2020 was marked not only by the COVID-19 health crisis but also by a sharp rise in the number of cyberattacks. According to the ANSSI (France’s national cybersecurity agency), “the number of victims of cyberattacks increased fourfold in 2020”. (1)
Any organisation, from public services and SMEs to large international groups, can be of interest to a hacker. Data protection is therefore becoming a priority for companies. Preventive measures can help avoid these attacks.
Here are five good practices.
1. Train employees in IT security
Making employees aware of the risks involved is the first step in preventing these attacks. For example, it is recommended not to open suspicious emails asking for confidential information, not to download attachments and not to click on links from unknown senders. If in doubt about a message, ask your employees to contact the IT department.
2. Change your password
Password management is a key issue in securing your systems. It is therefore essential that your employees choose complex passwords. We recommend using numbers, upper- and lower-case letters and special characters. To generate a complex password, you can, for example, encode a phrase:
Example phrase: Complex password
Encoded example: C0mpl3xP@55w0rd?
This makes the password harder to “crack”. It is also recommended to change all passwords regularly.
3. Software updates
It is imperative to update your operating system and the applications on your computer as soon as possible. Among other things, this will fix certain bugs and close security loopholes.
4. Make regular backups
Setting up regular, automatic backups should be part of your IT security plan. If your computers are hacked, the backup will allow you to recover all the stored data.
5. Control remote access
Employees are using more and more connected devices, starting with laptops but also phones and tablets. This is all the more true since remote working became widespread. The proliferation of these devices represents an additional risk. To limit it, you can, for example, alert users every time there is a new login to their account.
To go further, you could, for example, look into introducing a single sign-on (SSO) tool, as well as an organisation-wide multi-factor authentication (MFA) solution.
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