In the age of information and digital transformation, new data is generated at all times, at an impressive speed. In this sense, it is, therefore, necessary to develop a security and protection infrastructure to manage this data and prevent problems.
It is also necessary to consider that, nowadays, there are many dangers that companies face: from lack of availability of data to internal processes to the instability of systems.
Therefore, information security becomes such an important and necessary issue. It is critical to understand how to structure protection policies to eliminate risks, reduce costs, and ensure consistency. In the process, it is also interesting to observe the most common mistakes in order to avoid making them.
Thus, companies optimize processes and ensure innovative solutions. If you want to delve into the subject and find out everything you need to know, be sure to follow the following article.
What is information security?
The term encompasses all processes, methods, approaches, strategies, and efforts aimed at data protection, network, and systems. Information security deals with both the physical and virtual dimensions. The goal is to ensure the integrity of the relevant information and to allow operations to continue normally in companies.
The protocols in this area focus on mitigating risks and attacking the problems associated with cybercrimes, malicious attacks, and equipment deterioration. The protection aims to prepare the company with systems, good practices, and methodologies.
The assets that this concept aims to protect are the data generated internally and externally, stored in the bases of the companies. They are information from customers, employees, leaders, and other stakeholders. Thus, they are fundamental components of daily operations and need greater attention from management.
However, what matters most to organizations is the fact that security care also causes several global improvements in processes and work on a day-to-day business. That’s what we’ll see in more detail in the following topic.
It is always worth remembering that safety not only takes care of the logical aspect but also represents care with physical elements, that is, with the protection of equipment.
In this sense, it is necessary to think about protection against natural accidents, disasters, fires, and poor temperature conditions, the problems that put at risk the performance of the systems.
What is the importance of information security in the current context?
Information security is a relevant issue today for a number of reasons. One of them is the set of improvements that companies provide, which makes them run behind these strategies.
For example, we have a cost reduction. If corporations optimize data security, they start dealing less with fines, indemnification expenses, and expenses to correct incidents. Infrastructure and systems become stable and consistent, which allows for increased productivity. In this way, the company saves resources and can have money to invest in important areas as well.
A holistic vision is another advantage. As we will see below, the creation of protection policies requires an in-depth analysis of all aspects of the company, with monitoring of risks, a survey of vulnerabilities and weaknesses, among other issues.
Thus, IT management becomes more attentive to the company’s problems and can have a broad view of what happens internally. In addition, security management is important to stimulate global care of all assets to ensure that everyone is within compliance and internal rules.
If your company wants agility in the day-to-day, investing in protection is a great shortcut. With this management, it is possible to ensure that the infrastructure is used exclusively to generate a return, with the best use of its capabilities. Similarly, it is possible to prevent instability and technical bottlenecks arising from incidents.
Reputation is another extremely important factor. In this sense, it is necessary to think about the relevance of the theme today, because of the laws and all the discussion about it.
Thus, organizations that adapt to standards such as the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) will gain a place in the market and stand out as reliable for customers. With this credibility, it is easier to attract satisfied consumers to do business.
Moreover, the General Law stipulates some rules that are mandatory for all companies dealing with personal data. In this sense, compliance with the new law is another issue that demonstrates the importance of security. By managing protection and paying for these points, they organize to prepare for standards and avoid fines and data blocking.
Security is also important for optimizing communication internally, primarily serving as a bridge in the IT industry to other parts of the company. If everything is properly secure, without risks and major vulnerabilities, the technology industry serves as a basis for the functioning of other sectors, including providing information when needed.
Thus, operations can flow normally, with increased productivity indicators and deliveries in less time.
What are the components of information security?
We have already talked about the concept of information security and its importance to companies today. Now, let’s take a closer look at the term and study its components.
When we talk about it, we consider six main pillars, which describe the idea of security and serve as a guide for organizations, with the characteristics they should seek.
Confidentiality concerns access control, that is, the ability to control who is authorized to view and modify sensitive data. Ideally, this should be managed with care in order to avoid exposure to sensitive company information.
In turn, integrity deals with the cleanliness of data and the ability to understand and use it normally in everyday life. The third pillar is availability, which summarizes the condition of being able to access the data whenever necessary. The fourth pillar is authenticity, which seeks to keep documentation of the authors of each information in order to prove the origin of it.
The fifth is compliance. This term means the alignment of the company’s strategies with the laws governing the area, such as the aforementioned General Data Protection Law.
