Strengthen Your Cyber Security: An Essential Roadmap

Importance: Devices like printers are often overlooked entry points for cyber threats. Unsecured devices can lead to network infiltration, data leakage, and disruption of services.

Benefits:
• Minimises the device's attack surface.
• Reduces the risk of network breaches initiated through vulnerable hardware.
• Prevents unauthorised access to sensitive data stored or processed by the device.
• Mitigates potential financial losses and reputational damage from security incidents.

Importance: Simply backing up data isn't enough; backups can be corrupted, incomplete, or even contain dormant malware. Verification ensures your backups are reliable when you need them most.

Benefits:
• Guarantees the integrity and usability of your backup data.
• Enhances overall data security by confirming backups are complete and uncompromised.
• Streamlines the disaster recovery process, minimising costly downtime and operational disruption.
• Demonstrates a proactive approach to data security, aiding regulatory

Importance: Passwords alone are vulnerable to theft and guessing. MFA adds crucial layers of security, requiring additional proof of identity beyond just a password.

Benefits:
• Provides strong protection against unauthorised access even if passwords are compromised.
• Effectively defends against brute-force attacks attempting to guess credentials.
• Secures access for remote workforces connecting from various locations.
• Helps meet compliance requirements for data protection regulations.

Importance: Your Active Directory (AD) holds the keys to your network. A compromised domain gives attackers widespread access. Domain hardening strengthens this critical infrastructure.

Benefits:
• Reduces the potential entry points (attack surface) for attackers targeting your domain.
• Enhances control over user access by enforcing the principle of least privilege.
• Improves the ability to detect and respond quickly to suspicious activity within the domain.
• Protects critical user accounts, permissions, and access controls.

Importance: Managing the ever-growing number of business devices (laptops, mobiles, etc.) is crucial for security and efficiency. A comprehensive strategy is needed to secure, monitor, and control this ecosystem.

Benefits:
• Enhances security through enforced passwords, data encryption, and remote wipe capabilities for lost/stolen devices.
• Improves productivity by enabling remote application deployment and troubleshooting.
• Ensures adherence to data security regulations and compliance standards.
• Helps control IT costs through standardisation and better license management.
• Empowers employees with secure and productive remote work capabilities.

Importance: Email is a primary target for cyberattacks like phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC). Traditional filters are often insufficient against modern, sophisticated threats.

Benefits:
• Protects against devastating consequences like data breaches and ransomware attacks.
• Utilises advanced techniques like sandboxing, URL rewriting, and impersonation protection (DMARC) to block malicious content.
• Prevents data loss by scanning emails for sensitive information.
• Secures email communication through encryption.