The central cybersecurity challenge organizations come up against is determining the right level of protection to allow users to stay productive without jeopardizing security. Almost daily, more news stories surface detailing the damage that intrusive attacks and data breaches have inflicted on organizations and their users. When our clients want to understand what IT solutions can be implemented to address their cybersecurity concerns and enforce preventative security measures, Flycast Partners never puts forward the unrealistic promise of an all-in-one fix to secure their networks and environments. Instead of purchasing every security product under the sun, we believe the security infrastructure’s design needs to revolve around the surrounding security conditions. Most of all, alongside using best practices, effective baseline protection is key to providing consistent policy enforcement across the organization.
There are essential cybersecurity practices to ward off general and random attacks that are performed on all public IP addresses. Organizations can limit open ports in firewalls and enable encrypted SSL-only connections to business-critical applications behind these firewalls. Likewise, segmented networks establish another level of security to protect sensitive data, close off security gaps, and ensure that only users with the right privileges can access network resources. Against the tactics of malicious actors, intrusion prevention systems and reverse proxy servers can monitor and detect suspicious activities, notifying IT to take preventative actions before services are impacted.
To evaluate the system itself, penetration testing is vital for finding and correcting issues before compromises occur. Additionally, performing audits regularly allows organizations to determine if security requirements are being met. Most scans and audits can identify failed login attempts from unknown sources, recognize missing security patches, and recommend additional configuration requirements to secure systems and services beyond the initial rollout of the infrastructure. An often-overlooked security measure is having a documented and tested backup policy. This gives organizations the capability to restore systems and services if a compromise does happen. To prevent the backup from being compromised, it must be up to date and kept in a separate storage system.
Baseline security practices include login security policies -- such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) partnered with Single Sign-On (SSO) and Password Expiration -- which can consistently ensure that users are authenticated and have the proper permissions to access the right resources without having to remember or improperly store lists of passwords for multiple resources. Partnering with the MFA and SSO login practices also provides a valuable access log for every resource and user, proactively protecting accounts from attempted compromises.
If your organization is seeking to evaluate and improve its cybersecurity posture, please reach out to Flycast Partners. We have over a decade of experience helping organizations analyze their systems and assess what processes and tools align with their surrounding security conditions. With our assistance, organizations can keep their data safe and simplify IT with effective cybersecurity solutions.