The sixth is interaction, which walks along with that of authenticity. However, its purpose is to prohibit authors or recipients from denying their participation in an operation involving data. That is, it is fundamental to attest to the authorship of information and allow there to be clarity about it.
What are the main risks of poor information security?
Let us now know the main risks of lack of security management.
Before mentioning the most common types, you need to perform some categorizations of the top threats. We can classify them according to their nature, inactive and passive. Passive attacks are less damaging and assets are activities undertaken with the aim of taking down systems and actually stealing data.
We can also think about the risks in terms of the security pillars we have already talked about. For example, interception is a way to break data confidentiality, manufacturing attacks authenticity, disruption impairs availability, and modification affects information integrity.
Then we can move on to some practical examples of the main enemies of protection in companies. In subsequent topics, we will resume the information in this topic to discuss ways to prevent these problems and address their consequences.
Ransomware
We started with one of the most dangerous today, which has made headlines recently, with a series of attacks around the world.
Ransomware is a type of virus that installs itself on the machine, hijacks the data, blocks it, and requests a kind of payment for release, as well as a common hijacking. In some cases, payment should be made in bitcoins, something that further complicates the situation.
The fact that the company is unable to access your data incurs a serious availability issue. The main consequences are the creation of productive bottlenecks and delays in production, which, in turn, generate non-compliance with deadlines and loss of profitability.
Trojan horse
The trojan horse is a well-known virus, with an intense performance for many years in the digital world. It is malware that installs itself in the system and impairs its performance, by running in the background, in a hidden way. In this way, it can open loopholes in the machine for malicious action with even more harmful tools.
A trojan usually appears in an executable program, as a front for a real system. It can delete files, install spy programs, redirect navigation to malicious websites, as well as install proxy in order to ban some user actions.
Backdoor
Associated with the trojan, the backdoor also works with hidden execution. Thus, it is used to gain control over the devices and perform some specific actions in order to harm the victim.
DDoS
DDoS attacks are a more complex method of attacking an organization, but they are quite common. They consist of organized and targeted attacks on servers, with the aim of taking them down or making them inoperable and very slow. In this way, operations are compromised and the company gains in delays and losses in profitability.
The organization of actions involves the command of a machine that enslaves several others to overload a server with exaggerated requests, above the capacity of that machine. Internet sites are often common victims of this type of malicious onslaught.
Phishing
Phishing is another type of malware that attempts to trick the user. To achieve its purposes, it clones web pages that are true in order to request personal data from users.
In this way, criminals can gain access to sensitive company information, passwords, and even private data, such as credit card passwords and others.
Information leakage
This risk is not malware, but a consequence of their actions. That’s when the company has its confidential information improperly disclosed without authorization. It consists of a strong attack on the confidentiality and control capacity of those who visualize/modify what. Therefore, it can be a strategic and financial nightmare for managers.
How to promote information security in the company?
In this section, we’ll start discussing some measures that can be implemented to optimize security.
Initially, we need to talk about culture change. There is no possibility to manage protection responsibly and adequately without reevaluating the cultural aspects, intrinsic of the company.
After all, if the company does not have a proactive vision of dealing with problems before they start offering risks, for example, it will not be able to develop effective protection.
If there is cultural resistance to prevention actions, security will be compromised. In this sense, to promote defense in a global way, it is essential to work with culture and cultivate a new way of thinking in all sectors.
This mentality should also embrace innovation, as it is a very important basis for information security. As we will see below, some solutions for protection include the use of innovative and modern tools. Thus, it is necessary to adopt the technological systems available to reinforce the company’s barriers against risks, in order to make the process efficient and agile.
For a data protection framework to be built, one recommendation is also to adopt cloud computing. The cloud consists of using virtualized computing resources, as a service, arranged in packages.
In this way, the company will acquire these components according to the need, and it is possible to scale the solution flexibly whenever necessary.
The cloud offers a number of elements that help with security management, such as encryption, constant monitoring, server redundancy, and disaster recovery solutions. In addition, the organization does not need to bear the concern of protection internally and can outsource this function to some specialized partner.
In addition, the fact of virtualizing the components helps to avoid physical security problems, since the equipment will not be stored in the company’s facilities.
The benefit of having the external partnership is to have the most modern and effective practices, a mature vision that knows the most common mistakes and knows how to avoid them, as well as all the expertise in the subject. Thus, the company does not need to overload internal members to take care of this matter.
What are the top 5 information security practices?
Next, we’ll look at the best strategies for optimizing security in companies of all kinds.
