Balancing a Proactive and Reactive Approach to Cyber Incidents

A cyber incident is a type of security event that can harm a business like yours. Ranging from data breaches and system failures to malware attacks and phishing scams, these incidents can hinder productivity, revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

In most cases, a cyber incident will result in data loss or downtime. This can include loss of confidential information, customer data or business records. In some cases, a cyber incident can also cause business interruption or financial loss.

We can all agree that no one wants their business to be hacked. A single cyberattack can rob you of your time, money and peace of mind. In addition to getting systems operational and data restored, you have to let all affected parties know that their data may have been compromised. This can be a difficult situation to navigate for anyone, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

In this blog, we’ll provide you with proactive and reactive approaches to tackle an attack, cope with the aftermath of a hack and prevent future incidents.

Proactive steps to implement

By taking these proactive steps, you can help protect your business from the devastating consequences of a cyberattack:

Routinely update your passwords

It’s critical to update your passwords regularly to help keep your account safe. By updating your passwords every six months, you can help protect your account from being hacked.

Here are a few tips on how to create a strong password:

  • Use a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols
  • Avoid using easily guessable words like your name or birthdate
  • Use a different password for each account
  • Don’t reuse passwords

Use a virtual private network (VPN)

A virtual private network encrypts your company’s data and gives you complete control over who has access to it. This can aid in the prevention of data breaches and the protection of your company’s information. However, make sure to select a reputable provider offering robust security features.

Conduct regular security awareness training

As a responsible business executive, you must ensure that your company’s security awareness training program is comprehensive, engaging and adaptable to new threats. In today’s digital age, this is critical to protect your business.

Run regular phishing tests

Phishing is a type of cyberattack that employs deceitful techniques to try and obtain sensitive information from users or cause them to download malicious software. Phishing attacks can be highly sophisticated and challenging to detect, which is why it is essential to periodically test your employees to assess their vulnerability to this type of attack.

Reset access controls regularly

It is crucial to regularly reset access controls to prevent unauthorized access to protected resources. This helps to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to sensitive information. Resetting access controls can be done manually or with automated tools.

Use multifactor authentication (MFA)

Multifactor authentication is a security measure that requires your employees to provide more than one form of identification when accessing data, reducing the likelihood of unauthorized data access. This can include something they know (like a password), something they have (like a security token) or something they are (like a fingerprint).

Before we move on, take note of the cybersecurity training topics recommended by the Small Business Administration (SBA) for all small businesses:

  • Spotting a phishing email
  • Using good browsing practices
  • Avoiding suspicious downloads
  • Creating strong passwords
  • Protecting sensitive customer and vendor information
  • Maintaining good cyber hygiene

Reactive steps to remember

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) reactive incident response framework covers the following five phases:

Identify

To develop an effective incident response plan, security risks must be identified. This includes, among other things, threats to your technology systems, data and operations. Understanding these risks allows you to respond to incidents more effectively and reduce the impact of security breaches.

Protect

To protect your company, you need to develop and implement appropriate safeguards. Security measures to guard against threats and steps to ensure the continuity of essential services in the event of an incident are examples of safeguards.

Detect

Detecting anomalies, such as unusual network activity or unauthorized access to sensitive data, are needed to limit the damage and get your systems back up and running faster following an incident.

Respond

A plan to respond to detected cyber incidents is critical. This strategy should include breach containment, investigation and resolution strategies.

Recover

To minimize disruption, you must have a plan to resume normal business operations as soon as possible after an incident.

Implementing the above proactive and reactive steps requires time, effort and skillsets that are possibly beyond what you can commit to at the moment. However, you can still accomplish this by collaborating with an IT service provider like us. Our experience and expertise may be just what you need. Feel free to reach out to schedule a consultation.

Also, to walk you through incident prevention best practices, we have created a checklist titled “Cyber Incident Prevention Best Practices for Small Businesses,” which you can download by clicking here.

Cyber Incident Response 101 for Small Businesses

Imagine it’s the end of a long workday and you’re ready to head home for the evening. However, just as you’re about to leave, you find out your email credentials have been hacked and critical data has been stolen from your business. As a small business, you may have to deal with similar scenarios caused by phishing attacks, ransomware, malware or any other security threat.

The question is, do you have a plan in place to respond quickly and effectively to minimize the impact on your business?

Remember, the longer it takes to address a cyber incident, the more harm cybercriminals can do to your business, such as severe data loss and damage to your bottom line and reputation.

That’s why, in addition to having strong cybersecurity measures in place, you need to have an incident response plan to fall back on.

An incident response plan is a set of steps that can be implemented following a breach to minimize its impact and get the company back up and running as soon as possible.

