What is Cyber-Security? Does my business need it?
The simple answer to that question is yes.
Cyber security refers to the execution of technologies, processes, and practices/strategies implemented to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorised access.
Why is Cyber Security important?
Cyber security is important because government, corporate, financial, and medical organisations collate, analyse, process and store an insane and unprecedented amount of data on computers and other devices.
A significant portion of that data can be sensitive information, whether that be intellectual property, financial data, personal information, or other types of data for which unauthorised access or exposure could have rather negative consequences.
Organisations transmit highly sensitive data across streams of networks and to other devices in the course of transacting or soliciting businesses, and cyber security describes the discipline dedicated to protecting that very data, information and systems used to process or store it. As the amount of cyber attacks grow, companies and organisations alike are especially tasked with safeguarding information.
Cyber Security challenges.
For a cyber security approach to be effective, an organisation needs to coordinate its efforts throughout its entire information system. Predominantly, the below:
Network security: The process of protecting the network from unwanted users, attacks and intrusions.
Application security: Apps require constant updates and testing to ensure these programs are secure from attacks.
Endpoint security: Remote access is a necessary part of business, but can also be a weak point for data. Endpoint security is the process of protecting remote access to a company’s network.
Data security: Inside of networks and applications is data. Protecting company and customer information is a separate layer of security.
Identity management: Essentially, this is a process of understanding the access every individual has in an organisation.
Cloud security: Many files are in digital environments or “the cloud”. Protecting data in a 100% online environment presents a large amount of challenges.
Mobile security: Cell phones and tablets involve virtually every type of security challenge in and of themselves.
Disaster recovery/business continuity planning: In the event of a breach, natural disaster or other event data must be protected and business must go on. For this, you’ll need a plan.End-user education: Users may be employees accessing the network or customers logging on to a company app. Educating good habits (password changes, 2-factor authentication, etc.) is an important part of cybersecurity.
So as you're now aware, if you solicit business, the handling of sensitive data is frankly unavoidable. What is avoidable however is having that very same data exposed and accessed in an unauthorised manner.
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