Building a Resilient Cybersecurity Plan: Tips for Businesses 

• Create an incident response plan – It’s a strategy to reduce damage drastically. Hence, an automated early detection system can deal with securing the data.   
• Create a remote wipe of data: Protect critical assets by creating a remote wipe of the data in case the asset is stolen. Shred every piece of data that is sensitive to ensure that the dumpster is completely clean. 
• Maintenance & Monitoring – Learn the proactive and preventive approach, don’t let the organisation be reactive. Remember that cyber threats are real and there are people paid, known as black hats, to attack an organisation.  
• Proactive approach – Just like business continuity and disaster recovery, penetration testing and vulnerability assessment are the keys to ensure the same. Build a managed security services approach to execute all things related to your business.  
• Create compliance protocols – There are compliances like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and many more. Please be compliant with the ones relevant to your business to avoid heavy penalties which can be a disaster for the brand and its bottom lines. A cyber security plan should be incorporated as a practice, so don’t ignore it.  
• Awareness and training sessions: When you engage in training of employees, please train them regularly around cybersecurity awareness. In short, a cyber security plan must include employees and they must know that they are vulnerable to malicious attacks from potent individuals and organisations. 
• Framework first: Create governance for a 3P structure – It’s all about people processes, and technology within the company and nothing can work in silos. 
• Administrative plans:  

     1. Identity and Access Management, including Privileged Access Management for Administrative Roles.  
           2. Strong passwords 
           3. Multi-Factor Authentication  
           4. Device and Data Encryption  
           5. Bring Your Device (BYOD) Policy 
           6. Firewalls.  
           7. Systems for Intrusion Detection (IDS / IPS)  
           8. Security Incident and Event Management Systems (SIEM)  
           9. Spam Filter/Anti-Phishing.  

• Roles and Responsibilities: Give responsibility to the employees within internal control functions to perform access reviews, educate other staff members, oversee change management protocols and provide implementation support for the cyber security policy.  
• Classification of Data – Data classification is important for risk assessment which essentially separates between sensitive and non-sensitive information. Data can be classified into:   

             1. Public  
             2. Private  
             3. Confidential  
             4. Restricted  
             5. Internal Use Only  
             6. Intellectual Property  

Once the critical assets are identified and segregated evaluate the related functions of technology. Businesses should be involved as a support function within the network. Evaluate the technology under the following:  

• Identification of the Operating Systems (Servers / Desktop / Laptop) used within the entire network. 
• Categorise devices nearing to End-of-Life period; accordingly discontinue updates. 
• Deploy support personnel to maintain critical assets. 
• Remove duplication of services provided by different systems. 

With the number of cyberattacks increasing at a tremendous pace, working with a Cyber Security Service provider would be wise choice.   

According to Marketsand Markets the global Cyber Security Market size as per revenue surpassed $173.5 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to exhibit a CAGR of 8.9 per cent to reach over $266.2 billion by the end of 2027.