The digital age is an exciting and productive time to be alive. But despite all the amenities, usefulness, and quality of life enhancements technology brings, there’s always someone out there looking to attack, sabotage, or steal the data it stores. Data breaches and attacks occur with increasing frequency nowadays. And with remote work becoming more prevalent—and more companies attaching assets to their networks yearly—the need for better infrastructure security is significant. As businesses face growing digital threats, it’s absolutely crucial to start reinforcing your organization’s infrastructure security right now. Keep reading to learn more.
Infrastructure Security At A Glance
Infrastructure is a term that covers both physical and digital assets at an organization. Infrastructure is a term that covers both physical and digital assets at an organization. According to Hewlett Packard, infrastructure security is all about protecting these assets from cyber threats. Cyber threats aren’t restricted to digital attacks. Hardware, like servers, can become compromised just as quickly as digital assets (cloud resources, data, etc.). There are many existing threats—malware, insider attacks, hackers, ransomware, and more—as well as emerging threats that can negatively impact an organization. Fortunately, regular security assessments, audits, and multiple layers of protection (such as firewalls) can all help an organization avoid these threats and stay secure. Companies must keep their infrastructure security up to date in order to stay ahead of these potential threats.
Identifying Risks
Now that you understand the concept of infrastructure security, you must understand how and why identifying risks matters. Understanding and anticipating threats is key to maintaining a strong defense against potential enemies in cybersecurity. Finding these vulnerable points can be challenging. A few ways to identify risks—systematic assessments, audits, and penetration tests—help detect and be proactive about risks. Businesses can also run threat modeling and attack simulations. Combining this type of prudent approach with staying abreast of industry trends and reinforcing cybersecurity best practices throughout the organization can help you identify risks to your infrastructure and keep your assets safe.
Developing A Plan
Unexpected cyberattacks can cause significant financial and reputational damage to companies. And that’s not even considering the issue of data loss, theft, or corruption. That’s why developing an infrastructure security plan is so crucial to keeping your business safe in 2023. Every organization needs a risk management plan specific to its infrastructure security. As mentioned previously, identifying risks is critical to any cybersecurity measures, but it’s crucial for infrastructure security. Teams must talk to one another, develop risk management plans, educate employees, and be aware of the current threat landscape. They must also be able to determine if endpoints are vulnerable or watch out for compromised assets. Once you identify threats, your organization must assess them. How likely are they? What type of impact would they have? How would they affect the organization’s reputation, finances, and ability to operate? Mitigation strategies should be developed for each risk, followed by a plan for implementing them. Developing a comprehensive risk management strategy is essential, and your teams must be able to implement and monitor them continuously.
Mitigating Problems
Organizations of all sizes are increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats, and the cost of mitigating these risks can be a little high. According to a survey from Kaspersky Lab, up to 75% of organizations experienced at least one successful attack in 2020 alone, and it’s only going to get worse. To safeguard their infrastructure from malicious actors and hackers, its imperative for businesses create and implement strong cybersecurity measures. Here are a few good ways to mitigate threats:
- Regular software patching
- Updating firmware
- Updating systems with security features
- Using multi-factor authentication
- Set up remote access procedures and protocols
- Backing up data
- Securing cloud storage
Taking proactive steps now will help ensure that your organization is well protected against potential cyber threats in the future.
Implementing Infrastructure Security Solutions
There’s always someone looking to target organizations. Whether through identity theft, hijacking, phishing, vulnerability exploits, ransomware, or botnets, companies must proactively solve cybersecurity problems. Securing your company’s infrastructure also requires some software tools and solutions. As part of XDR (extended direction and response), organizations can use cloud-based software to minimize business disruptions, reduce costs, and detect threats early. XDR software analyzes threats and identifies complex, multi-step attacks. Software is also helpful for preventing breaches without requiring the Security Operations Center to get involved. Better than that, a good infrastructure security software solution can make continuous risk assessment/monitoring easy and enable zero trust-based access control for your company’s most important data.
