As companies expand their digital dependence, security attacks are on the rise.

One of the best ways to prepare your business is to imagine it is about to be attacked. What would you do to prepare your infrastructure differently if you knew an attack was imminent? This mentality unifies the whole business and allows IT and operations to agree and communicate a process to put prevention methods and plans in place. It can also include a recovery plan after an attack.

Outside of external threats, employee behaviour inside the organisation itself can create a big risk for Cyber Attacks. Imagine you’ve spent all year preparing your business and securing your IT infrastructure to be as robust and secure as possible. Then the Black Friday, Cyber Monday Christmas sales periods start and you find staff are using their personal devices at work and maybe worse – using their work hardware clicking links to chase the latest deals. This all needs to be considered as part of a continuous security plan.

Below shares three simple steps FourNet recommends you follow based on our experience:

Assess your risks

Outsourcing risk assessment to a specialist team such as FourNet, allows a detailed and independent assessment of the company risk profile. This allows organisations to discuss areas at risk and prepare themselves for Cyber Attacks by putting preventative measures in place. This plan can involve a series of stages over a 12 to 24-month period all with varying degrees of risk. The purpose of Cyber Security awareness is to ensure the assessments continue and evolve and that they are not a ‘one off’ measure due to changing technologies, new competitors and viruses in the market.

Dedicate budget

One of the risks could be a lack of budget for Cyber Security measures. Prioritising this in the company strategy prior to the budget forecasting can help put technology investment and security of the business on the agenda- ultimately protecting existing and future revenue associated with consumer confidence of their data in your company’s hands.

Put the plan in place

Once you have identified the threats facing your organization, put the right technology and best practices in place to prevent them “" put up firewalls, upgrade code and don’t forget about PCI certification. PCI is evolving and requirements will probably become stricter in the future. PCI certification can mitigate the risks to systems that store or transmit credit card data.

Several low-cost best practice solutions can help you to substantially mitigate long-term data loss and exposure.

Outside of ‘soft’ security measures, never underestimate the importance of physical security no matter what size your business. Now with the onset of shared offices this is becoming of even greater importance. Attackers gain access to login credentials, trade secrets, infrastructure schematics and other valuable and exploitable information by being onsite and gaining physical entry into buildings or data centres. Employ security best practices like badged door entry, camera surveillance and a policy of supervising visitors. Also, prepare your staff to protect their environments when they are away from the office by being vigilant at remote workplaces while travelling or visiting the local coffee shop. Keeping calls and conversations, as well as screens, private while in these external environments are just a few tips to consider when your personnel are outside of the protected confines of the home office.