Network and Cyber security can be confusing topics if you have not been exposed to the industry. Hearing things like ‘cyber threats’, ‘cyber security’, ‘privacy breaches’, ‘credential harvesting’ and ‘phishing’ can all be terrifying if we don’t know how to properly deal with them. Handling these things can be hard enough, but equipping yourself with the knowledge needed starts with finding out where these cyber security breaches can come from. 

For businesses there are three main types of risk

• Individuals just having fun and seeing what they can do.
• Businesses who want to get financial benefit from hacking into your business and stealing and selling your data.
• State sponsored attacks.

The biggest threat to a corporation being individuals and businesses coming from the second category.

Ok, well as an individual or business owner what can I do to keep myself safe?

When it comes to online data security, there are two main types 

Network Security  

This is the type that most companies have a firm grasp on. This includes having firewalls and a multilayer protection approach stopping threats coming from the outside in.

Cyber Security 

With this, it is your staff that is the biggest threat. They can be a risk to your organization if they open an email, click on a link or don’t have a strong password. 

There are a few things that you need to be aware of when it comes to online security. These are

1. Password Maintenance

This includes Changing Passwords Frequently and having the maximum characters possible for your password. If a hacker finds your password (and if you have used this same password for multiple accounts), this individual can access all your data and details

1. Phishing

A hacker can pose as your bank, send you an email and ask you to enter some details. If you click on that link, anyone on the other end of that email now has access to your details, which they can store or sell. This is known as credential harvesting. 

So what do we suggest?

Invest In training

Spend time or money looking into your cyber security process. With this process, look at;

1. Yourself
2. Your Board
3. Your Staff

The steps to take when doing this are (1) analyse the current risks of your business, (2) How do we address those risks, and (3) What will it cost us?

The end result you as a board member should get is the ability to answer these four questions

1. Do we understand how cyber security impacts our collective and individual responsibility

1. As an organization, who currently has responsibility for cyber security

1. As a board, how do we ensure that our cyber security measures are effective

1. As an organization, do we have a process which ensures that our cyber risk is integrated with our business risk.