Cyber Security Defined and Explored

Common Types, Risks, and Approach to Protection

What is Cyber Security?

Cyber Security and IT Security seem to be constantly in the news. It is understandable that this could lead to us becoming numb to the threat. The changes in IT in just the last five years mean that security measures from back then are insufficient. The days of a firewall, web filter, and anti-virus being enough to protect your business are gone.

Imagine the data you need to do work for your customers – credit card information, contracts, trade secrets, email messages, etc. – were compromised due to a data breach at your firm.

Alberta has privacy legislation, the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), that was last updated in 2010. Your firm has disclosure and reporting responsibilities for data breaches.

In addition, PIPA requires you have in writing how you complied with taking “reasonable measures to protect personal information and personal employee information.” Could your company comply with this law?

If your firm is a federally regulated private-sector organization, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) rules apply and became law in November 2018. You would have to comply with the section on Safeguards and demonstrate you meet your responsibility to “safeguard the information from unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.”

We need to take action to reduce the risk of a data breach, the cost of regulatory compliance, and damage to your firm’s reputation.

Cyber security spending is increase at a rate of between 9 and 12 percent each year.

Cyber Security Defined

Cyber security consists of technologies, processes, and controls designed to protect computer systems, software, networks, and data from unauthorized access. This requires daily monitoring, management, and remediation activities. Cyber security is not set it and forget it.

Types of Cyber Security

Cyber security is classified into the following types:

Information Security

Information Security aims to protect the users’ private information from unauthorized access and identity theft. It protects the privacy of data and hardware that handle, store and transmit that data. Examples of Information Security include User Authentication and Cryptography.²

Network Security

Network Security consists of the policies and practices adopted to protect network traffic. This is done by controlling incoming and outgoing connections to prevent threats from entering or spreading on the network.¹Examples of Network Security includes Antivirus and Antispyware programs; Firewalls that block unauthorized access to a network; VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) used for secure remote access.²

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Data Loss Prevention protects data by focusing on the location, classification and monitoring of information at rest, in use, and in transit.²Examples of the information contained within an object would include a file, email, packet, application, or data store.

Cloud Security

Cloud computing security, or more simply, cloud security refers to a broad set of polices, technologies, and controls that work together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure. Cloud security includes detective controls, identity management, physical security, data confidentiality, encryption, and compliance.³

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)

Intrusion Detection Systems monitor a network or system for malicious activity or policy violations. Violations are typically reported to an administrator or collected centrally using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system.³

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Identity and access management is an authentication service to limit and track individuals’ access to technology environments. This will ensure appropriate access to resources in a way that protects systems from malicious entities.

Encryption is the process of encoding data to render it unintelligible, and is often used during data transfer to prevent theft in transit.²

Antivirus and Anti-malware

Antivirus and anti-malware solutions scan computer systems for threats. The sophistication of today’s threats require a solution that can scan, detect, and protect systems in an automated way without relying on local threat definition files. The ability to deal with unknown threats based on behaviour is a fundamental requirement.²

Sources: ¹ Forcepoint, ²Comodo One, ³Wikipedia

Where Are The Biggest Risks?

Your team is the biggest risk and also the biggest opportunity to reduce risk. The stats are clear:

90% of breaches are due to human error
91% of cyber attacks start with phishing
93% of phishing emails involve ransomware

Cyber security training is an inexpensive way to reduce the biggest cyber security risk in your business.

Build Security as a Core Value

Solutions need to balance the threat, risk, and cost to the business. It is no longer an IT issue. A layered approach to security that addresses the largest threats in a practical way works.

There are frameworks you can adapt to your firm to implement The Security Culture Framework. Founders and leaders play an important role in setting the tone around security.

Build security into business planning and strategy from the beginning to avoid “us” versus “them”. Leverage the security community and don’t reinvent the wheel.

Recovery Over Defenses: Practical Business Continuity - PBC

Practical Business Continuity, or PBC, is our exclusive solution with a focus on recovery over defenses. No vendor can claim to keep you 100% secure from attacks and neither can we. What we can do is make recovery from an attack as fast as possible by protecting images of your systems.

We Are Too Small To be a Target, Right?

There is a common misconception among the small and medium sized business owners that due to their smaller scale, they are immune to cyber hacks. That is simply not the case. In fact, half of all cyber attacks are targeted towards small businesses. So how can we help to protect you?

Results Matter Cloud Services offers a 3-step solution for you. Here is how it works:

Protect: More than the essentials of firewalls and endpoint protection are required. Building cyber security into the culture and addressing the number one threat to your business – engaging your teams.

Detect: Continual monitoring for more anomalies using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human judgment to understand what is happening. These daily activities are part of a proactive approach to act on potential threats before an incident occurs.

Recover: A plan to deal WITH successful attacks is essential. Our world-class recovery and continuity solution will keep your IT going for your business. Just in case you have an unplanned outage, from a disaster or human error, the recovery component has your back.

Recover Your Cloud Apps in Minutes. Could You Do That Today?

SaaS Tools Need a Recovery Focus As Well

Are you using Office 365, Google Suite, or Salesforce? How would you recover if that solution was compromised, either from a bad actor or human error?

You get the ability to recover from a disaster, ransomware, and other unplanned outages. The same ease of recovery normally only available to enterprise clients. Here is what you get:

3x/day automated backup for Office 365’s Exchange, OneDrive and SharePoint or G Suite’s Drive, Team Drives, email, calendar and contacts. Perform additional backups as needed at any time.
Store an unlimited amount of data in our cloud at no additional cost.
Restore individual files or groups of files back into a user’s account, or export them directly to a machine.
Preview backups by user, item and point in time snapshot.
Search meta data.
Security controls that include compliance with SOC 2 Type II and the ability to meet HIPAA compliance needs.
Data sovereignty to keep data in Canada.

This protection can be added on to an existing support package from only $99/month for up to 49 user.

Increase Productivity Help My IT Team Increase Profit

Case Study: Ransomware Recovery at Law Firm

Recovery with no business interruption and data loss. PBC (Practical Business Continuity) solution delivered as promised.

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Ransomware Protection: Think Business Continuity Rather Than Data Backup

A change in mindset will result in focusing on the highest impacting action you can take to improve your ability to recovery. Prevention is important but the ability to recover in minutes is vital.

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