Don’t Be the Easy Target: Top Cybersecurity Mistakes Companies Make (and How to Avoid Them)
When considering the subject of cybersecurity, there are several errors that are common for enterprises and organizations to fall into. In order to have an accurate view of what has to be done to form a cyber security strategy, these errors have to be addressed and a correct view put in their place. The first and most important error is an enterprise thinking that they won’t be targeted, either because they’re too small or because they don’t have valuable information. Rest assured, no enterprise is too small for a cyber threat actor to consider targeting, and every organization possesses valuable information. Even if an organization is not personally targeted, it is likely that they’ll end up being victimized by a larger scale software breach at some point. Organizations need to adopt a security-first mentality and assume that they will be targeted: that is the basic first point of any security strategy.
Another common mistake is thinking that security is solely the responsibility of the security or IT team. To be sure, the IT team can make security their top priority, but in order to avoid blind spots, everyone has to be involved. Management and employees both make countless daily decisions that impact their enterprise’s cybersecurity posture, and coordination has to be maintained between these two groups and IT in order to maintain security. In the same token, a responsibility shared between IT, employees and management is the maintenance of the network infrastructure. In today’s age of cyber threats focused on perimeter network devices, the biggest step towards securing your environment is maintaining a precise inventory of all network devices and enforcing proper regulations. Whole networks have been compromised by public-facing devices with outdated software. Patching policy is the responsibility of IT, but they need the collaboration of management in order to properly enforce it. Only through mutual cooperation can an enterprise’s network environment remain wholly secure.
