Stay Ahead Of Cyber Threats – Utilizing A Scorecard For Retail Cyber Securitization
An avalanche of high-profile cyberattacks in recent years has catapulted cybersecurity to the forefront for many businesses. Staying ahead of the attackers is essential with attacks driven by everything from sophisticated nation-state actors to shady employees. Scorecard can be of immense help. Companies must invest in defensive, detection, and responsive measures to protect their brands.
Invest In Security
Retail’s critical role in our economy makes it an attractive target for cyber attackers. But how can leaders stay on top of the latest threats? A quarterly threat landscape scorecard for cyber security for retail has been created to keep retailers in the know. These scores indicate what your business is at risk of, from data breaches to ransomware attacks. To reduce risks, take steps to protect your company with preventative measures. They include implementing best practices and a cyber incident response plan. Take help of scorecard. In addition, consider training your employees to identify and respond to cyberattacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks.
Prioritize Fighting Cyber Criminals
Many of today’s significant cyberattacks no longer focus on stealing personal information, like credit card numbers or Social Security numbers. Still, they aim to disrupt the operation of essential industries like utilities and military equipment. Geopolitical adversaries often conduct these attacks to gain a strategic advantage over their competition. Moreover, there is also an intention to steal secrets for economic gains. With these high-profile cyberattacks making headline news, it’s clear that no one is immune from the danger of a cyberattack. Companies must accept they are in an escalating fight with cybercriminals to avoid being a victim. At the same time, they prioritize hunting for attackers in their systems based on intelligence proactively.
Know Your Threats; Use Scorecard
As a business owner, you can’t stop cyber attacks or threats from happening. But you can take steps to mitigate them. It would be best to start by understanding the attacks you face. Also, you have to infer the vulnerabilities they use to target your system and systems. Your attack surface consists of all the points where hackers can exploit your systems or assets. These can include digital attack surfaces, such as your IoT devices, software, and web application systems; physical attack surfaces; and social engineering attacks that use phishing and whaling to trick employees into divulging sensitive information.
Threat modeling
Threat modeling is a way to map out your security landscape and identify the risks that threaten what assets. Businesses must understand what they are risking so that they can make informed decisions about where to spend their resources. With this, enterprises can avoid spending money on protection for their systems and data or on the wrong things. Implementing and enforcing strict cybersecurity policies is the most effective measure to prevent an attack. However, human error remains a leading cause of security breaches. Employees are often tempted to share passwords or click unsafe email links, so educating your workforce is vital. It is also important to regularly back up your company’s data to avoid serious downtime and financial loss in a breach.
Assess Your Risk
Retailers must assess their risk, not just of the current attack surface but also future risks. Threats are constantly evolving, and a retailer’s defenses must be in step with those evolutions to protect data and the business.
The first step in assessing risk is identifying your assets, including physical and logical systems. Next, prioritize each vulnerability based on the potential impact on your organization. Protective mechanisms like scorecard can be effective in this regard.This considers how difficult it would be to exploit the vulnerability, the value of the data that attackers could gain, and what damage a breach might cause. When assessing vulnerabilities, remember that they may be chained together to create an attack path. For example, two low vulnerabilities may provide a threat actor with a foothold in your network enough to get a hold of the valuable PII they seek. In this case, it is essential to consider the impact of a compromise and apply solutions or mitigations that reduce risk.
Additionally, retailers must consider the impact of a breach on revenue. While it is tempting to prioritize security features that directly increase the bottom line, such as enabling SSL/TLS and implementing encryption, this short-term thinking can lead to a loss of business, reputational damage, and long-term costs from cyber attacks. By analyzing threats and identifying the risks, retailers can better advocate for the appropriate budget to protect their business and data.
Prioritize Your Efforts
The growing threat landscape is transforming how attackers target businesses. For instance, the phishing attack remains the most common method of cyberattacks and is estimated to account for 80 to 90 percent of all attacks in 2022. This is due primarily to the rise of remote work, which has given bad actors access to systems that would otherwise be secured in an office environment. Additionally, the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that can be exploited has created new opportunities for attackers to gain entry into business networks.
It’s essential for businesses to understand the financial impact of data breaches and to have an effective cybersecurity strategy in place, using scorecard. In addition to lost revenue, the reputational damage and legal costs associated with a breach can affect a company’s ability to grow and thrive. To help minimize the potential risk of data breaches, companies should invest in cybersecurity training and regularly assess their security posture with a Managed Security Service (MSS) provider. This provides real-time visibility into your security posture and enables proactive protection.
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