Identify Your Critical Services, Functions and Dependencies

Small and medium-sized businesses may still not see themselves as fantastic targets for hackers to exploit. However, hackers pursue targets that pose the least amount of risk to their operations, which often means targeting many smaller, less protected organizations. Businesses of all sizes need to identify their critical services and supporting critical functions and dependencies when planning their security strategy.

Where Does Your Company Fit in Critical Infrastructure?

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) play a significant role in not only our nation’s economy but also the personal lives of those in the community. Many of these SMBs make up portions of the U.S. critical infrastructure. The NIST cybersecurity framework charges companies with the task of understanding where their organization fits within its environment to better inform cybersecurity and risk management decisions. Specifically, organizations need to:

Fully Understanding the Impact and Potential Cost of a Cybersecurity Incident

It is a significant challenge to stay ahead of threats to your systems and networks and it is likely that your organization will experience one or more cyber incidents. The NIST cybersecurity framework advocates that organizations fully understand the impact of any incident and that they conduct analysis to ensure that the response has been effective in supporting recovery activities. But what does it mean “to understand the impact of an incident?” 

Protecting Your Company’s Data with Cyber Insurance

Purchasing insurance coverage against cybersecurity incidents is a best practice that all businesses should implement. There are a variety of companies willing to insure your business with various policies, including insurance against costs arising from:

Cryptographic Hashes: Verifying the Integrity of Your File System Baseline

We have discussed the importance of establishing a baseline for data flow across your network and the criticality of identifying abnormal activity before it wreaks havoc on your business systems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends IT cybersecurity teams use cryptographic hashes to detect unauthorized changes to software, firmware and information stored on your network.