6 Ways to Proactively Prevent Cyber Threats

These days, we cannot overstate the importance of cybersecurity in the business world. Businesses of all sizes are at risk if steps aren’t taken to implement an adequate defense against cyberattacks.

Indeed, it’s critical for businesses or even individual website owners to respond appropriately after these threats occur. And, it’s just as important to put measures in place to prevent them from happening altogether. 

Here are six ways you can keep your business and customers’ information secure from cyberattacks:

1. Employ Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is a methodology that utilizes skilled hackers to attempt to break into a system. In doing so, many security vulnerabilities can be discovered and must then be immediately resolved.

Penetration testing is an effective tactic because if an ethical hacker can find a weakness, then so can malicious cybercriminals.

2. Keep Your Systems Updated

Critical security updates are frequently made available in virtually all systems. As security vulnerabilities are discovered, patches are put in place and pushed out as updates.

It’s vital that your business install all security updates immediately to protect your valuable data against cyber threats.

3. Use a Web Application Firewall Solution

You may be asking yourself, “What is a web application firewall?” A web application firewall is a crucial layer of security that can protect your website or web app from cyberattacks.

When you use a WAF, it analyzes all requests to your website and identifies and blocks malicious acts. This prevents dangerous traffic from accessing your server. Web application firewall solutions are similar to the firewall built into Windows.

The Windows firewall acts as a filter for processes on your computer, while a website firewall does the same for your website’s server.

4. Protect Your Passwords

It can be tempting to use the same password on multiple accounts. But this is a big mistake. If one password is compromised, it’s common for cybercriminals to programmatically attempt to use the same credentials across thousands of different websites.

So, if you use the same password in multiple places, one stolen password could compromise numerous accounts. One highly recommended tactic for securing your passwords is using a password manager to generate random secure passwords.

Using a password manager, you only have to remember one password, and the rest are securely stored in the manager’s vault. 

5. Go Beyond Passwords with Multi-Factor Authentication

Keeping your passwords secured is essential, but passwords alone are an inherently insecure authentication method. While complex and unique passwords are difficult to crack, it’s far from impossible.

Multi-factor authentication improves security dramatically by demanding that at least two different authentication methods are satisfied before systems can be accessed.

Multi-factor authentication is more than a trend and is not going away anytime soon. It’s more likely that we’re looking at a no-password future, with alternative authentication methods taking their place.

6. Scan for Malware

A malware scan may seem more of a recovery tactic than a preventative solution, but it is both. Installing malware on your server inevitably weakens your defenses and can result in additional security holes.

Constantly scanning for malware will ensure that quick detection and removal of malicious software prevents further system penetration.

The Bottom Line: Prevention is Better Than Recovery

While knowing how to remove malware or recover from a cyberattack is important, it’s just as critical to mitigating risk.

After all, an attack resulting in a data breach is far more costly than the small investment of time and money to properly protect your systems. That’s why the benefit of investing in prevention far outweighs the cost of recovery.