unknown entities. Providing protection for your business should be one of your top priorities. This is because today, at an alarming rate, cyber attacks are occurring even with the billion dollar companies you’ve never expected to experience a security breach such as Facebook, Yahoo! and Uber.
CTS performs a risk assessment for every new customer we engage with. This includes your website’s detailed report that highlights the major sensitive and regulated data along with suggestions for optimal upkeep and regulation of your data against compliance issues and security risks that may lead to any harmful data breaches you might encounter.
Why does my business need to invest in cybersecurity?
Simple. It protects you and your customers from different threats caused by data breaches that may lead to identity and money theft incidents among many other cybercrimes data may be used for. But to help further illustrate how cybersecurity works in businesses, here’s a brief illustration of the threats and solutions behind some of the most common cybersecurity issues:
Data Privacy
THE THREAT: Does your company request, store, and process data? If you do, then cybersecurity is something you need to consider and prioritize. It’s not enough that you have a privacy policy all set for your customers. Let’s face it, no one wants their personal data floating around for someone to misuse for their own profit. Neither do you want yours to be. As a company, allowing this to happen will cause you more than bad publicity. The backlashes of most data breaches include DDoS attacks (service disruptions), physical data loss (may cause companies to go out of business), intellectual property theft (company information theft), company-wide hacking, and heavy downtime to fix the damages among many.
THE SOLUTION: Your customers are entrusting you with their information, thinking that it’s safe with you as you have data encryption protocols set as per your privacy policy. But make sure to give back by ensuring that their private information are safe with you. Other data encryption strategies you can try are getting web security tools, protecting yourself from SQL injections and XSS attacks, and avoiding file uploads. There’s a lot more that’s involved in making sure your website is fully protected. But if you can’t do it yourself, there are always experts like CTS who can help execute the job without making you break the bank.
PCI and HIPAA Compliance
THE THREAT: PCI (Payment Card Industry) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) Compliances both hold very crucial cardholder information, that once placed in the hands of the wrong people, can eventually disrupt related companies and gain access to important personal files that hold private information beginning from a person’s profile and health records right down to the bottom of their bank account. A website that asks sensitive information such as these need to comply to those standards as there are different protocols to handling them. Regulations that related companies have implemented also come into play to make every transaction smooth and secure.
THE SOLUTION: Complying to the PCI and HIPAA Standards entails following and implementing the requirements that each standard expects. CTS’ team of qualified experts can help your website become compliant to these standards. We’ll even help your team get the training they need to reduce the risks of making violations as well as provide data backup and email encryption solutions to further secure your website from potential threats.
Policies and Procedures
THE THREAT: Following specific cyber standard policies and procedures is the main highlight of implementing cybersecurity on your website. It’s not just valuable website-wise, but also needs to be implemented throughout the whole company. Implementing these policies and procedures also means that every employee needs to be educated and involved in the process as they are commonly targeted by cybercriminals for providing a gateway for any data breaches.
THE SOLUTION: More and more cyber attacks are happening in several companies without them knowing. There have been reports that these attacks are happening on a daily or weekly basis, causing more companies to scramble for help. But not all these companies are getting the right amount of support they need from these service providers. At CTS, we make sure that your defenses are always up and that anything from DDoS attack prevention strategies, network load balancing, firewalls, and even employee digital safety protocols are updated and implemented round-the-clock. Through our cybersecurity services, strict policies will also be put into action such as: Remote Access Policy, Access Control Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Email/Communication Policy, Information Security Policy, Change Management Policy, Disaster Recovery Policy, Incident Response Policy, and a Business Continuity Plan (commonly used with the Disaster Recovery Plan for business restoration).
Vulnerability Assessment
THE THREAT: Creating cookie cutter programs and services are what make some cybersecurity service providers the last place any company with cybersecurity problems should visit. This is because cybersecurity isn’t a one size fits all process. Companies, no matter the similarity in industries, market, or target audiences, differ greatly from one another. This can be a difference in their structure, their business model, their services, and even the way their networks are created and connected. So when the same protocols are done for every client, the results become scattered. Some aspects may improve security-wise, while others hand keys to cybercriminals as they expose network weaknesses, are treated with less care, and are eventually overlooked until the issue turns into am expensive crisis.
THE SOLUTION: At CTS, we make sure to do a comprehensive vulnerability assessment of our clients’ organization firsthand. We identify which components they need to improve on as well as where they excel at. Once we have all the data we need, our team of cybersecurity experts map out a detailed set of plans that aims not just to resolve the current cybersecurity issues, but the potential problems that they might encounter along the way. Among the components we evaluate are the client’s external and internal vulnerabilities, wireless networks, physical security, social engineering (employee training and human resources), and the application and database (software vulnerabilities).
Human Firewall and Employee Training
THE THREAT: Several cybersecurity risks reports have unfortunately come to the conclusion that although cybercrimes happen within networks, the human errors are the primary ones that have exposed their networks to issues more than it is to be blamed on other factors. Among the ways that hackers do this is by tricking the company’s employees into entering private data or clicking on seemingly innocent links that might open the doorways to a massive cyber attack. Hackers have once targeted networks straightforwardly, but now that they have more tools to work with such as fake websites, ads or content that spark instant curiosity, or simply emails that have interesting offers that the employees might want to click on while they’re at work. The possibilities of hacking into secured networks have become endless for hackers these days and unfortunately, it now starts with the employees’ curiosities.
THE SOLUTION: Organized cybercrimes often happen by involving curious and innocent company employees. And because of this, CTS offers employee training that educates them about the risks they’re taking every time they open malicious emails, visit certain websites, fill out online forms with their private information, use the same password for everything, or when they simply download suspicious software or files using their computer that’s connected to the company’s network. Our idea is to influence and train your company’s employees to become more aware that these risks can easily affect the company’s equilibrium as well as their employment. And once they work smarter and more defensive of any potential attacks, they can be the company’s first line of defense against any potential hacking that may occur.
Fake Spam
THE THREAT: Along with employee cybersecurity training comes the most basic scam that most unknowing employees easily fall for: fake spam. Fake spam is defined as it is: a fake email. Now this fake email may be easy for other employees to spot, but for some who are new to the knowledge of their existence and the damage they can do, matters may go downhill from there. These emails are disguised as common client emails that almost replicates the original email address the client uses. And it doesn’t stop there. Once opened, the unknowing employee might be tricked into clicking links, inputting private information, sending out important files or cash, or even responding to it, giving the cybercriminals an upper hand with creating a bigger fraud.
THE SOLUTION: To combat these unfortunate hacking incidents, CTS offers security awareness training that turns your employees into human firewalls within their professional and personal environments. After such training, you may expect to have employees that are well aware of what to look out for in an incoming email, implement security protocols, and properly report any suspicious activity that may affect the company’s network if they are not addressed early.