Cybersecurity is the protection of systems and data from cyber-attacks. It can be broken down into three areas: physical, technical, and organizational.
- Physical cybersecurity focuses on protecting a system’s hardware components, such as servers, switches, routers, and firewalls.
- Technical cybersecurity involves protecting software applications such as operating systems and application programs or APIs.
- Organizational cybersecurity includes policies that govern how an organization protects its information assets, including business continuity planning, incident response plans, network access control (NACL) lists, user authentication processes, and more.
What Is A Cybersecurity Program?
A cybersecurity program is a set of best practices and policies that mitigate the risks associated with cybersecurity. The goal of any good cybersecurity program is to ensure that an organization is protected from malevolent actors out to do them harm. Today, that includes hackers out to attack systems for ransom money (or crypto), competitors trying to get a leg up on their competition, or state actors looking to steal IPs or sometimes even for more malevolent purposes. Cybersecurity includes monitoring and defending against malicious attacks as well as responding to them quickly when they occur.
The most common types of cyber attacks are direct attacks and indirect attacks. The former attempt to access or change information on a system without a user or a company knowing about it. Examples include hacking into a personal email account or stealing credit card numbers from online shopping sites.
On the other hand, indirect attacks attempt to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data by using a third party’s computer, network, or service. For example, an attacker might use a website that is compromised and send spam emails through the site. The company that has been hacked may only become aware of it when its website appears on a spam website list, at which time some real reputational damage would have been done. One cyber attack against your business can cause you to lose the trust of your clients.
What are the objectives of a cyber-security program?
The three objectives of a cyber-security program are to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
- Confidentiality: This means that the information you need to protect should not be made available or accessible by anyone except those with a legitimate reason for doing so. This includes sensitive data like financial information, personal information about employees or customers, and even trade secrets (business operations).
- Integrity: This is about keeping your system free from malware and other types of attacks that could damage your system’s overall operation or prevent it from being used safely.
- Availability: When someone loses access to their own computer systems due to virus infection or other causes, they’ll be unable to do their job properly until they’ve been able to restore it again; this could mean losing money because there may have been no backups made before the disaster occurred! A good cyber-security program will prevent this.
The Core Functions of an Effective Cybersecurity Program
Identify
The first step of an effective cybersecurity program is to identify what you’re up against. This includes identifying the threats, finding out how they work, and understanding their nature.
Protect
Once you know what your organization is facing, it’s time to start protecting yourself against those threats by implementing a security strategy that will help keep your data safe from hackers.
Detect
After implementing a cybersecurity plan that helps protect against potential threats, it’s important to monitor operations so that you can detect if something has happened remotely.
Respond
Once something has been detected as being compromised within an organization (such as through server breaches), responding appropriately becomes crucial—and this can mean taking many different steps depending on the situation at hand.
Recover
Finally, responding appropriately means recovering from any damage caused by hackers or other bad actors trying unsuccessfully to steal information from within organizations’ systems and networks themselves; recovery should also include restoring systems back into normal operation after undergoing repairs have been made following successful attacks.
Scheduling Cyber Awareness Training Services
Cyber threats can derail any company and result in a wide range of problems. Sometimes these IT security threats are minor, while others are much more serious. Taking a proactive approach to IT security is essential in giving your business additional protection against these threats. A managed IT service provider can increase security for your company through cyber awareness training services. These training sessions can be held on an ongoing basis due to the ever-evolving nature of these attacks.
Schedule a free consultation with the cybersecurity experts at Cyber Sainik.
If you are looking for a comprehensive cybersecurity program that is tailored to your organization, contact us today. We will help you understand the risks and how to mitigate them. You can also schedule a free consultation with our experts by contacting us today. We are here to help!
