Cyber security is the active use of digital protection to safeguard information technology assets and support business continuity.
It’s also called information security and its aim is to shield computers and their networks, software, apps and data from disaster, including natural disaster, burglary, loss and compromise by cyber criminals.
Cyber criminals have taken the global opportunity to target the massively growing numbers of people and organisations who use computers, mobile phones and the internet for doing their banking, communicating, and everything in between.
This form of crime has become an attractive avenue for criminals for a few reasons: it requires little capital outlay and there’s virtually no risk of being caught. Also, it doesn’t take much effort to carry out basic hacking and phishing. That’s not to say most criminals are beginners. The majority of hard-hitting cyber crime is carried out by highly sophisticated criminal gangs with a lot of experience and expertise.
Sophisticated cyber activity has forced experts in cyber security to pull out all the stops to develop equally sophisticated tools to fight it. As a result, cyber security has been progressing as fast as cyber crime.
Today’s cyber security requires various technologies, processes and controls which, when used together, are enough to protect a computer system. These include:
- endpoint protection for desktop and mobile devices
- AI-based anti-malware and anti-ransomware software
- automated backup with versioning
- continual scanning for suspicious activity
URL filtering
On their own, these security elements wouldn’t be enough to combat the level of criminal expertise out there, but together they can prevent criminals from entering computer networks.
In the past, SMEs have felt they don’t have the resources to monitor their computer networks to keep criminals out and most have relied on data backup as their only real safeguarding activity.
Backup has always played an essential role in keeping copies of important files safe from corruption, loss or theft, but it doesn’t stop cyber criminals from entering a network and spreading to remote office locations.
So, even though backup protects data from loss, it doesn’t qualify as data protection in the broader sense
Data backup + data protection
Data protection tackles broader concerns such as the accessibility of data, data privacy and authenticity, and securing data from theft and breach. It’s a multi-tiered approach to securing data against cyber crime.
Data protection needs to be factored into a business’s cyber security strategy for it to match up to the current levels of cyber crime. This comes in the form of full-system backups integrated with proactive protection/perimeter defence.
Due to technological advancements in cyber security, it’s become easier for SMEs to apply protection to computer systems via software that deploys online. The data backup and security can be managed from one console, to give you a constant overview and the ability to manage all your protection at once.
This combination of data backup and data protection as a cyber security strategy is proving a good defence against:
- Malware, which includes ransomware
- Password attacks
- Man in the middle attacks
- Phishing and fishing
- Denial of service
A cyber security strategy feeds into business continuity, safeguarding your systems and data and, ultimately, your business from all kinds of disaster.
If you’d like to chat about your cyber security setup, or get in touch with us here.
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