There has been a significant increase in internet usage, with many users trying to undertake transactions online. Businesses are also revamping their websites to bring in more visitors and increase the conversion ratio. Often, companies have the visitors provide their personal information, viz. login information, personal information, etc. Care must be taken to ensure the data does not fall into the hands of hackers. To do your part in protecting your personal information and data, you need to take certain measures. For instance, have antivirus software on all your devices. To learn which software provides the best security, read this site.
Studies show that US$ 2.9 million is lost every minute due to cybercrimes. Therefore, businesses must pay heed to cybersecurity and enhance their security systems against possible data breaches. Cybersecurity benefits are manifold, and it ensures that the client data does not fall into the hands of hackers. We will discuss the types of cybersecurity practices and how they differ.
What is reactive security?
Businesses have increased cybersecurity spends, and it is mainly targeted towards past and present threats. As the name suggests, these security practices activate when the IT Security team detects a breach and initiates the process to address it. While it may not be an issue if your team reacts to any perceptive threat, the process cannot always be reactive.
Functions of reactive security
These security practices cannot anticipate threats that make it challenging to have a robust security framework across the organisation. When there is a threat, the stakeholders assess the damage done and determine the threat they had faced.
These processes help your team to prevent the known malware from attacking your systems and causing extensive damage to them. The systems must be such that any known threat can be detected even if it slips through the defences. However, many businesses do not take advantage of a firm security policy and depend on reactive strategies only.
Examples of reactive security
Network monitoring solutions. These solutions monitor the network and collect and analyses available information to find out unauthorised changes or any suspected behaviour in your network. They can trigger notifications to the IT Security team and initiate any suitable actions deemed fit for the threat.
Forensic analysis. If there is an attack, your team must assess how the attack was undertaken. They must also know how the vulnerabilities in your systems were breached. It will help to have a clear strategy to prevent such breaches from happening in future. The plugging of the vulnerabilities can be prioritised, while the system’s assets can be quantified before that.
Anti-malware/ Firewalls. These solutions can thwart the threats from malware and other malicious programs from causing harm to the networks. Your team must ensure that the configurations are updated to prevent any unauthorised entry by third parties. Moreover, antivirus and anti-malware solutions can only safeguard against known threats. The solutions must be updated with the latest version to prevent such threats.
A Disaster Recovery Plan. What would you do if you were to face a cyberattack? First, you must have a robust disaster recovery plan that can help to recover from an attack. It is a set of policies and procedures that can help recover your digital networks after any disaster.
What is proactive security?
A better way to fight against cyberattacks is to use proactive steps in preventing the attacks in the first place. It provides a holistic structure to the cybersecurity responses of an organisation. It helps to add enhancements to the reactive processes and allows companies to anticipate potential situations well in advance. These activities focus more on prevention and mitigate threats by understanding your organisations, systems and the other resources associated with them.
Features of proactive security
The proactive security practice involves educating your employees in security best practices while planning for unplanned risks at the same time. As a result, they use preventive measures and can test the systems using the best test automation tool while your security team keeps them updated with the latest techniques that hackers might take.
It depends on comprehensive assessments and uses real-time monitoring techniques to overview the entire security landscape. In addition, it uses detailed analytics to find out the weakest links and enhance the overall system security.
Examples of proactive security
Install an SSL certificate:
Businesses must proactively protect the customer data lying on their servers. One way to ensure this is by installing an SSL certificate. It will encrypt the communication taking place with the visitor’s browser.
If you have multiple first-level sub-domains along with the main domain to secure, you can use the cheap yet premium Comodo Positive SSL Wildcard to bolster your website’s defences. It is one of the best and ideal certificates for large organizations. It will secure your multiple, wildcard domains, multiple domains, and unlimited number of subdomains. This certificate will save your time and cost for each site.
Penetration testing
The industry behemoths readily deploy dedicated teams who undertake penetration testing of the networks traversing the organisation. It helps to identify the vulnerabilities and devise ways to plug them well in advance. The team uses several latest techniques like social engineering.
Endpoint monitoring
You can utilise automated checking for issues about your networks and systems. Any potential problems are readily reported till they turn worse. The security of the remote device is proactively monitored, and various tasks like patch updates, monitoring audit logs, etc., are undertaken.
Internal training:
It is essential to train the employees regularly about the latest cybersecurity trends. They must also know about the techniques that hackers undertake to break into the networks of businesses. The training must also cover the internal security policies and how to work against phishing.
Threat hunting:
This process involves security experts predicting a cybercriminal’s plan of attack through the networks. It requires correlating data from different sources and analysing the system with valuable information.
Major benefits of using proactive security practices
Adds threat intelligence
Hackers are also utilising the latest technologies to break into unsuspecting networks. They are looking for the slightest gaps in your networks to sneak in and wreak havoc.
You must use proactive practices to ensure that you stay a step ahead of the hackers. Your security framework must sniff out how the hackers may try to enter your networks. Threat intelligence is another cybersecurity benefit that proactive security practices bring.
Aids in preventing data breaches
Among the cybersecurity benefits that proactive security practices promise is their help in preventing data breaches. It helps by ensuring a holistic approach that mitigates the risk of an upcoming cyberattack.
Actively find vulnerabilities
The threats of a data breach are not only from outsiders. Well-informed insiders can also initiate a data breach and having proactive security policies can help. The threat perception is higher as they have more knowledge about the internal systems and any weaknesses. They can actively find out the risks and mitigate them even before it becomes an issue.
Prevent erroneous leakage of critical data
There can be instances when private data could be leaked onto public networks erroneously. Having strong control points can prevent this from happening, and the security team must prevent such incidents proactively. They focus on your infrastructure and can detect any deviation from the accepted norm.
Ensure you are compliant with data laws
The data laws in many geographies are stringent. Global companies must ensure they have adequate procedures to ensure data safety. Proactive security practices ensure that your organisation has sufficient layers of defence to prevent any cyberattack. It can use data analytics to foretell risk factors and use the ideal techniques to respond to these gaps.
Staying prepared for threats
The security teams can be proactive in facing any impending data threat. They are constantly searching the networks for any weaknesses and are already plugging such gaps proactively. They also have the systems at their fingertips and are confident of bouncing back with minimum delay if there was indeed a breach.
Better overall performance of security systems
Organisations that opted for a proactive security framework could reap the cybersecurity benefits. The security team was more confident that they could prevent a cyberattack. Moreover, they could also foretell lower costs to recover from any incident if it took place.
Difference between reactive and proactive cybersecurity
Let us now review reactive vs proactive cybersecurity and how organisational processes can benefit from them.
Being reactive would mean addressing the problem once it has arisen. But you would install proper control points, sniff out gaps, and find ways to mitigate threats of a data breach using proactive cybersecurity practices.
Through a proactive strategy, you can anticipate a data breach by understanding how hackers attack your networks. Being reactive would mean acting once an incident has occurred and how to revive your systems from the event.
Being reactive can make your networks vulnerable to a data breach. But being proactive will allow you to prevent such incidents from happening. You can analyse audit logs and prior conditions and assess the areas in your network or resources most susceptible to an attack. You can then allocate adequate resources to plug these gaps.
Conclusion
There has been a spurt in data security-related incidents around the world. As a result, businesses must ensure they utilise adequate measures to prevent such an attack. The proactive security measures are ideal to be built over the reactive measures and are instrumental in avoiding any data breach.
It helps to have a reactive security core. While proactive methods allow you to have complete control of the environment, reactive measures can allow you to initiate activities if any mishap happens. You must note that despite all your attempts, there might still be a breach in your systems. You can build proactive security processes over this and have a robust security framework to safeguard your business.
