The main asset of a modern organization is information. Personal data of employees, customer base, information about the market and partners, unique processes: any company stores a huge amount of information that is of great value. Cybercriminals, offended employees or unscrupulous partners can use the company’s data to achieve their goals. Therefore, cyber protection of the company, in particular tools for dark web monitoring for enterprises are gaining more popularity. In this article, you will learn how to protect your company from cyber threats.
What Is Information Security?
Information security is the totality of all the measures and tools you use to save and protect the data at your disposal. Special security software, access policies for different users, instructions for working with confidential data, backup servers – all this is part of the information security infrastructure.
Information Security Goals
In order for your enterprise to be considered protected from an information point of view, you need to ensure that three main goals are achieved:
- Confidentiality. You must strictly control access to the enterprise’s information assets (at all stages, including transferring data to counterparties or partners). If someone gains access to your information, you must be aware of it.
- Integrity. Data must be organized, consistent, and reliable.
- Availability. Everyone who has the right to access the data must be able to get this access if necessary.
Thus, information security is not only about protecting information from intruders but also about the general culture of working with it: organizing data, providing access to it, etc.
Information Security Threats
All factors that can threaten your information are divided into three large groups:
- Anthropogenic intentional. Threats intentionally created by a person or a group of people: hacker attacks, theft of a database by an offended employee, and the machinations of competitors.
- Anthropogenic unintentional. Negligence, incompetence, or simply an accident associated with human actions. When your employee writes the password to the database on a piece of paper and puts it under the keyboard, this is just one of these threats.
- Natural. All threats that are not directly related to human actions: a fire in a data center, a communication failure due to a hurricane, a hard drive failure, etc.
What Are The Most Dangerous Information Security Threats?
Intentional. The fact is that you are protected from natural threats by the infrastructure itself, including the infrastructure of your contractors (if you take a responsible approach). Unintentional threats create risk zones but do not always lead to negative consequences: the same piece of paper with a password in a good team can lie for years, and this will not create problems (although, of course, this should not be done).
An intentional threat initially arises from someone’s conscious desire to harm the company. The attacker is trying to gain access to your data (customer base, payment information, etc.), he is actively working on this, making efforts. Therefore, most means of protection in the field of information security are aimed in one way or another at protecting you from intentional threats.
How to Ensure Information Security at Your Enterprise?
For protection to be effective, it must work at all levels (including the level where people act, not machines). The same example: you can have excellent data encryption, but what’s the point if the administrator password is written on a sticker and is in the reception area? That is why information security clearly distinguishes three levels of control, and you need to actively work on each of them.
Administrative
Administrative control is a set of instructions, processes, and standards by which you and your employees work. It regulates the actions of personnel, prescribes the use of certain means of technical data protection, and at the same time prevents unintentional threats to information security.
Tools:
- corporate security policies;
- job descriptions and regulations;
- disciplinary measures provided for violations;
- regulatory acts and laws.
Logical (technical)
This level of protection includes software and hardware for restricting and distributing access to information, as well as for ensuring its safety.
Tools:
- special software (we will discuss this in more detail below, in a separate section);
- technical means: servers, gateways, etc.
Physical
The third level of control focuses on the physical protection of information carriers.
Tools:
- heating, air conditioning, and fire extinguishing systems;
- alarms;
- cameras;
- doors and locks;
- access control systems to premises, etc.
Data Protection Programs
Let’s take a closer look at the tools that should be used to ensure the company’s protection at the logical level:
- Antiviruses.
Such tools register unauthorized access, limit suspicious program actions, and generally provide good basic protection. To choose an effective solution, study the best antiviruses for small and medium businesses.
- DLP systems.
These are advanced systems aimed at protecting against data leaks. If an antivirus focuses on malware, DLP provides comprehensive information security – they analyze the actions of your employees, check attempts to gain unauthorized access to information, and signal suspicious events (for example, a specialist downloads a database to a flash drive).
- Employee monitoring systems.
Tools with this focus will help the company even if the attacker does not download anything, but simply photographs data from the screen. You will be able to see who visited the corresponding pages of internal resources and track them.
- Encryption.
Data encryption programs help protect important corporate information from theft through unauthorized access. Even if an intruder can download, for example, a customer database, he still will not be able to use it – without a special key, the data will be unreadable. Most good data storage services already have built-in encryption systems, but there are also special programs specifically for cryptographic data protection.
- SIEM systems.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) are software packages that constantly monitor the status of network devices and applications. If a security threat arises (for example, suspicious attempts to access a database), SIEM immediately processes the corresponding signal, checks for other similar signals, and notifies the operator about the problem.
- Tools for monitoring the dark web.
These tools help identify hidden data leaks, protecting the company from compromised partners and suppliers. Darknet monitoring allows you to quickly respond to incidents and prevent serious consequences.
Conclusion
Protecting your business from various types of cyber threats requires a comprehensive approach. It is necessary not only to use modern technologies but also to constantly train your employees. One of the key methods of proactive protection is monitoring the dark web, which allows you to detect data leaks and potential threats before they cause damage. We recommend ImmuniWeb if you are interested in this practice, as well as other effective tools for data protection.
