Modern business cannot be imagined without the use of computer and information technologies. Any company at different stages of the business development processes all kinds of information data. The scope of information includes personal data on employees, managers, owners, and shareholders; customers, partners and vendors data; information on contracts and deliveries; technological and logistic data; all kinds of information about the company’s financial activities, development of new products, etc.
This information is available to employees of the company. It is stored, as a rule, in cloud services, on the computers of these employees, in dedicated storage or databases. So, such antivirus solutions as Webroot SecureAnywhere guard your cloud storage and protect sensitive information.
But let’s find out what is cybersecurity itself in business?
Business Cybersecurity Essentials
Information is of great value to a company of any scale, so it must be protected and stored correctly. Different information has different values for the company, and its loss ultimately leads to a loss of money and time. So, for example, the leak of information about the main business owners may provoke the threat of a raider seizure of the company.
Disruption of any control system as a result of the hackers’ attack can lead to a halt in business processes, a halt in production, and a halt in the company’s logistics. Any business shutdown is a loss of revenue opportunities.
It is possible to avoid such cases, and there is only one way – to build the right cybersecurity system. It will reliably protect the company’s business from information leakage, contingencies, and financial losses.
Cybersecurity is the process of using security measures to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. It is necessary to ensure the protection of assets, data of the local network of computers and servers. The purpose of cybersecurity is to protect data (both in the process of transfer and/or exchange, and in storage).
The Worst Things That Can Happen to Information
There are a variety of reasons, forms, and ways of violating the company’s information security. This leads to the fact that there is no single recipe for all companies for the protection of information. But, for all companies, there is single advice or recommendation: Do you want to protect your business? Build information security (cybersecurity) for your business.
If someone offers you to buy a universal cybersecurity system that will solve all your problems in the field of information security once and for all, you will probably be deceived. Cybersecurity is built individually for the requests and requirements of a single company.
Solving the problem of protecting the business from cyber threats requires a comprehensive, systematic approach and high qualification of specialists.
Confidentiality breach
For example, let’s look at the following situation: competitors received secret information about the new product, technological data, and a marketing plan. It is a serious data confidentiality breach.
Violation of integrity
For example, a hacker in the database of counterparties replaces bank details. Accounting carries out payment, and the money goes not to the accounts of suppliers, but the accounts of attackers.
Lack of availability
The example for this case is: completely blocking the operation of the company’s information systems due to a virus attack.
Any of these undesirable events can occur due to employee fault or due to incorrect configuration of information systems and information protection systems.
What Needs to be Done?
The most critical stage in building an effective information security system is selecting and implementing technical security tools.
- Data must be protected at the network level.
- Control access of employees, customers, and partners to data.
- Provide mechanisms for detecting and blocking viruses, such as the cryptographer and Trojan programs (applying antivirus software).
- Implement measures to counter hacker attacks.
- All these funds should be linked to a single information security system.
For this approach to begin to work, it is enough for the information security (IS) service to come to a business with a description of the identified weaknesses or conduct appropriate cyber exercises with a demonstration of ways to lose money. But this approach also has pitfalls. Firstly, unlike cyber threats and regulations, reaching the business level is not a universal way to promote IS. These cyber-threats are the same for any company and any country in the world.
Second, not everyone may like your desire to eliminate weaknesses in business processes. It is no secret that certain unscrupulous employees, and even managers, feed on such vulnerabilities. They will not want their “feed base” to decrease, and therefore they can insert sticks into the wheels of all initiatives to promote IB at the business level. You also need to be ready for these events. It is time for security to show what contribution it is ready to make to improving business performance.