How To Improve Your Security And Recovery Time

If you have any sort of website, which most businesses do today,, you need a way
to protect your data. If you don't have one, you risk losing information, and down time
while your security team tries to figure out the extent of the damage. Here's how to
mitigate your risk and reduce your recovery time so you can spend more time making
profits and not cleaning up messes:

Have a High Level Strategy

There are certainly tools and tricks you can use to make your network more secure.
However, without defining your higher level strategies you could make vital mistakes
in the day to day protocols. Makes sure you understand what is the most valuable data
on your network and protect it by any means necessary. This can be banking information,
product designs, or customer lists.

Test

Test the strength of your security with regular testing. Either have someone on your team
or hire out a team of penetration testers to see where you need more security. For instance,
your website might have software holes that can be exploited. Or perhaps your office's wifi
signal is being broadcast too strongly, allowing others to eavesdrop. Testing points out where
you need to be diligent and what areas are safe for now. Remember, no one thinks they will
be hacked until it happens.

Virtualize the Network

Network virtualization the act of combining your physical hardware with software
so you can manage your entire network virtually. With this, you can enjoy a number
of benefits such as being able to see your actual network in real time. Instead of having
some abstract list of numbers or code, you can see graphs and charts that move so you
can conceptualize what is happening. For instance, if your network is typically a wave,
but then it changes to a straight line, then you know something is happening.

Having the ability to see your network is crucial for various reasons. First of all, you can
plan strategies in advance and leverage the fact that people are visual learners. Secondly,
if a hacker is invading your network, you can see it and respond instantly. When someone
is trying to gain access to your network (or worse: they already have) time is of the essence.

The reason is that many sophisticated hackers today will employ what is called a "staging
strategy." This is a strategy that can be undetectable until the final moments of the heist.
First, they gain access to your computer system by tricking one of your employees into
clicking on a link. When the employee clicks on this link, they are actually running invisible
software in the background that gives the cyber criminal access to the rest of your system.

To avoid detection, the hackers will sit latent in your system and move slowly through levels
of access to different parts of your company's private information. This information can
include banking info from customers or private trade data about your products.

Because you probably have a lot of information hidden in your systems, they need a way
to remove the information and steal it quickly before you have a chance to catch them.
What they will do is slowly, over time, move the data into what is called a staging server.
This digital network server will hold the information closer to the exit point. Then, when
they're ready to strike, they will extract the information from that exit server. Only by
having network tools such as visualization can you see it and stop it before it's too late.

When it comes to security, there are multiple aspects to consider. Not only do you want
to prevent people from gaining access to your systems, but also increase your recovery time.
After all, it may be painful to lose customer information, but if your entire team is out of
commission, your profits are going to be affected even more. So use the tips above to give
yourself the most powerful cybersecurity you can have.