5 steps to kick-start your cyber security strategy in 2018

Knowing where to start when it comes to securing your business’ valuable data and assets can be somewhat bewildering.

Although there is a wide range of advice being offered up by various government and industry bodies, the reality is that not all businesses are able to apply – or truly benefit from – the cyber security strategies they often recommend.

It’s for this reason the team at Aura Information Security has developed our own checklist of what we believe are the Top 10 actions you should take to protect your company from cyber-attacks.

These are based on industry best practice standards as well as Aura’s own experience of helping a wide range of Australian and New Zealand-based businesses improve their security posture.

Here are the first five security controls featured in Aura’s Top 10: 

1. Patching & Updates – Keep operating systems and applications up to date, especially critical and security updates. 

2. Least Privilege & Privileged Access – Run all user accounts with as few privileges as possible, as long as the users are still able to perform their job function successfully.

3. Multi-Factor Authentication – Ensure multiple pieces of evidence are required for authentication – most commonly a password and a one-time token.

4. Security Education, Training & Awareness – Security education, training, and awareness for staff is a crucial activity and needs to be tailored to suit the needs of an organisation; and often tailored to suit specific sub-sets of staff and IT users.

5. Incident Response & Disaster Recovery – Sometimes things do go wrong and it is important to be prepared for worst-case scenarios – data back-ups and response plans are a must.

By starting with these actions, your business will be well on its way to improving its security posture. To find out all Top 10 actions to take, download our FREE cyber security checklist