5 Ways To Prevent Cyber Attacks in 2022

Cybersecurity has never been more important because the costs of cyber breaches have never been higher for businesses.

A recent report from IBM found that the average cost of a data breach in 2021 was $4.24 million – the highest figure ever in the report’s 17-year history.

That means if your business isn’t already taking cybersecurity seriously, now is the time to start doing so. Here are five strategies you can use to help prevent cyberattacks in 2022.

Train Employees

Training employees is one of the most impactful and straightforward steps to reduce your risk of cyberattacks. 

Most attackers gain access to companies through phishing attacks, which target employees. These typically involve including malicious links in emails and social media messages.

If you can train your team to recognize these attacks, practice safe web-browsing habits, and create strong passwords, you’ll already be well on your way to avoiding cyber-attacks in 2022.

In addition to the strategies already outlined, businesses must embrace a culture of continuous security testing and assessment. This approach involves regularly evaluating your cybersecurity measures through various methods to ensure they remain robust and effective against evolving threats. An integral part of this strategy is the routine security audits, vulnerability scanning, and utilizing specific methodologies, such as deploying red teaming tools.

These practices serve a dual purpose. Firstly, they highlight potential weaknesses in your cybersecurity framework. Secondly, they provide invaluable insights into how your security measures perform under various threat scenarios. While specific techniques like red teaming tools are essential to this strategy, the overarching goal is to maintain a proactive stance in cybersecurity. Red teaming tools in particular, plays a crucial role by simulating realistic cyberattacks, thus providing a practical assessment of your system’s resilience and readiness.

Incorporating continuous security testing and assessment into your cybersecurity routine ensures that your defenses are not static but are dynamic systems, constantly evolving to meet the challenges of the ever-changing cyber threat environment.

Multifactor Authentication

Another important aspect of training your employees is encouraging (or requiring) them to use multifactor authentication. This involves making employees confirm their login attempts through a second system, such as an SMS message, biometrics, or security questions.

You can think of multifactor authentication as an additional layer of protection. So even if an attacker manages to discover an employee’s login credentials, they would still need to make a second breach to access your important data.

Create Data Backups

There was a nearly 2,000% increase in the rate of ransomware attacks in 2022. Ransomware is a malicious piece of software that threatens to block access or erase data that’s the lifeblood of your business. The attacker asks you to pay them a ransom to avoid that, hence the name.

The impact of one of these attacks will be reduced significantly – if not eliminated altogether – if you can still access the data that the attacker has placed behind a ransom.

That’s why it’s also a great practice to start creating backups of your most important data. That way, even if you do suffer an attack, it may not be as impactful.

Control Access Points

Every cyberattack requires a point of access, which is typically found through employees. When an employee’s credentials are compromised, the severity of the resulting attack will be directly dependent upon how much access they have to your system with the compromised credentials.

This is why it could be a good idea to segment your data into different silos that each require unique credentials to access. You could really bring down the potential for damage of an attack by doing this.

In keeping with this line of thinking, it could also be a smart decision to limit which of your employees can access your most important data. The fewer access points an attacker has, the less likely it is that they will be successful in breaching your organization.

Embrace Updates

It can be frustrating to constantly update the various apps, operating systems, and software that you use. But it’s essential that you do this in a timely fashion.

When a software developer pushes out an update, it’s often because there’s been a vulnerability discovered in a previous version. That means if you delay updating for too long and a malicious actor finds out, you could be at a high risk of experiencing a cyber attack.

To that end, be sure that you’re reminding your employees to update their software regularly. You need everyone to be on the same page with this to eliminate this attack vector.

Consider Working With Experts

If you run a small or medium-sized business, you may simply not have all of the resources that you need to prevent a cyber attack. A solution to this problem is partnering with experts.

An expert team can take an in-depth look at your organization to make sure that it doesn’t have any cyber-attack vulnerabilities. Then it can plug whatever holes it finds during that investigation to make sure they don’t impact your business down the line.

It’s generally pretty easy to hire one of these teams, as well. All you need to do is search for something like “IT services in San Antonio,” and you’ll quickly find an expert that can help.

Review and Adapt

Many businesses mistakenly believe that once they’ve implemented a new security practice, they’re completely protected and don’t need to worry about cyber attacks anymore. But that’s far from the truth.

Cyber security is an ongoing process, sort of like a game of cat and mouse. As technology evolves and hackers find new exploits, companies need to continue improving their security to stay protected.

Instead of thinking of cyber security as a one-and-done process, try to get into the habit of practicing good cyber hygiene. That means building out a strategy of constant cyber security improvement and being capable of adapting quickly as new threats emerge.