Cyber incident response 101

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), incident response has five phases:

Identify

There are numerous security risks to be aware of in order to develop an effective incident response plan. This includes threats to your technology systems, data and operations, among other things. Understanding these risks allows you to be better prepared to respond to incidents and reduce their impact.

To identify risks, you can start by looking at system logs, examining vulnerable files or tracking suspicious employee activity.

Protect

It’s critical to create and implement appropriate safeguards to protect your business. Safeguards include security measures to guard against threats and steps to ensure the continuity of essential services in the event of an incident.

To protect your business against cyberthreats, you can use backups, implement security controls such as firewalls, and train employees on security best practices.

Detect

Quickly detecting irregularities, such as unusual network activity or someone attempting to access sensitive data, is essential to limit the damage and get your systems back up and running faster.

Deploying techniques such as intrusion detection systems (ISDs) is an effective way to tackle irregularities.

Respond

You need to have a plan in place to respond to detected cyber incidents. This plan should include strategies for breach containment, investigation and resolution.

A few things you can do to respond to an incident are isolating affected systems and cutting off access to every impacted system.

Recover

Following an incident, you must have a plan in place to resume normal business operations as soon as possible to minimize disruption.

These steps can be part of your recovery plan:

  • Restoring systems that have been affected by the attack
  • Implementing security controls to prevent the incident from happening again
  • Investigating the root cause of the event
  • Taking legal action against perpetrators

Keep in mind that a well-crafted incident response plan will help you resolve a breach, minimize the damage caused and restore normal operations quickly and effectively. It’s critical to ensure that all staff are aware of the incident response plan and know their roles and responsibilities in the event of a breach.

An incident response plan should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that it remains relevant and effective. Cyber incidents can occur at any time, so it’s crucial to be prepared.

Collaborate with an IT service provider to ramp up your defenses

A specialist IT service provider like us may be exactly what your business needs to develop an incident response plan. By employing our expertise and experience, we can help you:

  • Protect your business against cyber incidents
  • Create a comprehensive incident response plan
  • Abide by NIST’s five phases of incident response

These are just a few of the ways we can help you with your incident response journey. If you’re looking for help protecting your business against cyber incidents, be sure to contact us to schedule a no-obligation consultation.

To provide you with an understanding of the threats small businesses face, we created an infographic titled “Small Business Incidents: What You Can Learn From Their Experiences,” that can be downloaded by clicking here.

Why Your Business Needs to Prepare for Cyber Incidents

As the world becomes more digital, so do the risks of conducting business online. Cyber incidents can happen to any business, regardless of size or industry, and can have serious consequences.

The following are some examples of common types of incidents to look out for:

Phishing

Phishing is an online scam in which criminals send emails or instant messages falsely claiming to be from a legitimate organization. These messages typically contain links to bogus websites designed to steal your personal information such as your login credentials or credit card number. Phishing attacks can be challenging to detect because scammers use familiar logos and language to dupe their victims.

Denial-of-service

A denial-of-service attack makes a computer or other service inaccessible to users. These attacks are carried out by flooding the victim’s computers or network with requests, rendering it unable to respond to legitimate traffic or causing it to crash. Such attacks can be excessively disruptive and can result in significant financial losses.

Ransomware

A ransomware attack is a cyberattack through which hackers encrypt a victim’s data and demand a ransom to decrypt it. Encryption is the process of transforming readable data into an unreadable format. This is done using a key, which is a piece of information that controls the transformation. Only the same key can convert the unreadable format to readable data or decrypt it.

These attacks can be incredibly detrimental to individuals and organizations since they frequently lead to loss of data or money.

SQL Injections

An SQL injection is a form of attack cybercriminals use to execute malicious SQL code in a database. Simply speaking, SQL code is a language to communicate to computers. You can use it to tell the computer what you want it to do, like find some information or create a table, for example. Cybercriminals use this code to change, steal or delete data.

SQL injection attacks pose a serious risk to any website that relies on a database because they can cause irreversible damage.

Malware

Malware is software that is intended to harm computer systems. It can take the form of viruses, Trojans or spyware. Malware can be used to steal personal information, corrupt files and even disable systems.

Nothing could be further from the truth if you believe cybercriminals only target large corporations. According to a recent report, 43% of all cyberattacks target small businesses.1

Real cyber incidents experienced by small businesses

Although the media usually underreports attacks on small businesses and focuses on data breaches that affect large corporations, here are two instances of incidents that severely impacted small businesses:2

  1. When the bookkeeper of a boutique hotel began receiving insufficient fund notifications for regularly recurring bills, the chief executive officer (CEO) realized their company had been the victim of wire fraud.

A thorough examination of the accounting records revealed a severe issue. A few weeks prior, the CEO had clicked on a link in an email that they mistook for one from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It wasn’t the case. Cybercriminals obtained the CEO’s login information, giving them access to sensitive business and personal information.

