What Are You Doing To Protect Your Business In 2020 & The Post-COVID Era?

Recent months have been challenging for us all on so many fronts – from businesses working tirelessly to still service clients’ needs and protect their employees, coping with the sudden and demanding changes to the technical infrastructure and communication needs of the business, to employees adapting to the new normal of working from home and staying focused and productive. Every day has brought new challenges to overcome.

With the shift towards more remote and flexible working looking like it is going to become a larger part of the new normal even Post-COVID, the ability to remain connected going forward is crucial, and so much of this relies on online services and technology.

With this comes a whole new world of considerations - how to ensure that your team can work efficiently, reliance or programmes like Zoom, employees using their own Wi-Fi connections and personal devices to access company information, and data security.

“The average cost per data breach has increased from $3.54 million in 2006 to $8.19 million in 2019.”

Recent statistics show that on top of these already alarming numbers, there has been a dramatic increase during the pandemic of businesses being targeted through email spam, malware, ransomware and malicious domains. This is something that not only affects the big tech companies and online marketplaces but also a lot of businesses that would typically have a larger offline presence and workflow – including production, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.

When looking at this there are clearly two main areas that as businesses we need to focus on:

• Security of corporate assets (IP, business methods, trade secrets, and of course financials) and digital infrastructure needed to service to customers and clients needs.
• Compliance with data protection legislation and best practices.

There are some basic procedures and guidance that can make an immediate impact on the security of your business, however, it is also something that the C-Suite need to give real consideration to and develop a long-term holistic approach to ensure the risk to the business is mitigated as much as possible.\

What can you and your employees implement immediately?

Basic online awareness:

• Beware of suspicious-looking links – especially related to COVID (50% more likely to contain malicious content,
• Where possible use work approved devices and consult your IT department when using personal devices to connect to company networks and information,
• Ensure that you don’t perform personal tasks, admin, or searches on work devices and don’t allow family members to use company devices,
• Make sure all work-related data is stored on company approved cloud storage with the augmentation of programmes like GDrive, iCloud, and OneDrive syncing it becomes far too easy to place files in an area on your hard drive that might be backed up to an external source,
• And of course, make sure all staff are using strong passwords on their accounts and devices not something like *insert pet's name here*2016.

Given everyone has so much change to deal with right now, getting awareness out to your employees to be extra vigilant will play a big part in maintaining key business operations and supporting new ways of working, but looking forward a lot of companies will require a more in-depth approach and the input from key IT security professionals either inhouse or on a contract basis.

Possible specialist system and operational implementations:

• Multi-Factor Authentication on all Virtual Private Networks (VPN) connections and critical cloud services to increase security.
• Optimising the behavioural analytics tools to detect suspicious activity for admins and those who handle critical and sensitive business information.
• Monitoring system capabilities and increasing automation were needed to deal with emergency situations, heightened client needs, and adapt to future changes in how the company may need to work.
• Ensuring all information is backed up and redundancies are in place, and implementing a Four Eyes Principle on all changes to key information and systems.

This is where we excel – discussing your business’s particular needs and advising you on the kind of role needed to meet your requirements - whether that be on an ongoing basis or on a shorter consultancy role, and implementing a cohesive and bespoke training & recruitment strategy to match those needs.

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