Top Ten Best Practices to Create a Positive Cybersecurity Culture

As the digital footprint of companies and consumers continues to mushroom, establishing digital trust with your clients and customers will become essential to your future success. In fact, a recent survey by McKinsey found that 85% of respondents say that knowing a company’s data privacy policies is important before making a purchase and 72% said the same about AI policies. The same study found nearly 50% of consumers will consider switching brands when a company’s data policy is unclear. By contrast, the survey found a mere 41% of companies are actively mitigating cybersecurity risks, one of the most important aspects of creating digital trust. 

Digital Trust 

Digital trust is individuals’ expectation that digital technology and services – and the organizations providing them – will protect all stakeholders’ interests and uphold societal expectations and values. 

Source: World Economic Forum 

1. Password Management – Effective password management starts with having strong policies in place but that is not enough. Companies should consider implementing a companywide password management solution that will require employees to adopt strong passwords while using a password vault.
2. Multi-Factor Authentication – MFA goes hand in hand with effective password management and should be required of all employees when accessing mission critical data and solutions.
3. Access Management and Data Segmentation – Effective access management practices ensure only those individuals who need to have access to information can get to it, and data segmentation ensures in accessing the information, they can only get to that which is critical to their role.
4. Data Encryption – Data encryption is one of the best ways to ensure that even if your data is compromised, malicious actors cannot use the information against you.
5. Security Assessments – At a minimum, you should be conducting one cybersecurity assessment and one penetration test each year.
6. Network Monitoring and Management – Continuous monitoring of all networks, systems, and logs gives you an early warning system for unusual activity allowing you to quickly take steps to manage potential harm to your systems.
7. Software Updates and Patching – Keep all software, operating systems, and solutions up to date with the latest security patches to avoid exploitation of the vulnerabilities of outdated software.
8. Data Backup Policies – Your data should be consistently backed up to a cloud storage service to prevent a cybersecurity incident from grinding your operations to a halt and allow for fast recovery.
9. Incident response and data recovery – When an incident happens, it will be too late to plan your response. You should have a plan in place and review and update it at least annually.
10. Cybersecurity Training – Your defenses are only as strong as the weakest link and unsuspecting end users are frequently taken advantage of by attackers. You should have cybersecurity training requirements for all users.  

How many times in your life can you recall wishing you could turn the clock back? It is true an adverse event may never happen to you, but in today’s environment, there are countless examples where bad things upended an organization. Isn’t it worth taking the minimal steps we have identified above to avoid a situation where you find yourself feeling that familiar sense of helplessness, knowing time marches forward unimpeded?