These factors have brought cybersecurity to the forefront as a focus area for all organizations. Businesses of all sizes and within all industries need to protect business-critical information from cyberattacks. Here are our suggestions for the best practices that your organization should implement for a stronger cybersecurity strategy.

Implement zero trust security

In a Zero Trust architecture, you don’t trust anyone or anything before verifying who they are and what access rights they may have. This can’t be accomplished until every user, device, and network flow is authenticated and authorized. Passwords have played out their role, and many organizations seek the concept of trusted corporate identities, identities with security keys that can be managed in an automated way and used in all scenarios and that offer rich user convenience.

It is straightforward from a conceptual point of view: every user and user's device needs a trusted identity. However, it is not only about people, a similar approach is also needed as new endpoints get introduced into the network. Recently, through DevOps and continuous development flows, a very dynamic environment has been introduced with the need to protect endpoints such as conference room equipment, servers, and printers. Discover how your organization can implement a zero trust strategy in 14 easy steps.

Develop and maintain good cyber hygiene

Good cyber hygiene helps to protect against the vulnerabilities that come from emails, networks, operating systems, and other technologies, by accounting for various risks and is an important preventive measure. Cyber hygiene in its essence is a collection of security best practices that an organization follows to boost its overall security posture. This often includes various aspects ranging from employee awareness against cyber-attacks to the processes followed by the IT staff, such as regularly updating software and patching vulnerabilities.

Make Multi-Factor Authentication Mandatory

Numerous studies have proven that a simple username-password combination is no longer enough to guarantee enterprise data and asset protection. By adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) to verify user access, organizations can drastically reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

MFA requires two or more independent pieces of information to verify a user’s identity. This means, that even if cyber attackers get access to stolen user credentials, they cannot access an organization’s resources without the additional authentication factor. With a key stored on a smart card or token, for example, the chance of cybercriminals getting access to your systems drops to close to zero.

Multi-factor authentication is one of the most important measures recommended by various security experts for many years. Deploying MFA in your environment is the first, and really important step, towards protecting your organization against cyber-attacks such as password cracking, phishing, and keylogging.

Email and Communication Safety

Email is one of the top communication tools for businesses and unfortunately it is also one of the most vulnerable channels. Cybercriminals can infiltrate your network and gain access to sensitive information by injecting malware into an email, using malicious links, or using social engineering to launch phishing attacks against your organization. Implementing email encryption and signing boosts the overall security of your organization’s most widely used communication channel.

Don’t forget workplace devices and IoT

It is important for your organization to be aware of all devices connected to its network. This can include servers, printers, routers, and IoT devices, as well as laptops and smartphones. It is important to secure every connected device since each unprotected connected device means a risk.

Securing endpoints in your network with PKI-based identities allows you to take control of the devices and block unauthorized access. If you are using a system for IT service management (ITSM), such as ServiceNow, or if you use Windows autopilot to preconfigure devices, make sure it can be integrated with your security solution.

Educate and train your workforce

Last, but possibly most important - Awareness within the organization is essential to create a security culture and to increase the cyber defense level of the organization. Cyber security shouldn’t be considered a job only for the IT teams. Educate and train your users so everyone understands what they should do to ensure a high level of security. It is also important that the management stands behind the security investments and allocates a reasonable budget for cybersecurity measures.