As revolutionary technologies proliferate, new cyber threats emerge at an astonishingly rapid rate and pose threats against critical infrastructure, people, and businesses. This creates unique difficulties for organizations when addressing cybersecurity.
Maintaining digital assets in 2022 is crucial for business success. Consider these tips on how to keep your data secure:
1. Encryption
Data encryption is a standard practice to secure your company’s digital assets. By scrambling information into unreadable ciphertext that only you have access to, data encryption makes it more difficult for hackers to misuse any of your company’s information if they gain entry via stolen hard drives or phone access.
Encryption can be particularly helpful when sending sensitive or confidential data across the Internet, from texts stored on smartphones and fitness trackers, to running logs stored on fitness trackers and banking information transmitted through online accounts.
Your company should consider encrypting its data whenever it travels across the Internet, which is known as being “in transit.” Additionally, encryption can protect information stored somewhere else such as on servers or in the cloud and is becoming an increasingly essential step to take as consumer privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA become more prevalent.
2. Risk Management
Our world is heading toward an unprecedented hyperconnected future that promises unprecedented social and economic advancement. However, with revolutionary technology comes hidden risks; for example, malware in its many forms increasingly poses threats against business operations, critical infrastructure systems, as well as individuals putting human lives in peril.
At an organization level, protecting everything equally simply isn’t possible, so they need to identify and prioritize their digital assets. This starts by identifying their crown jewels: data and systems which would most negatively affect them if exposed or stolen; industry specificities will influence which assets receive highest priority such as hospital staff must prioritize patient information over intellectual property rights while aerospace system manufacturers need to safeguard these first.
An effective risk management process must be in place to assess, monitor and oversee priority assets on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, this should facilitate dynamic dialogue between business and IT functions to ensure cyber-risk controls remain aligned with their risk appetite.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Even though cyber threats arise every day, AI tools are constantly on guard to detect and respond. Their continuous monitoring can detect hacks in real-time and minimize damage they cause while also helping prevent future attacks from taking place.
AI systems use machine learning algorithms to rapidly scan large volumes of data for unusual patterns that may signal potential threats and alert security teams more quickly than human cybersecurity experts could, thereby decreasing risks of breaches while simultaneously decreasing false positives – something often experienced with traditional security tools like firewalls and antivirus solutions that rely on signature detection alone.
AI cybersecurity tools offer another benefit in their ability to detect bots, which account for much of today’s internet traffic and have been implicated in fraud cases as well as account takeover attempts. AI can sift through all this data to detect both good bots, bad bots, and humans – potentially stopping malicious activities before they take place.
4. Physical Security
Organizations still must protect physical assets and systems despite their increasing reliance on virtual infrastructure, since cyber attackers can cause significant damage only if they gain physical access to its data.
Effective physical security measures, including CCTV surveillance, protective barriers, locks, guards and fire protection can help safeguard information against theft as well as natural calamities or war.
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are interlinked networks of physical and computer components designed to efficiently run processes safely. Unfortunately, cyber-Physical Systems have become the target of attacks for various reasons including criminal, military, espionage and political gain.
People often think of physical security in terms of locks, bars and guards when hearing the phrase. However, its physical component should also play a vital role in cybersecurity strategies as cyber-attackers may gain access to your physical assets easily to gain entry and steal data.