Nilesh Jivraj, Cyber Security Sales Specialist, CASA Software.
Everyone knows this grim statistic. A quick internet search reveals that in 2022, data breaches will cost businesses an average of $4.35 million, and in the first half of that year alone, there were over 236 million ransomware attacks worldwide. I understand.
South Africa ranks high on the list of attacks by hackers and is the fifth most attacked country in the world.
The impact of this tragedy is profound. The costs of responding are very high, and there are other considerations, such as regulatory fines and the potential for long-term reputational damage.
While there is no silver bullet to prevent cyber-attacks from occurring, layered defense mechanisms can significantly reduce the impact and risk if an attack or breach occurs.
We recommend prioritizing risks by ordering them from highest to lowest based on their potential impact.
Embarking on this multi-layered effort requires a foundational step critical to success: a comprehensive security assessment of your organization.
This is essential to fully understand existing tools, procedures and mechanisms aimed at risk mitigation. This should be followed by a detailed gap analysis to carefully identify and assess areas that require attention.
We recommend prioritizing risks by ordering them from highest to lowest based on their potential impact. This allows for the development and implementation of targeted strategies focused on mitigating the most critical first.
This effort does not end with implementation, primarily because threats evolve. Continuous hardening and assessment of the environment is therefore essential to enable businesses to consistently improve their security posture.
It’s also important to choose the right cybersecurity partner. This ensures you have the right technology stack:
- An effective endpoint security solution that helps prevent the most common cyber attacks that originate from multiple sources.
- A data loss prevention solution that protects the flow of information through multiple touchpoints throughout the data lifecycle.
- A robust network-wide access management solution that ensures users have the appropriate rights, roles, and privileges when accessing data.
- Humans are the weakest link on a network, so a cybersecurity awareness training program can significantly reduce risk.
Other important things to consider are multi-factor authentication, appropriate firewalls, and intrusion prevention features. Finally, create secure backups by following best practices such as the 3-2-1-1 methodology (three backups on two different media, one offsite and one on immutable storage). This greatly improves risk scoring and recovery processes when the first line of defense fails.
What about cyber insurance?
This needs to be considered within the overall security context. Insurance organizations exist as a last resort if you are faced with an insurance claim after an attack.
For businesses of all sizes, payments help recover costs that would otherwise be financially devastating. However, cyber insurance cannot be implemented on its own as a fail-safe should the inevitable occur. Insurance payouts won't save a business after an attack.
At best, the payments will only help recover some of the costs and will not prevent the business from closing.
On the positive side, cyber insurance facilitates the adoption of best security practices and adds value to your business security profile. Just like when applying for insurance for the contents of your home, insurance companies will require certain best practices to be in place before they will accept the risk. This is no different with cyber insurance.
We recommend building a relationship with a broker who is experienced and knowledgeable in the niche field of cyber insurance and has relationships with major insurance companies that offer such products.
However, given the rapid evolution of cyber security measures, this is just one element of a broader security strategy, which also requires collaboration with cyber security partners. This is especially important if his CISO is not supported by a well-staffed security department.
Test, test, and test again
Incident response is a critical component of an effective cybersecurity program. When a breach occurs, you need to take adequate action.
In fact, the success of your cyber insurance claim can depend on the quality of your incident response, which in turn depends on how vigorously and regularly it is tested.
In any case, this will play a major role in minimizing the fallout. This is not something that can be created on a whim. It should be implemented a long time ago and updated and tested regularly.
In conclusion, cyber insurance plays a role in protecting an organization's assets, but it must be integrated into a layered defense framework that includes partnering with the right cybersecurity experts.
Adopting this holistic strategy gives you the peace of mind that you have a resilient cybersecurity defense mechanism.