This attack had a significant impact. The company lost $1 million to a Chinese account and the money was never recovered.

  1. The CEO of a government contracting firm realized that access to their business data, including their military client database, was being sold in a dark web auction. The CEO soon noticed that the data was outdated and had no connection to their government agency clients.

How did this data leak happen? The company discovered that a senior employee had downloaded a malicious email attachment thinking it was from a trusted source.

The breach had a significant operational and financial impact, costing more than $1 million. The company’s operations were disrupted for several days since new security software licenses and a new server had to be installed.

Collaborate for success

Your business is not immune to cyberthreats. To address incidents as they occur, adequate security measures and an incident response plan are required. Consider consulting with an IT service provider like us if you need help identifying the right technologies to prevent a cyber incident or help with developing an incident response plan.

Feel free to reach out now.

To get you better acquainted with incident response best practices, we have created a checklist titled “Cyber Incident Prevention Best Practices for Your Small Business,” which you can download by clicking here.

Source:

  1. National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Report, 2022 – Staysafeonline.org/cybersecure-business
  2. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – Small Business Cybersecurity Case Study Series

Cyber Incident Prevention Best Practices for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you may think you are “too small” to be the target of cybercrime because you aren’t a large, multimillion-dollar company. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Although the media mainly focuses on attacks on big businesses, small businesses are low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals.

Cybercriminals know that small businesses are less likely to have strong security measures in place, making it easier for them to breach their data. In this blog post, you’ll learn the steps you can take to protect your business from the claws of cybercriminals.

Follow these cyber incident prevention best practices

While there is no single silver bullet for preventing all incidents, there are some best practices that can help you reduce the risk of falling victim to a cyberattack.

  1. Ensure your cybersecurity policy supports remote work

When implementing a cybersecurity policy supporting remote work, consider the following:

  • How will employees access company resources off-site?
  • What security measures should be put in place to protect company data?
  • How will remote employees collaborate and share data?

Additionally, you should identify any support mechanisms to help employees struggling to adjust to remote work. By taking these factors into account, you can create a cybersecurity policy that is productive, seamless and secure.

  1. Provide cybersecurity awareness training for employees

Implementing a security awareness training program for employees is critical in today’s digital age. As a responsible business executive, you must strive to ensure that the program is comprehensive, engaging and adaptable to new threats.

  1. Deploy software patches

Threats to your network security are becoming more prevalent as technology advances. That’s why it’s critical to keep your software up to date with the latest security patches.

There are two different ways to keep your software up to date. One way is to set your software to update automatically while the other is to manually check for updates on a regular basis.

  1. Have active antivirus and antimalware protection

There are numerous antivirus and antimalware solutions in the market, so select one that is appropriate for your company. When doing so, you’ll have to consider the size of your company, the type of data you need to safeguard and your budget.

Once you’ve decided on a solution, make sure you follow through with it. This includes installing it on all your company’s computers and keeping it updated.

  1. Implement multifactor authentication (MFA)

Multifactor authentication is a security measure that requires users to provide more than one form of identification when accessing data, thus reducing the chances of unauthorized data access. This can include something that the user knows (like a password), something that the user has (like a security token) or something that the user is (like a fingerprint).

  1. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

A virtual private network encrypts your company’s data and allows you to control who has access to it. This can help prevent data breaches and keep your company’s information safe. However, make sure to choose a reputable provider that offers robust security features.

  1. Deploy single-sign-on (SSO) and password management

A single sign-on solution can make your users’ login process easier by allowing them to log in once to a central system and then access all the other applications and systems they require. This can make the login process more efficient for them.

In addition to SSO, a password management solution simplifies the user login process by allowing them to manage their passwords more securely and efficiently.

  1. Encrypt your data

Data encryption is the process of converting information into a code that can only be deciphered by someone who has the key to decrypt it. It is done to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing the information. Data encryption is a critical tool in cybersecurity since it can help reduce the exposure of your data to risks and ensure compliance with data privacy regulations.

  1. Have backup and disaster recovery solutions

It is critical to have backup and disaster recovery solutions in place in case of system failure or data loss. Make sure to research the different options and find the best solution for your company. To ensure that your backup and disaster recovery solutions are working correctly, test them on a regular basis.

Collaborate for success

If you’re a small business owner, you may not have the time or expertise to implement effective cyber incident prevention best practices. However, by partnering with us, you can leverage our experience to build a digital fortress around your business. Contact us today to find out how we can help you protect your business against potential cyberthreats.

In addition, click here to download our infographic titled “Is Your Business Prepared for a Cyber Incident?” for a deeper dive into the concept.