Remote Workforce: Ways Of Strengthening Cyber Hygiene

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Remote Workforce: Ways Of Strengthening Cyber Hygiene

In the current scenario, it is critical that security officials take action to ensure cyber hygiene. Malicious actors are launching attacks against organizations of all sizes and their workers who, in the aftermath of COVID-19, are operating remotely. For enterprises, as the expanded perimeter becomes more and more difficult to manage, risk levels are spiking at frightening levels.

Safety teams have their job cut out for them, but they should not be demotivated from protecting what they can manage by a sense of fear. Data breaches occur over e relatively long period of time with multiple measures taken to exfiltrate sensitive data. Implementing good cyber hygiene initiatives across the enterprise is crucial to stopping the oncoming attacks in their tracks.

Here are some practical suggestions to improve cyber hygiene and safeguard their company.

1. Keep an inventory of all resources (hardware and software) in real-time on the company network

It is very demanding to maintain an up-to-date business inventory framework. As you can't enhance ...
... what you can't measure, inaccurate inventory makes it difficult to handle compliance and cyber risk.

2. Make VPN open to all staff members

Usually, businesses with large remote workforces have a comprehensive VPN solution available to their workers. But mobilizing to a VPN can be a nightmare at first for companies that aren't used to employees working from home.

First of all, prioritize access to the senior staff and privileged users because if their assets are compromised, it will have a much greater effect on the company. Make sure you have visibility into all VPN connections.

3. Get granular visibility into your extended perimeter

Usually, a breach starts with one or a handful of vulnerable devices being breached on the extended perimeter. This may occur due to phishing of an employee, or by a poor password, or other unpatched weakness. Your extended perimeter is more fragile than ever before, with remote work on the rise.

4. Ensure endpoint security controls

Get ahead of the workers becoming victims of scams by introducing strict endpoint security controls for all employees. For each department or division, the endpoint security you deploy can focus on the business criticality of the assets of that team. If you've already introduced adequate endpoint security, make sure the endpoint visibility is validated and remains consistent for remote users.

5. Prioritize patching for critical assets

In most organizations, all assets tend to be handled with high priority when an immediate and/or high-gravity vulnerability needs to be addressed. As new vulnerabilities emerge with the change to work from home, it is necessary to fix business-critical vulnerabilities first.

6. Audit the number of users on business-critical applications with admin privileges

The more users you have on company applications with admin rights, the greater the probability of leveraging those properties. It could be the key to a major breach if admin credentials on a sensitive asset are compromised. Identify the business-critical apps and audit the number of users with admin privileges in order to combat this.

7. Identify at-risk users and risk owners and impart training

To predict breaches, tracking web traffic and hygiene among your users is essential. When detected, training can be provided to high-risk users.

8. Set up a secure user identity via Multi-Factor Authentication

It is critical to be able to identify users who are attempting to access some business resource or application in a robust way. Using an Identity and Access Management (IAM) product, a functional, strong user identity can be created. Where possible, this will give you robust Multi-Factor Authentication and policy control and allow for good password hygiene across managed and unmanaged apps.

9. Develop strong capabilities for device identity and application identity

Using client-side certificates, strong system identity can be established, and strong application identity can be established using server-side certificates. Expiring certificates should be renewed, and users who click past certificate alerts must be educated on the same.

Appsian One of the leading ERP data security,compliance,implementation solutions provider that gives organizations to complete control and visibility over their ERP data.