October is recognized as Cybersecurity Awareness Month for cybersecurity. In honor of this, Juta Gurinaviciute, a cybersecurity expert and CTO of NordLayer, is interviewed to explain the importance of this month and the global cyber trends. Gurinaviciute provides a list of places businesses must first look when developing an effective cybersecurity plan, and which risks are the most prominent within the IT world.
Why is Cybersecurity Awareness Month being celebrated?
Cybersecurity Awareness Month provides a time to inform partners, employees as well and other stakeholders about the constantly changing cybersecurity landscape. It’s not just an educational event, but also a societal one. Gurinaviciute gives her advice about cybersecurity awareness:
As one who is responsible for the technical infrastructure of our organization, there may not be enough cybersecurity awareness. If businesses and individuals are well-informed, they can be more knowledgeable about their internet-related operations,” she says. “An informed public is less prone to cyberattacks, which makes the online ecosystem more secure for all parties. As the awareness grows and spreads, it helps create a mindset where cybersecurity is second nature and encourages a sense of security for all.
Promoting the use of safe Tips
Cybersecurity Awareness Month encourages companies and employees to maintain safe habits in their everyday lives. This includes:
Regular Employee Training
Many breaches are the result of human error, and the threat landscape continuously evolves, so must the training programs. Regular updates to training material ensure that employees are prepared to meet new challenges. Training helps employees recognize and avoid common pitfalls. Furthermore, using live examples and scenarios in these trainings makes the training more memorable, allowing employees to understand and relate more effectively.
Implement Multi-Factor Authentication
This is an essential cybersecurity solution, providing additional protection in case your password has been compromised. However, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Examples of MFA that you should consider include biometric scanning, like fingerprints and retinal scans one-time passwords delivered via tokens, emails, or SMS, devices that are hardware that include identification badges and cards and tokens, context-based factors like the behavior of a keyboard, data about location and the network that is used to establish a connection.
Maintaining Software up-to-date
Updates usually include patches for vulnerabilities that hackers may take advantage of. Additionally updates often include enhanced security features that provide more security.
To ensure compliance, businesses can program software to automatically update to reduce the chance of oversight.
It’s good news, according to a NordVPN study, called the National Privacy Test, more Americans recognize the security advantages of updating their apps quickly as an update becomes available. In the last year, 59% of users updated their devices as quickly as they could, compared to 66% this year.
The Most Significant Cybersecurity Threats
Gurinaviciute discusses what the most prevalent cybersecurity threats are today that have caused the most trouble for businesses:
First of all, phishing is an ongoing danger. Criminals use deceitful messages or emails to entice people into divulging sensitive information, like login credentials or financial information. In the modern age of AI techniques, phishing tactics can be made more professional. AI can make dialogues or even fakes that entice people to reveal confidential workplace data.
Second, incomplete or late updates pose a risk. If the hardware and software are not properly updated or promptly, there is a risk of sustaining an attack. The vulnerability can be detected in these situations if users have not updated their software with the latest security patches. Security firewalls, cloud cybersecurit, and timely updates could stop this from occurring.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is not without vulnerabilities. The number of devices on the network is increasing exponentially, thereby increasing the attack area. But not all IoT devices indeed have robust security measures, which makes some of them vulnerable and if compromised, an IoT device could act as an intermediary between larger systems, and could cause massive destruction.