Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. Cybersecurity is a business concern because of its significant functions. Therefore, companies must have a plan to prepare, handle, and recover in the event of a security breach. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out network monitoring on an ongoing basis.

Companies can establish several measures to secure their assets to be safe from hacker attacks and breaches. Check out some of the cybersecurity strategies below that companies can do to secure the network.

Conduct a Risk Assessment

Risk assessments are recommended to be conducted at least twice a year. But it can also be done once a year or every three months. Risk assessment is the process of identifying, assessing, and implementing key security controls in applications. Risk assessments reveal security weaknesses and vulnerabilities of enterprise systems to help manage and mitigate risks.

The four stages in risk assessment are:

  • Identify: discover the organization’s critical assets, such as data and infrastructure. Next, diagnose and understand the value of the organization’s assets and create a risk profile for each asset.
  • Assessment: assess the identified risks for critical assets. Determine how to effectively allocate resources for risk mitigation and analyze the correlation between assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigating controls.
  • Mitigation: determine the mitigation approach and apply security controls to each risk.
  • Prevention: implement tools and processes to minimize threats and vulnerabilities occurring to company resources.

Create a Security Policy

Create a clear security policy that outlines the organization’s rules, job roles and responsibilities, and expectations for employees. A security policy is a document that states in writing how the organization plans to protect physical and IT assets.

The document should include plans to educate employees about protecting the company’s physical and digital assets, how security measures will be carried out and enforced, and procedures for evaluating the policy to make corrections.

Other key elements of a security policy include a statement of purpose, a statement of objectives, a data statement on how company data is handled, as well as a data classification statement that divides data into sensitivity categories.

Physically Protect Assets

Physical security measures are also important in network monitoring and are also needed to protect the company’s physical assets. This means buildings, vehicles, inventory, and machinery. Protecting physical infrastructure is essential for housing company data.

Therefore, make sure there are personnel who are authorized to access, move, and handle physical assets. For example, companies can implement a biometric verification system that restricts access into certain rooms. That way, employees who are allowed to enter are very limited.

Perform Backup and Test Backup

Perform regular information backups and test data recovery from backups. If the company has complete and up-to-date backups of all data, then there is no need to worry about data loss. Use a backup solution that can save automatically. Also set the backup to continuously back up according to the system configuration.

It is also necessary to perform a backup test to assess the effectiveness of the data and verify that the data is available for recovery in case things go wrong. Test backups need to be done to ascertain whether the backup is capable of working properly or whether another backup system should be used.

Check for Security Updates

Network operating systems and server programs should be kept up to date. That way, their performance will always be up-to-date and in line with the latest developments. Enable automatic system updates whenever possible. Replace all operating systems, applications, and hardware that are no longer supported.

Utilize Access Control

Access control is the selective restriction of access to a place or resource. This method ensures that users are who they say they are and that they have appropriate access to company data.

Companies can also implement multi-factor authentication, where employees are granted access to company data only after successfully presenting two or more proofs to the authentication mechanism. Multi-factor authentication strengthens access security.

Conduct Periodic Incident Report Tests

It is necessary to prepare a cyber incident response handling plan to prepare in the event of certain incidents that jeopardize the security of company data. This involves defining roles and responsibilities, risk assessment and escalation procedures, and notification requirements. A response plan enables a quick, consistent, and appropriate response to suspected and confirmed security incidents.

Testing incident reports regularly will increase the effectiveness of organizational testing and allow companies more frequent opportunities to identify outdated plan components.

Implement Network Monitoring, Analytics, and Management Tools

Choose a security monitoring solution that integrates with other technologies. Network monitoring tools will continuously track, analyze, and report on network availability, health, and performance. Implementing network monitoring, analytics, and management tools will allow companies to stay ahead of potential problems that can cause IT to malfunction.

In addition, network monitoring tools can also identify if there are security threats, effectively track the source of the problem, and find problems in IT that can cause the system to crash and not work at all.

Implementing Network Security Devices

Use routers that support the latest technology, firewalls, and other security equipment. Using the right network security devices can help companies to defend their networks. If a company’s data and infrastructure are not properly secured, they can be exploited by third parties and other irresponsible parties.

Physical or virtual network security devices can include antivirus, intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and content filtering devices. Such devices are very much needed and must be owned by companies because protecting consumer and company data must be done for the good and smooth running of the company.

User Education

No matter how good the network monitoring tool used by the company is, of course no tool can work alone with 100% perfect results. Still, the tool must be monitored for performance and work results by employees. That is why education must be carried out for employees who will directly operate the tool.

Educate employees regarding threats and how to provide feedback on any suspicious activity that may occur on the internet. In addition, carefully protect all access that can lead to the company. After that, carefully monitor all sessions when employees work with sensitive data.Make sure to use the right strategy for network monitoring. With the help of Netmonk Prime, a network monitoring solution that provides easy monitoring solutions and has been trusted by more than 1000 companies in Indonesia. Visit the Netmonk site to try the free demo!