Cyberattacks are an evolving and increasing risk to all of us – organisations and individuals alike. With the number of attacks having grown significantly over the past few years, the sophistication of those threats has also increased dramatically – making us vulnerable every time we log on to our machines.
Alarmingly, the average lifespan of a malware sample in 2020 lasted just 3.4 days, meaning the speed of change has overwhelmed traditional antimalware products, making them obsolete. Businesses need to start adopting a holistic approach to cybersecurity in the ‘new workplace’ – whether that is remote or hybrid – taking both preventative as well as disaster recovery measures into account.
Cybercriminals using a variety of techniques cause losses in business productivity as well as reputational and revenue damage, which can be devasting to businesses, especially SMEs in our tough economic climate.
Today’s threat landscape
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the threat landscape, highlighting numerous security and privacy risks associated with remote work operations. Within 2020, 31% of global companies were attacked by cybercriminals at least once a day. The most common attack types were phishing attempts, DDoS attacks, and videoconferencing attacks.
According to Acronis Cyberthreats Report 2020, nearly half of all IT managers struggled to instruct and secure remote workers. This forced 92% of global organisations to adopt new technologies to complete the switch to remote work. As a result, almost three quarters of global organisations saw their IT costs increase during the pandemic.
Since standalone backup and cybersecurity solutions are no longer enough, organisations need new strategies and solutions if they are to stay ahead of new threats. To combat today’s cybersecurity trends, employers need a plan of attack that combines cybersecurity solutions with tried-and-true best practices.
Preventative tips:
Employee training
Around 94% of all malware and 96% of all social engineering attacks today are delivered through email, and have shown that human error plays a role in 90% of all data breaches. Therefore, one of the most effective cybersecurity strategies is to conduct regular and ongoing awareness training to ensure employees can identify and avoid risky online behaviour.
Cybersecurity tools
Companies should also look to invest in a reputable security tool to prevent security incidences from occurring. A good security tool will have artificial intelligence and machine learning built in to detect and quickly respond to possible attacks.
Selecting the right solution
Before selecting a cybersecurity solution, it is essential to conduct a thorough evaluation to determine what you need to protect, what your risks are if your protection fails, and how attackers are most likely going to breach your current cybersecurity measures.
Once you have completed asset audits and risk assessments, you should have a solid grasp of what’s on your business’s network, what needs the most protection, and how vulnerable its network is to attacks. This will help you in your search for data security solutions by letting you know what kinds of protection you need.
Always have a back-up
Back-up systems
Implementing a robust backup system can help to ensure that there is no loss of data, which can be costly, both monetarily and in the loss of reputation. An increasingly popular way of backing up important data is to use a cloud-based offering that can do this automatically.
Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery refers to the plan and processes for quickly re-establishing access to applications, data, and IT resources after an outage. A disaster recovery system for business-critical applications is crucial to minimising downtime as a result of an attack and should account for all possible risks and what exactly your business needs at a minimum for operations to continue.
Today, the importance of being cyber-prepared and having a cyber-resilience strategy cannot be overstated. To meet the needs of organisations today, Rectron has expanded its cybersecurity and disaster recovery offering with the addition of Acronis to provide products that will improve the lives of our customers.
Through this trusted partnership, Rectron continues to provide cybersecurity and disaster recovery solutions that will ensure data belonging to businesses of all sizes remain protected and if need be, is easily recovered.
By Elaine Wang
The writer is the Cloud and Software Solutions Director at RectronSouth Africa