By Ashley Halsey:
Business continuity is essential for businesses, yet this important factor is usually taken for granted. However, the worst-case scenario is NOT having business continuity, which can be extremely detrimental to your business, since you need it for cybersecurity and disaster recovery threats that many businesses face in ungiven times. In fact, no business wants to be caught dead with a serious cyber threat that would not only affect its employees and users, but also cost them millions of dollars, which can go towards other things to improve the company.
And, since cyberattacks and data breaches aren’t slowing down in frequency any time soon, they should definitely be addressed when undertaking business continuity planning and disaster recovery strategy development.
So, if you’re a Business Continuity (or Disaster Recovery) manager looking to prevent cybersecurity from affecting your business, then be on the lookout for these 4 major cybersecurity risks, so that you can come up with an effective business continuity plan:
- Third Parties
“Your business has to be wary of third-party vendors, regardless of their overall reputation,” says Judy Poole, a cybersecurity expert at Writinity and Researchpapersuk. “Sometimes, hiring a third-party vendor can be detrimental to the cybersecurity of your company.”
One example of this was in 2013, when retail giant Target had experienced a major security breach through a third-party vendor that they had dealt with. As a result, this breach had cost the retail giant millions.
“Whenever your business allows a third-party company access to its systems,” adds Poole, “you’re running the risk of potential hackers getting into those third-party systems, and then possibly accessing yours too.”
Therefore, your best bet is to consider network segmentation. By establishing dedicated servers that third-party vendors can use, that tactic will restrict them from accessing your company’s critical network.
- Employees Bringing Their Own Devices
Some employees prefer to work from home. Therefore, should they be called into the office for a day, a week, or such, remote employees might want to bring their devices to work, and use them for company business. However, the bad news is that outside devices might not have the same kind of security as in-house devices. Therefore, the risks are greater for outside devices that are brought in by remote workers.
Think about the following:
- Create a policy for devices that are brought in from outside the office.
- Allow these devices access ONLY through a VPN and two-factor authentication protocol.
- Educate all employees about the importance of strict confidentiality.
- Vulnerable Passwords
“Like any other account that you have, your business must also have strong passwords,” says Randall Bowman, a business writer at Draft beyond and Last minute writing. “Plus, you have to make sure that those passwords are restricted on a ‘need to know’ basis, meaning that managers and supervisors shouldn’t share passwords with administrative assistants, or even interns. Otherwise, you’ll risk someone on the team spilling the password out to someone else, and jeopardize password security.”
Also, keep in mind, when enabling passwords:
- Keep passwords long and complicated.
- Change passwords at least every 30-60 days.
- Enable two-factor authentication (i.e. facial recognition) to have additional layers of security.
- The Employees Themselves
Although your employees want to work hard for you, they might still make mistakes without even knowing it. In other words, they’re not security experts, unless you’ve hired some. But even so, experts can make mistakes too. Plus, they might engage in certain activities (i.e. checking personal emails, opening phishing emails, etc.) on their work computers that can lead to cyber-attacks from interacting with malware.
Therefore, it’s important to educate your employees about cybersecurity, and to set some ground rules on how to operate in-house computers, and what not to do on them. You can even block certain usages on said computers, to better protect your employees from malware, as they work.
Conclusion
As you can see, cybersecurity is extremely important, when it comes to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. No business should be without this protection from potential cyber-attacks, which can happen at anytime, anywhere. Plus, no business is too big or too small to be a potential target for these attacks. In fact, smaller businesses are more vulnerable than bigger ones.
Regardless, breaches can be made public in no time at all, if something isn’t done beforehand. Therefore, keep in mind these four major threats, and keep your business and employees safe.
Ashley Halsey writes and edits at Luckyassignments.com and Gumessays.com. As a professional writer, she has managed many writing projects nationwide. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, and spending time with her two children.