1. Access control
One of the main strategies is access control, effective to protect the confidentiality and prevent information leakage. It’s about implementing measures to ensure that only a few of the employees can view and modify sensitive data. Only leaders and experts. In addition, it is imperative that each sector only has insight into industry-specific data.
2. Security policies
We must also mention the definition of security policies. This aspect is very broad and encompasses a number of definitions that are fundamental to establishing protection internally.
It is necessary to soften, for example, the rules for the use of systems and devices in the company, in order to minimize risks.
This includes password control, internet practices, careful link clicks, and the use of important tools that are key to protection. With this attention to use, it is possible to avoid problems already mentioned, such as phishing, as well as the installation of programs with backdoors and trojans.
Similarly, it is crucial that the policy contains guidelines for employees in times of emergency when an incident occurs. These actions will be carried out with the aim of containing the dangers and consequences. Strategies for disaster recovery should also be included after incidents.
In general, policies should integrate good practices and responsibilities in order to become a guide for employees and enable the alignment of all for the same purpose.
3. Firewall and antivirus
The use of firewalls and antivirus is a great approach against security dangers as well. Antivirus esthetes with constant monitoring of activities, periodic scans on all files, and important notifications about protection. It, therefore, fights malware such as backdoors, trojans, among others.
Firewall systems serve as a filter in order to block access from suspicious sources. Thus, it is a great solution to prevent and combat DDoS attacks, as it already identifies attack attempts and blocks the origin in a preventive manner.
4. Backups
Another important tool to make use of is backup. Backups are crucial to help with the availability and integrity of information by enabling companies to always have a healthy and accessible version of some information saved elsewhere in their systems. All data must be submitted to backup routines, including with the help of automation.
Backups are great ways to survive a ransomware attack, for example. After all, even if criminals block access to one of the versions, the company will still be able to keep its operations normalized and use that file.
In addition, it is also useful when the company needs to perform some upgrade or configuration on its servers. In this case, the backup acts as an option for restoring if a problem occurs.
5. Digital signature
Another recommendation to help primarily in controlling interaction and authenticity is a digital signature. Using this digital method to attest to document participation is essential in order to prevent fraud and any other problems associated with denial of authorship.
What are the 3 errors that harm information security?
So what are the main errors associated with this area? The first is the lack of INVESTMENT in IT. Companies that do not employ the proper financial resources for this concern fail because they neglect the importance of it. In this way, they have become easy targets for malicious and do not organize themselves for compliance with the laws.
The investment includes adopting technologies for this purpose, such as cloud, machine learning, deep learning, among others. Likewise, it involves all efforts for training and alignment of employees.
Another common mistake is the lack of systematization of a comprehensive policy, in the terms, we have already discussed in this text. By not deploying single documentation to coordinate all approaches, companies are lost in fragmented and inefficient strategies.
In practical terms, it is a common problem also not to update internal systems, both software, and hardware, which is the third error. IT leadership often lets this issue pass without due attention, which creates vulnerabilities. Most virtual attacks occur because of exploits of obsolete and updated system breaches.
In terms of hardware, you always need to reevaluate assets and use modern equipment that offers no risk. In terms of software, it is always necessary to be up to time with supplier upgrades.
How to change the company’s culture in relation to information security?
As we have already pointed out, one of the obstacles to information security is precisely culture. Therefore, this topic will focus on this issue.
To invest in this global and structural change, the company initially needs training. All employees must be prepared for safety management, with a full understanding of the risks, dangers, and benefits of proper administration. Thus, in all internal processes, protection will be respected, from software development to communication with the client, for example.
In this way, it is necessary to stimulate the awareness of members and the active participation of all. Remember, security is everyone’s effort. Even if leadership knows what it is doing, creates policies and rules, it is necessary for the parties of the whole to fully embrace it.
Another tip to encourage this change is the hiring of a specialized partner. With the advice of a company specialized in the subject, the organization can eliminate doubts and resistance on the subject, in order to clarify what is necessary and strengthen protection. It will be possible to rely on global care to optimize safety at all ends.
A partner with years of experience and a good reputation will help your company solve key problems and close common loopholes. In addition, the consultancy works as an advisor, always helping to disseminate knowledge on the subject.
Information security is an extensive and extremely important issue. For organizations that want to innovate, reduce costs and optimize their daily processes, it is a basic need. Organizing protection involves a reassessment of culture, investment in technology, change in everyone’s practices, and even the search for an external partnership.
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