Practical Ways to Strengthen Cybersecurity
Amid the pressure of constantly evolving cyberattacks, it is important to continually return to the basics. In this article we talk about the three foundational concepts of security that should frame every decision - confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
1. Confidentiality
Many compromises begin with social engineering. The more information a bad actor has, the more equipped they are to manipulate you, your family, or your employees. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and financial information should be stored in secure locations and all accounts must be secured with complex passwords and MFA.
2. Integrity
Once an email account is compromised, bad actors move quickly to identify potential areas of attack. This may be as simple as changing wire transfer information or as complicated as injecting whole new parties into conversations. Every email, regardless of the sender should be treated as suspicious. Voice verify any request for financial or confidential information.
3. Availability
The primary goal of cyber warfare is to limit the availability to systems. This may mean anything from attacking websites so that legitimate users can’t access them to encrypting or destroying hard drives so that the data is no longer accessible. The key to minimizing this damage is to maintain good backups that are physically and geographically isolated from the primary systems.
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