With the right tools, it’s not necessarily difficult to cut through a padlock on an old garden shed or a storage facility. That hasn’t stopped them from becoming a near-universal symbol for data protection across countless digital applications. But what is cybersecurity, really, and how can a more substantial definition help organizations improve the way they safeguard critical assets? It’s a question every business should be able to answer.
Understanding Cybersecurity
Ask an IT manager “What is cybersecurity” and they may respond with a highly technical response, but the fundamentals can be understood regardless of whether you’re a business owner or working in a department like sales and marketing.
Definition and importance of cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is a term that encompasses the policies, procedures and tools organizations use to ensure only authorized parties have access to the networks, systems and data that they own and manage.
On a more tactical level, cybersecurity involves the use of both strategic planning and a host of technologies. This includes products that can detect cyber threats, thwart attacks and reduce the risk of future incidents.
CISA, America’s cyber defense agency, says cybersecurity is an art, suggesting there's a lot of creative thinking required to assess and respond to security threats.
With strong cybersecurity in place, organizations can build trust among employees, customers, citizens and other stakeholders that need to feel confident their data won't fall into the wrong hands.
Common cybersecurity threats and attacks
The data organizations manage ranges from financial transactions to details about future product ideas and business plans. This makes it a value target for threat actors, who attempt to breach their defenses in myriad ways.
One of the most common forms of attack involves social engineering techniques such as phishing schemes. This is a technique where cybercriminals will attempt to dupe employees into clicking on a link in an e-mail message or text that installs malware on a device.
Ransomware attacks are similar but go even further by encrypting the victim’s data and locking users out of their device until a payment is made.
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) take longer and work in stealth mode to gain as much access as possible to an organization’s systems and data. By the time an APT is detected, considerable data could already have been compromised or stolen.
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks flood servers with requests that often render systems inoperable, shutting down web sites or other IT assets an organization manages.
Unfortunately, cybercrime is increasing as everyday processes become more dependent on technology and digital channels. One estimate suggests the global cost of cybersecurity incidents could skyrocket to more than $13 trillion by 2028.
What are the Benefits of Cybersecurity?
What is cybersecurity worth from a return on investment (ROI) perspective? After all, it takes time, human effort, and often technology purchases to keep data safe.
Protection of personal data
Customers entrust organizations with a lot of personally identifiable information (PII) such as their contact details, credit card numbers and details about their interests and habits. The same is true of public sector organizations that may hold citizens’ social security numbers and tax records.
Preventing this data from being stolen or compromised is a good way to ensure you’re compliant with local laws and regulations and avoid fines. It’s also simply the right thing to do, given the responsibilities organizations take on when they are provided personal data.
Safeguards business reputation
People expect organizations to keep critical infrastructure protected in order to continue doing business with them or engaging in ways that require them to share their data.
Avoiding or mitigating cyber threats allows organizations to stay out of the headlines that create negative word-of-mouth and drive customers to engage with competitors.
Protects international property
A sound cybersecurity strategy is not only effective in protecting an organization's locally. It can also scale to safeguard data in remote offices or branch locations as organizations grow and expand.
Best Practices for Cybersecurity
Ultimately, the answer to “what is cybersecurity?” will play out a bit differently from one organization to the other, but there are some common approaches that are well worth adopting.
Creating strong and unique passwords
Using your birth date, your first and last name, or simply “PASSWORD” is like putting out a welcome sign for hackers and other cybercriminals. Aim for a combination of letters, numbers and characters that can’t easily be guessed or associated with your personal details. Make this a policy for all other employees, too.
Enabling two-factor authentication
Combining a password with an additional credential (like a security question) can provide a valuable extra layer of defense. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is especially useful in protecting systems or applications with highly sensitive data.
Regular software updates and patches
Threat actors are constantly on the lookout for software vulnerabilities that make it easier for them to inject organizations with malware and gain access to their networks. These are essentially like broken windows that can easily be fixed, as long as you maintain a regular patch management schedule.
How to Secure Your Online Accounts
While cybersecurity should aim to protect all organizational platforms and apps, online accounts are a big area because they are often connected to multiple cloud-hosted sites. This can increase the severity of data breaches when they occur, so act accordingly.
Password management techniques
Beyond coming up with a strong and unique password, many organizations require employees to change their passwords on a quarterly basis. Staff should also avoid storing passwords in a file, on sticky notes or anywhere else they can easily be discovered.
Using LastPass to store and generate secure passwords
Password managers can be a huge game-changer for cybersecurity because they allow employees a single tool to keep track of multiple credentials.
LastPass builds in additional capabilities, such as features to not only store but generate and autofill passwords. This data is all stored in an encrypted vault for even greater peace of mind.
Protecting against phishing and social engineering
Raising employee awareness of phishing and social engineering threats can go a long way to reducing the potential for successful attacks. Deploying 2FA, which we discussed earlier, can also limit the extent to which hackers use phishing to inflict damage.
Cybersecurity Considerations for Businesses
What is cybersecurity strategy looking like in your organization today? Keep these areas top of mind as you confine to refine and develop your approach:
Implementing a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy
Your overall goal should be to make cybercriminals’ jobs as difficult as possible. This is sometimes described as having a layered security or defense-in-depth security strategy.
In addition to passwords, for instance, you can run intrusion detection tools and firewalls to block suspicious traffic. Having a strong backup process in place can also give you the ability to fail over to a copy of data that gets compromised in a breach.
Securing remote work environments
With more organizations operating in a decentralized manner at least part of the time, policies around password management, the use of 2FA and limiting access to those who truly need it become even more important. Employees may need to take additional measures to secure the hardware and software they’ve set up in a home office.
Training employees on cybersecurity awareness
Employees should become suspicious of unsolicited e-mail attachments that wind up in their inbox. They should be double-checking logos, names and URLs that may look like they’re coming from a trusted source but are really cybercriminals hiding their identities. Most of all, employees should understand how (and whom) to report IT security risks or early signs of a data breach.
Emerging Trends in Cybersecurity Technologies
Cyber threats and hacker techniques are ever-evolving, so think of cybersecurity as another area of lifelong learning. These are just a few examples of areas to watch:
Artificial intelligence in cybersecurity
Artificial intelligence (AI) holds a lot of promise in terms of predicting future events and automating everyday tasks, but cybercriminals are making use of it too. The biggest concerns include how hackers could manipulate algorithms so that AI begins making harmful decisions, or how generative AI could ease the process of developing multiple variations of malware more quickly.
Blockchain technology for secure transactions
In parallel to the rise of cryptocurrency, blockchain has emerged as a way for any organization to use a sort of distributed ledger that verifies transactions in bundles. It’s nearly impossible for third parties to tamper with this process, which doesn’t prevent data breaches but provides an immutable record of an organization’s data.
Internet of Things (IoT) security challenges
Putting sensors on equipment and other parts of a physical environment is helping organizations conduct preventative maintenance and achieve operational efficiencies, among other benefits. However, the Internet of Things (IoT) also poses dangers from nation-state threats, brute-force attacks, and device tampering. These are all risks a good cybersecurity strategy should address.
What is cybersecurity? A top priority for any organization that puts data and digital technologies at the heart of how it operates. Begin your cybersecurity journey by starting your LastPass trial today.
