10 Common Cyber Resilience Challenges and How to Overcome Them?

Introduction

A breakdown of global cybercrime damage costs predicted that in 2024 it will be USD 9.5 trillion a year. This number is daunting and sums up to billions of dollars per month in cybercrime damage. With technological tools and advancements becoming handy, hackers are also upgrading themselves for it. This proves one thing implementing a cyber resilience policy is not enough, you will also need to incorporate strict measures against it.

Most organizations don’t leave their data security to negligence but don’t do enough to secure a fool-proof solution too. What they don’t understand is that businesses get impacted and they lose revenue, customer data, and operational resources. Cybersecurity concerns or breaches not only impact an enterprise’s goodwill but also leave them out of business.

So without any delay, let us see the cyber resilience challenges organizations face and their solutions.

10 Cyber Resilience Challenges and Their Measures

When organizations are aware of the possible threats and are always on the lookout for solutions, they never face any cyber security threats or breaches.

1. Two-Factor Authentication

Most data breaches happen due to weak passwords and they alone don’t offer adequate protection. Having strong passwords is mandatory to ensure data privacy and avoid credential-compromise cyber attacks.

For passwords, you can implement a preventative and commonly used strategy of having strong passwords. This can be added,

• The passwords must include at least 8 characters
• They should be alphanumeric
• Avoid putting personal data like date of birth
• It should be unique and not previously used
• Lastly, the password should not sum up to a legitimate word

Additionally, it is also important to figure out other forms of authentication like multi-factor authentication via apps.

All users including senior members in the company can be asked to adhere to it. Multi-factor authentication should be enabled for every system account with a substantial focus on accounts having sensitive data like finance, HR, and legal teams.

2. Remote Access Protocols

The concept of remote access has grown far and wide due to the pandemic. These remote access solutions allow full control of a remote computer or laptop including local network access and storage. Such massive access provides opportunities worth of gold to attackers.

So it is pivotal to keep remote desktop solutions inaccessible via the internet. What you can do to make them accessible is only via VPN or enable a virtual desktop solution. A few examples of virtual desktop solutions are VirtualBox, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Nutanix, V2 Cloud, AirWatch, and more. Remote desktop protocols should not be accessible without a two-factor authentication.

3. Corporate Networks

Corporate networks or virtual private networks have become a place of exploitation for attackers. They look for intrusion vector focus as a potential weakness or exploitable perimeter. A simple solution for the same is to keep vulnerability scanning tools, blending reactionary and active patch management at arm’s length.

Antivirus solutions fail to locate an adversary that connects to the VPN with stolen admin credentials and is issued greater privileges, operating as a normal user would. Consider constant reviews of VPN logs for any potential or suspicious activity. So users must log into the VPN with limited access privileges.

4. Encrypt All the Data and Create Backups

When organizations save their data in normal-text format, it is easy for hackers to access it. So you should make sure that all your sensitive data is encrypted. Data encryption controls the data access to parties who possess the encryption key. Another benefit is that even if someone gets unauthorized access, they won’t be able to read your sensitive data. A few data software also let you know when someone is altering or meddling with your data.

Cybersecurity breaches often result in data loss, so it is fundamental to have backups of important information from time to time. If you don’t create a backup and there happens to be any cyber security breach, it will lead to operational chaos and revenue loss in your organization. So make sure you have a secure and reliable backup option.

5. Endpoint Detection and Response

An EDR collects and monitors any threat-related information from workstations and any other endpoints like laptops, servers, and workstations, giving systemwide transparency for evidencing suspicious behavior.

Antivirus is a bit different from EDRs as antivirus depends on signature-based detection to find any malware. It is incorporated to look for any suspicious behavior like network scanning or lateral network movement. Attackers generally enter networks through unmonitored systems so EDR agents should be deployed as wide as possible in the environment.

6. Access and Track Your Vendors

There is a huge possibility that you are highly dependent on third-party vendors. So you will require vendor risk management to mitigate third-party risk instead of solely relying on incident response.

You should primarily focus on

• Cybersecurity Risk: Thoroughly monitor your vendors right after you start a business with them. Create improved strategies before onboarding them.
• Strategic Risk: Make sure your vendors or service providers will not interfere in meeting organizational objectives.
• Operational Risk: Continuously check your vendors and make sure they won’t create any operational disruptions.
• Legal and Compliance Risk: Ensure that the vendor you are seeking will not impact your compliance with legal, regulatory, or local laws.

Always look for vendors who will secure your networks instead of creating risks for you as a cyber resilience move.

7. Employ a Killswitch in Place

Killswitch is a kind of cyber resilience, a reactive cybersecurity protection strategy where your information technology department closes all systems as soon as they identify any suspicious activity until it is resolved. Every organization should have a killswitch in place as a protection from large-scale attacks.

Conduct cybersecurity framework audits frequently and analyze all server logs to make sure everything is protected. Another thing you can do is get network forensic analysis tools that check information flow through your network.

8. Install Firewalls

Cyber attackers are becoming smarter with every passing day and they are coming up with new strategies to access your data. You can protect yourself from this by implementing firewalls. It is a network security device that analyzes and filters incoming and outgoing network traffic based on an enterprise’s previously established security policies.

This will help you protect against sudden attacks or any damages that cannot be reversed. It will also look for any suspicious activity that will hamper the data integrity. While choosing a firewall look for one that provides full security control and transparency of your networks and applications. Additionally, it should have complete protection and prevention capabilities along with security infrastructure.

9. Email Hygiene

It is one of the most important aspects of cyber resilience. Your employees should feel comfortable in notifying or communicating phishing emails. Inculcate a multi-layered defense by adding filters to inbound and outbound messages with attachment sandboxing and URL rewrites.

Along with email hygiene, pursue cyber hygiene practices to work smoothly in remote settings. Cloud-based email solutions can enable organizations to simply and cost-friendly implement core security controls such as MFA and reduce the chances of an attacker getting access to internal private networks through compromised on-premises servers.

10. Create Awareness in Your Employees

Phishing emails are hard to detect as they always seem genuine. Employee training on cyber security is essential as it assures them to raise a query and report suspicious activity. without proper knowledge or training, employees may entertain phishing emails and give access to hackers to sensitive data.

So organizations must hold training for employees at least once a year where you can educate them about primary forms of cybersecurity attacks and the solutions to prevent them. Also, communicate the importance of checking email addresses before replying and links before opening them.

Overcoming Cyber Resilience Challenges

Implementation of these solutions will definitely help you overcome any potential threat to cyber resilience. When organizations have a strong cyber resilience strategy, they have a secure environment, intact data, and no loss of revenue. With the growing smartness of hackers to access data in different ways, organizations need foolproof solutions to tackle the challenges.