Cyber Security: A necessity not a luxury

Table of Contents

Prevention is better than the cure

A 2019 study by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) found over 62% of small business were affected by a cybersecurity incident. Furthermore, it’s estimated these attacks cost on average $276,323.00 per incident. However, the real problem lies with an organisations ability for mitigating these increasingly frequent attacks. That’s why the ACSC has prioritised the Essential Eight strategies for preventing and reducing organisational cybersecurity risk. As with any incidents, prevention is better than the cure.

Securing your IT infrastructure

Cyber security in theory is very simple: protect your information technology (IT) from adversaries. However, this is much more difficult in practice. Most organisations, including small businesses are made of complex interconnected networks, systems and devices. Each of which provide an access point to cyber criminals. With increasing shifts to digital technologies, it has never been more important to secure your IT infrastructure.

“Over 67,000 cybercrime reports in the 2020-21 financial year.”

Cyber Reports Australian Government

Introducing the Essential Eight

A baseline set of strategies that form the most effective cyber security applications. Formed by the ACSC, the Essential Eight are an organisations best tactics to increase the difficulty cyber attackers have to access, and wreak havoc in sensitive systems and networks. As a basic overview, these include managing and implementing:

  • Application controls
  • Application patching
  • Configure Office Macros
  • Application hardening
  • Restriction of administrators
  • Patching operating systems
  • Multi-factor authentication
  • Daily backups

More information on each of these strategies can be found here.

Mitigating your cyber risk

In a perfect world, organisations appoint a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) with the sole responsibility of managing and reducing the cyber risk. However, most companies simply cannot afford this luxury and with such a skill set increasingly scarce, it is becoming extraordinarily difficult. Managed IT companies are a cost-effective alternative to implementing cyber risk mitigation strategies.

As a Managed Service provider for over 10 years, Screwloose IT are expertly positioned to analyse and establish a strong cybersecurity perimeter. Contact us to discuss protecting your business today.