There is a popular misconception that cybercriminals exclusively target big organisations with attacks but that is very far from the truth. You should be looking to protect your organisation against cyberattacks whether you are a huge company or a small organisation.
The fact is that a large percent of medium and small enterprises are at the risk of getting cyberattacks.
As a matter of fact, in a recent survey of organizations around the world who had a staff strength between 10 to 1,000 employees, it was discovered 64% of them had suffered cyberattacks!
This means that the need to protect yourself is not a worry that should be peculiar to large organisations, it is something that every company has to worry about.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have been forced to adapt the remote working model. Even with the eased lockdown, many organisations have continued to work remotely either due to the fact that they think it is not yet safe to start bringing their staff members to their brick and mortar locations or because they have become more productive working remotely.
Although it is outstanding to see many organisations embracing the remote work model, it must be said that remote work, like any other thing on earth, has its own downsides. But if managed properly, the negatives will not impact your business.
One of the things that working on the internet exposes you to is cyberattacks. Cyberattacks are malicious attempts by fraudulent parties to interfere in your business processes or steal your information for personal gain or the gain of their organisation.
It is very imperative that organisations that are now working remotely take active steps to protect their organisations from malicious cyberattacks. In this post, I will show you 5 easy steps that you can take to protect your organisation against cyberattacks whether you are working remotely or even if your staff members use the internet.
Below are 5 tips to protect your organisation against cyberattacks:
Use Complex Passwords Across Your Organisation
If you want to secure your organisation, you have to start from the basics. Most hackers and cybercriminals gain access into your organisation by guessing the passwords of users in the organisation. The best thing to do is to make that process as difficult as possible.
Using complex passwords ensures that malicious individuals find it difficult to gain access into your organisation.
If you can’t generate difficult passwords yourself, you can use one of the many free password generator tools that are available online.
And if you are finding it difficult to remember the complex passwords in your organisation, you can use trusted platforms like LastPass.
LastPass can actually help with complex password generation also.
Use Multifactor Authentication
A multifactor authentication process will further help strengthen your organisation’s cybersecurity. It simply involves creating multiple step processes for users to access your dashboards and platforms.
Let’s say for example, you sign in with your password, you will then be prompted to sign in with a pin before you are allowed access to a platform. That’s an example of multifactor authentication.
Multifactor authentications further complicates the hacking process for intruders as they are more likely to know just one password in the multifactor authentication process.
Employ Role-Based Security
There are different roles and seniority levels at your company. It might be wise to give different accesses to employees in different departments/different seniority levels.
That way, if you are compromised, you will know that the intruder has access to a few of your business dashboards/platforms instead of a situation where everyone has access to everything and the whole company is at risk.
Mandate Logging and Auditing
Loggin simply entails that you use technology to monitor and save data about people that log in to your business platforms. Doing that will give you the opportunity to audit microscopically, the people that logon to your dashboards also affording you the opportunity of identifying threats and suspicious login attempts.
If a person repeatedly inputs the wrong login information for example, you can be notified and take measures to verify their identity.
Give your end users control
Your staff members must be on board if you truly want to ensure your company’s security on the worldwide web.
Educating your employees and partners to be very security-conscious is very important for your security, but also make sure that you give them control over their passwords and authentications. That way, they can quickly change their details if they feel compromised.
Cybersecurity is a huge part of the modern work culture. In Nigeria, remote work has exploded due to the coronavirus quagmire and experts are predicting that remote work is going to stay as the new normal in Africa and beyond.
However, with the growth of remote work has also come the negative of cyberattacks. If the steps outlined in this post are followed, you will be at less risk of getting compromised.
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