How to Uncover IT Security Gaps in Your Organization

IT breaches can happen to any business. According to a report from IBM, more than 1.5 million businesses were affected by the cyber-attacks last year. Large organizations are attacked thousands of times every day. Some of these attacks actually result in data breaches.

Most organizations are trying to deal with complex attacks. IT professionals don’t know about the vulnerabilities that are present in their system. If you don’t know about the vulnerabilities present in your systems, then you can’t protect your business. In this article, we are going to give some tips that will help you in finding IT security gaps in your organization.

1. Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing

A vulnerability assessment will help you in finding the vulnerabilities present in your network. There are various vulnerability scanners present in the market that can help you in finding vulnerabilities in your network. You can also hire an IT security professional for conducting a vulnerability assessment. They will also help you in conducting external penetration testing.

Penetration testing will help you in finding external security gaps in your network. White hat hackers will use all the attack vectors they know for gaining information about your IT infrastructure and information. They will look for vulnerabilities in your configurations, systems, applications, and website. Also, they will try to exploit these vulnerabilities by using their tools. You can also use a test environment for ensuring that your main network is safe.

If there are no vulnerabilities present in your network, then IT professionals will use social engineering attacks. They will use phishing attacks for collecting data from your users. You should combine penetration testing with social engineering for ensuring that your network is actually protected.

It is important to ensure that you are regularly performing these penetration testing. This is very important if you are operating in a regulated industry. Regular penetration tests will ensure that your systems are secure and protected from attackers.

2. Identify internal risks

Your employees are the biggest security risk for your business. An internal penetration test will help you in understanding how much data an ex-employee or disgruntled employee can steal. Also, it will help you in estimating the risk of loss if that employee tries to sell or leak your data.

In this test, a white hat hacker or security professional will work inside your business. They will try to exploit the internal vulnerabilities that are present in your network. These security professionals will find weaknesses in your systems, applications, firewalls, access controls, networks, and databases. This will help you in finding defects in your IT infrastructure. Also, it will help you in identifying data that is at risk.

3. Perform an IT risk assessment

You should perform a complete risk assessment after conducting penetration tests. It is important to analyze all the risks that are present in your network. The risk assessment will help you in finding threats to your business.

You should ensure that you are educating your executives about the risks present in your network. This will help you in implementing better security controls and procedures. You should tell them about the things that should be fixed. Also, you should give them an estimated cost of implementing these fixes.

It is important to ensure that you are regularly performing risk assessments every year. IT risk assessment is compulsory in most of the regulated industries. If you are accepting credit card and debit card transactions, then you must follow the PCI-DSS regulations. Thus, you should perform a risk assessment annually for avoiding any legal penalties.

4. Create a security incident response plan

According to a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, more than 77% of businesses have experienced a data breach in the last 5 years. However, more than 35% of these businesses still don’t have an incident response plan. Only 17% of businesses are actually prepared for a data breach.

If you want to quickly restore your service and recover your data, then you should create an incident response plan. This plan should include the following points:

• It should include the names of members that are in your response team. You should also mention the actions that they need to take in case of an attack or data breach.
• Make sure that you know how to investigate a data breach. Your MSP will help you in getting your things up.
• You should create a communication plan. This plan will help you in communicating with your customers, stakeholders, and employees.
• You should create a report of every data breach. This will help you in avoiding data breaches in the future.

You should also regularly test your IRP with your employees and IT team. Make sure that you are testing this plan when you are conducting your penetration tests. Your IT team should know about this plan. These plans will them in detecting and reacting to attacks. You should train them for ensuring that they can think proactively.

5. Test your backup

Most companies forget to test their backups. Due to this, their backups might fail during the real test. Sometimes backups are not as reliable as most people think. This will leave your business vulnerable to data theft. It is very important to regularly test your backups. This will ensure that you can quickly recover your data in case of a data breach.

You should also consider backing your data into multiple data centers. However, you should also store a copy in your local data center. This will ensure that you will have fast access to your backup.

Conclusion

These five steps will help you in uncovering IT security gaps in your business. You can use these tips for protecting your business from attackers. However, it is not easy to protect your entire network until you have access to IT security professionals. Thus, you should consider working with an MSP like Bleuwire. Bleuwire will help you in finding vulnerabilities in your network. They will help you in creating a security plan for your business. You can use this security plan for protecting your data and applications from attackers. If you need more information regarding IT security services, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.