Introduction to Cyber Security: A Non-Technical User's Guide

Cyber Security in 2023 remains a critical concern for businesses and organisations of all sizes and for good reason. Whether you're a small company being targeted as part of a group or a large company being targeted directly, the data you hold is valuable to your business and therefore, valuable to a Cyber Criminal. Unfortunately, for this reason, Cyber Attacks, data breaches, and identity theft are increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated so it's essential that you're aware of the risks and how you can take preventative measures to protect yourself. In this blog post, we're going to cover "Cyber Security", for non-technical users.

What is Cyber Security?

Like alarms and locks on your home, Cyber Security refers to the practices and technologies that are used to protect your business, your data and your devices from loss, theft, damage and unauthorised access. Your people also need protection from various methods of exploitation and social engineering. Multiple technologies, policies and methods are often deployed to protect businesses against cyber security threats which include firewalls, antivirus or antimalware software, encryption and multi-factor authentication. 

Why is Cyber Security important?

Your 'data' is likely to include sensitive information including financial, personal and intellectual property. Cyber Security helps you to protect all of this information from loss, theft, corruption and misuse. Cyber attacks or breaches themselves can result in financial losses, reputational damages or non-compliance with regulations and standards. With increasing amounts of data being stored and transmitted digitally, cybersecurity measures are essential to safeguard personal and financial information and mitigate vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks.

Types of Cyber Security threats

There are many types of cyber security threats that individuals and businesses need to be aware of, including;

How to protect yourself from Cyber Security Threats

There is no 'silver bullet' for Cyber Security. A multi-layered approach is required to ensure you're minimising your exposure. However, there are steps that everybody can take almost immediately to protect themselves better and drastically reduce their risk. In no particular order;

• A modern anti-malware solution should be deployed to every device accessing your organisation's data.
  
  
• Use strong and unique passwords for each account and enable two-factor authentication.
  
  
• Enable two-factor authentication. 2FA has been shown to eliminate almost 99.9% of account breaches according to market leaders.
  
  
• Hardware and software should be kept up to date and supported by the manufacturer. Updates are not released for unsupported hardware or software which leaves them vulnerable to attack and exploitation.
  
  
• Be cautious of suspicious emails, messages and websites which could be attempting to steal information.
  
  
• Back up your data regularly and keep a copy offsite or in the cloud.
  
  

What do we recommend?

Cyber Security is an essential aspect of our digital lives that cannot be ignored. Modern threats and the pace at which new threats are released have created a very intense game of cat and mouse. By being aware of the risks and taking proactive measures to protect ourselves, we can safeguard our digital assets from cyber threats. 

Noble IT recommends getting a clear understanding of your 'attack surface' by reviewing the data you hold and the repositories used to store it. A managed backup and disaster recovery solution, anti-phishing and web filtering platforms as well as a modern endpoint security solution should be core to your Cyber Security strategy.