New Year Goals: Improve Your Cyber Security State in 2020

As we enter into the year 2020, organizations gear up to overcome challenges faced in the past. By setting new resolutions, industry leaders make commitments to improve their cyber security posture. As January begins, enterprises commit to changing systems for growth and intend to continue, but it is often a short-lived practice. According to Forbes, only 25% of people make it 30 days into the new year with their resolutions, and only 8% are successful in turning their resolutions into reality. 

How to Keep Your Business on the Right Track?

With growing phishing attacks, malware reboots and business email compromise (BEC), it is important for enterprises to consider a reliable cyber security testing company to achieve their new year aims. We know it isn’t possible to stick around with a plan when things do not go accordingly. So have you prepared for the worst yet? Enterprises are in dire need of overcoming some bad habits regarding security to achieve business goals and improve cyber security state. 

Changing Bad Security Habits

Firstly, it is important to give up bad habits for a better future. This holds true for best cyber security practices as well. Before listing down new year’s security resolutions, industry leaders need to give up the following bad habits:

1. Set Strong Passwords – Cybercriminals crack easy-to-create passwords because hackers can easily guess them. According to the U.K’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), the most common passwords for last year included words like ‘superman’, ‘qwerty’, ‘123456’, etc. Thus, enterprises should use complex passwords for security.
2. Free/Public Wi-Fi – Malicious attackers find it simple and convenient to attack networks with spoofing and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks when users are connected with free/public Wi-Fi. Companies with crucial data should avoid using them. 

Set Realistic Enterprise Goals

Do you know why most security resolutions fail? Because they tend to promise instead of planning to deliver. Meanwhile, goals allow individuals and enterprises to measure their success. Here are a few realistic goals that enterprises should set for the future:

• Test Often:

Enterprises should begin by partnering with a cyber security testing company and creating a regular test schedule to evaluate phishing email campaigns. Testing experts should perform robust penetration testing to find vulnerabilities in places that employees may not expect. 

• Upgrade Skills:

With the help of AI tools, enterprises can safeguard security blind spots and fill skill gaps by pattern detection to stay ahead of malicious attackers. Simultaneously, they can also encourage IT experts, to work on critical issues. Industry leaders explore AI and ML capabilities to ensure deploying the right cyber security strategy. 

• Save More:

Each year, enterprises promise to spend on cyber security. They either end-up spending more or stick to ineffective defenses. But with the right approach, industry leaders can set goal-setting solutions to find the root cause. IT experts can begin by layering access security with multi-factor authentication and then deploy identity and access management (IAM) tools that provide control over permissions. This can be helpful for enterprises in the long-run.

As we have stepped into a new year, we toss bad habits and set new goals by identifying critical outcomes, defining key metrics and implementing cyber security testing that covers up for any security vulnerabilities.