The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that a lot of businesses are approaching cybersecurity. In normal times, businesses will periodically try to make improvements to their organizational security and pounce all over events that could put their network and data at risk. While this strategy has worked, the new normal brought on by COVID-19 has IT administrators and business decision makers focused on maintaining resilience regardless of the financial and operational stressors they encounter. In today’s article we will look to identify the major shifts businesses have had to make, and how a consistent approach to cybersecurity is giving some companies an advantage.

What Is Changing?

This year has been far from typical, but it started out “normal”. Businesses had time to set their technology budgets for 2020, but when the pandemic hit those plans were either tabled or thrown out entirely. Unfortunately, in times of crisis, cybercriminals strike, and with many businesses looking to cut costs where they can, security was, somewhat surprisingly, one place businesses borrowed from, weakening security at a time when most would assume that attacks were about to increase.

What has happened in the interim has surprised many industry analysts. While many businesses cut their security spending, businesses have continued to invest in the right places to mitigate attacks. Businesses actually saw data breaches fall by a third in the first six months of 2020. This has led many businesses to question whether all the capital they were pumping into their cybersecurity strategies are actually necessary. 

Tried and True Solutions

With thoughts about cybersecurity spending shifting, there are some strategies that are imperative to keep your business secure from threats. They include:

• Endpoint protection - setting policy that works to secure entrypoint onto your network is essential to keeping threats off your business’ network. Today, there are some very sophisticated attacks and being able to detect, analyze, thwart, and contain attacks is extremely important. 
• Employee training - phishing attacks account for the majority of cyberthreats companies encounter. Ensuring that employees are cognizant of what constitutes a phishing threat, and what to do (and not to do) with it once it is received is paramount to keep data and networks secure. 
• Encryption for remote connections - If your business relies on remote workers, keeping the connection they use secure is extremely important. You never know what your staff has on their PC, and if you don’t want to find out you need to find a reliable remote access software or outfit each member of your remote team with an enterprise VPN. 
• Mobile access management - The smartphone has become more important than ever for businesses, but any environment that is being used as much as most people use their mobile devices needs to be secured against. 

These four platforms will go a long way toward helping your business maintain security of its digital assets. 

Where We Go From Here

Now that organizations are being a little more selective about what they spend their capital on, you will see strategies emerge that are designed to combine the lessons from the past several years with the stripped-down financial obligations they’ve been working with during the first half of 2020. This means that businesses will be looking to build their cybersecurity platforms on efficiency. Here are three strategies you will see more of in the future:

• Building resilience - In order to be successful building cyber-resilience, companies will want to tear down the barriers that separate departments. A unified strategy for all to comply with reduces support overhead and promotes continuity throughout your organization.
• Establish good cyber-hygiene - Many organizations are disorganized when it comes to managing access to their digital resources. Moving to more consistent methods of managing access is advantageous for workers and administrators, alike.
• Lean on cooperation - One notion that has been reinforced during the pandemic is the need for cooperation between departments. Strategies in combating cybercrime and other nefarious actions can work to mitigate the effectiveness of bad actors. 

Cybersecurity is going to continue being a point of emphasis going forward. If you would like to talk to the Ontario experts about how to protect your business now, and do it more effectively than ever, call Compudata today at 519-652-5664.