According to Homeland Security, cyber-attacks are one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world today. However, if you want your firm to stay at the forefront of industry trends, you will need to adopt new technology. This is crucial for a successful digital transformation, as you will need to move to the cloud, invest in digital marketing, and work with emerging tech partners to stay ahead of the competition.
Proactively responding to emergent threats can improve your resilience and help you avoid fines and legal fees following a breach. Having a plan in place can give you peace of mind when rolling out new tech, as you know that you have a continuity strategy in place should things go awry.
Cyber Security Threats
Colorado is internationally recognized as a tech hub. While this is great for growing businesses, it means that Coloradoan firms may receive more than their fair share of cyber attacks. Today, that means your entire team must learn from case studies of cyber-breaches like:
- Solarwinds: The 2020 breach allowed hackers to spy on the US Government and FireEye (a cybersecurity business). This was caused when SolarWinds pushed out an update that included compromised code, which affected 30,000 users.
- Microsoft Exchange: Hackers were able to take advantage of 5,000 unique servers in over 115 countries due to on-site vulnerabilities within Microsoft Exchange.
- Twitch: Streaming giant Twitch recently incurred hefty fines following a large data breach that featured confidential information about the platform’s biggest stars.
These breaches were extremely costly for the firms involved and exemplified some of the most common examples of cybersecurity threats. They emphasize the reality that your team must take malware and data cleaning seriously and should motivate your IT team to invest in threat detection and response.
Threat Detection and Response
Understanding the threats you’ll face is crucial if you want to assess and manage threats successfully. Today, that means you’ll need to invest in tools that test your team and simulate breaches. Simulations can help protect your business against cybercrime and will quickly reveal inadequacies in your current set-up.
The best way to improve your threat detection is to partner with cybersecurity specialists who utilize tools like AI to enhance your efforts. Cutting-edge AI programs use machine learning algorithms to identify weaknesses and suggest revisions to your current protocols.
You can also use tools like Google Security Command Center’s attack path simulation to see what would happen if malicious actors attacked your firm. Similarly, you can hire cybersecurity specialists to facilitate mock attacks based on common breaches like:
- Phishing
- Spoofing
- Pharming
- Spam
This is particularly important if you’ve recently trained your employees to recognize signs of an attack. By simulating phishing and spam, you can see whether your training programs have worked or if your team needs a refresher on the “do’s” and “don’ts” of cybersecurity.
Cloud Tech
Switching to the cloud should be a priority for your firm. The cloud increases your operational agility and helps you scale your operations when demand is high.
Embracing the cloud may improve your on-site security, too. Video cloud storage allows you to save CCTV and security footage in secure off-site storage. This can be particularly helpful if you need to scale your security footage up in response to seasonal demand. For example, if your firm sees an influx of on-site visitors during the summer, you can use video cloud storage to modify the amount of footage you save during a period when you’re at greater risk of an on-site breach.
Similarly, cloud storage is often regarded as a safer option than on-site data storage. Cloud data is stored off-site and is regularly backed up, meaning you are less likely to lose access should a breach occur. However, you will still need to save your data in a secondary location, known as a data mirroring which mitigates the impact of a breach or natural disaster that could interfere with your operations.
Conclusion
Assessing and mitigating risks is crucial for businesses in the digital age. With the increase of AI, you can’t afford to ignore emergent technology, but should be aware of the threats that increased adoption incurs.