10 Cyber Security Resolutions

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Cyber security threats and trends evolve year over year as technology innovations continue to advance at alarming speeds. It is critical for organizations to regularly reevaluate their overall cyber risk management and security practices, especially at the beginning of each new year, and establish realistic “cyber security resolutions,” or objectives for the coming year. These resolutions serve as proactive measures to shield the organization from potential and costly breaches.

Here are actionable resolutions that your company can adopt to help fortify its defenses and avoid falling prey to cyber-crimes:

Establish a cyber security awareness and training program— Your employees serve as the first line of defense against cyber threats. Even the most robust security and preventative measures can be vulnerable if an employee clicks on a malicious link or downloads unauthorized or malicious software. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to comprehensively train their personnel on prevalent cyber threats and appropriate responses. Employees need awareness regarding the risks associated with visiting harmful websites, sharing files and data outside of the organization, leaving devices unattended, and oversharing information on social media. Familiarity with your company's cyber security policies and knowledge of reporting procedures for suspicious activities are also essential for your employees.

Install strong endpoint security software and controls— In addition to training your employees about the risks of inadequate cyber security practices, robust endpoint security controls, including detection and response tools, and antivirus software, stands out as prime methods for safeguarding your environment. Organizations must conduct comprehensive research to select solutions that are tailored to their specific needs. It's imperative to ensure that once implemented, these solutions are tuned, monitored, and regularly updated to maintain optimal effectiveness.

Instill safe web browsing practices— Deceptive and malicious websites pose a significant threat, capable of harvesting credentials from employees, and possibly leading to infection of your network with malicious software.  These conditions could pave the way for more severe cyber-attacks. Safeguard your organization by providing employees with training on responsible web usage, emphasizing interactions only with secured websites. As an additional layer of defense, companies should contemplate blocking of known threats and potentially malicious webpages.

Implement strong authentication and access controls— Continuous management of user access controls, strong authentication mechanisms, and strong passwords can contribute significantly to thwarting unauthorized access to your organization's environment, applications, infrastructure, and data. Robust access controls help ensure the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the organization's environment.   Multifactor Authentication (MFA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and other solutions can significantly contribute to these objectives. 

Establish vulnerability management practices and controls — Conducting periodic vulnerability assessments and penetration testing is paramount in evaluating your company's cyber risk exposures. Through identifying critical vulnerabilities and simulated attacks, these assessments reveal potential entry points into your system. Security experts then compile their findings and offer recommendations to enhance network and data safety. Regularly patching and hardening of systems and keeping them updated is critical to preventing cyber criminals from exploiting software vulnerabilities. Timely updates to applications, operating systems, security software, and firmware are essential safeguards.

Patch systems regularly and keep them updated—A common way cyber criminals gain entry into your system is by exploiting software vulnerabilities. To prevent this, it’s critical that you update applications, operating systems, security software and firmware on a regular basis.

Back up your data— Maintaining backup files is equally important in the event of a compromised system to prevent the loss of critical business or proprietary data.

Understand phishing threats and how to respond— Understanding and mitigating phishing threats is crucial, given the rising sophistication of these attacks. Training employees on common phishing scams and other cyber security concerns is essential. Real-world examples during training sessions can better equip them to identify and respond to potential threats.

Create an incident response plan and perform a tabletop exercise— Creating an incident response plan is essential for organizations. While data protection measures are crucial, incident response plans provide clear action steps following a cyber event. These plans enable organizations to promptly and efficiently notify impacted customers and partners, thereby limiting financial and reputational damages. Additionally, the organization should conduct at least one cyber incident tabletop exercise each year, in order to validate, test, and identify any blind spots in the incident response plan. 

How Alliant Can Help?
Alliant has made considerable investments in the areas of cyber loss modeling and risk mitigation, and we can help determine which measures will have the greatest impact on your risk profile. Alliant Cyber performs a comprehensive risk assessment of your current security posture and by simulating an attack scenario, gauges potential losses and evaluates the effectiveness of your existing coverage.

More importantly, we can help identify which additional measures will deliver the greatest ROI in terms of reducing the likelihood and potential severity of an attack, so you can optimize your cybersecurity budget. Once the assessment is completed, we connect you with qualified service providers who can implement the recommended effective controls.

Alliant Cyber: Our Transformative Approach
Alliant Cyber uses extensive industry-specific expertise to help our clients navigate the evolving cyber insurance market. Our transformative cyber risk management approach employs a methodology that integrates cyber risk, quantification, security and control solutions to help our clients identify and remediate security vulnerabilities prior to presenting their risk to the cyber insurance market. This approach empowers our clients to build better cyber risk management programs and achieve their cyber insurability objectives.

To arrange a demo of the Alliant Cyber risk quantification dashboard or to schedule a cyber risk assessment, visit www.alliant.com/cyber.