Almost every day there is news of new cyber attacks, often targeting large companies. The expansion of the workplace through mobile devices, cloud and SaaS (software-as-a-service) allows greater freedom and collaboration, but also brings new threats to business continuity. According to the Cisco 2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report, more than 1/3 of companies that suffered cybersecurity attacks in the previous year lost more than 20% of their customers, revenue and business opportunities.

Although there are several applications for detecting and blocking the main cyber threats, there are some actions users can take to minimise the risk of exposure to cyber attacks. Companies should promote the practices below among their employees, as their behaviour influences exposure to cyber dangers.

Good user practices that help prevent cyber attacks

Change passwords regularly

As well as changing account passwords regularly, you should make sure they are different for every account and that they are strong (that is, made up of a combination of at least 10 upper and lower case characters, letters, symbols and numbers).

Do not open unknown attachments

If the origin of the e-mail is unknown, no attachments should be opened. You should also avoid opening e-mails that contain spelling mistakes or badly constructed sentences. This may be a sign that the text of the e-mail was machine translated and does not come from a reliable source.

Keep the operating system and applications up to date

Whenever new updates are released for the operating system and the applications you normally use, they should be installed. Updates usually fix bugs in previous versions and also improve protection against the latest cyber threats.

Invest in an automatic data backup solution

Options such as Skysafe keep your data safe from cyber attacks at all times. In the event of an attack, a single click is all it takes to restore all the information.

What about companies? What should they do?

On the company side, there are some actions that should be taken to keep information safe, since it is impossible to control everything employees do online and whether they take risky actions. Find out about some prevention measures that improve the security of your business:

1 - Reduce threats through identity and access management

Set up identity and access management for each employee in the company and eliminate the need for multiple credentials to access information.

2 - Manage mobile devices and applications

Consider managing the important applications rather than the whole device, and inform employees of the actions taken by the IT department.

3 - Promote conditional access

Conditional access restricts access to company resources, for example, by not allowing access to a given application if access is made from a public or unsecured internet network.

4 - Increase the protection of business data

This protection can be ensured, for example, through device encryption.

5 - Prevent data loss

This can be achieved through a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy which allows, for example, the distribution of an e-mail to be limited within the organisation.

6 - Enable secure collaboration

Base the collaboration in your company on secure solutions such as Microsoft Sharepoint.

7 - Reduce exposure to malware

Share good online browsing practices with your employees.

Explore the tips in the Microsoft eBook "Protect your Information: 7 Ways to Improve your Business Security".

Written by:
Openlimits

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