New Year’s is always the perfect time to review the previous year’s highs and lows, budgets, and leftover projects that need to be completed. But it’s also a good time to look ahead and see what needs to be fixed or capitalized on in the coming months. And while it’s important to outline the sales goals or hiring needs of a business, it’s even more important to look at the various weaknesses in a business. For corporate clients, this can be illustrated by one major need: cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity issues have become something of an unwanted staple in the corporate landscape today. According to Norton, there was a 54-percent increase in reported breaches in the first six months of 2019 compared to the first six months of 2018.
With this in mind, it’s important for corporate clients to understand the severity of data breaches and the importance of putting more effort into patching and protecting their networks from costly claims, the potential of losing clients of their own, and long, drawn-out legal issues.
Here’s a look at some effective New Year’s resolutions for corporate clients in terms of having better cybersecurity health.
1. Improve Firewalls
Firewalls have been around since the beginning of connected networks, but have seen a new level of importance in recent years with the uptick in breaches, both in numbers and sophistication. This is the first line of defense of cyberattacks, and it helps to block unwanted access to connected devices within a company. A lack of firewalls will literally open the door to potential cyberattacks and crimes.
2. Utilize Multi-Factor Authentication
This method of confirming a user’s identity adds another layer of protection to a network when someone is logging in. This method asks for a code to be dialed in after someone receives that code via phone or email. Even if someone discovers the password, accessing an account will be complicated for them.
It’s also important for network users to update their passwords regularly. COIs and IT departments should be prompt in reminding the employees of a company to update their password or even make it automatically mandatory to do so after a certain period of time.
3. Invest in Cybersecurity Insurance
Cybersecurity insurance, like from Tangram Insurance, is available to corporate clients who want to make sure they are covered in the event of a cyberattack. While the goal should be to keep all cyberattacks away, it’s more realistic to operate with the understanding that these attacks will happen at some point and in some capacity, so it’s important to have the right coverage.
Tangram Insurance is able to protect corporate clients’ financial securities and overall assets (not to mention reputation and future business) by supplying the resources needed to find the right recovery options and legal counsel.
4. Update Operating Systems
By updating operating systems and installing patches in a network, a company is helping themselves by minimizing the threats of malware and other vulnerabilities. Installing all important and necessary updates and patches to a system will help to provide blockage to vulnerabilities and risks that may threaten corporate cybersecurity.
5. Share Safer
Sharing information, even harmless posts via social media, has proven to be the gateway for hackers to access someone’s more sensitive information. It’s important to be as selective as possible when it comes to sharing personal information over a network. Anything may tip someone off to discovering password hints and login information.
Personal information and data spread throughout different social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, when analyzed and correlated in the wrong hands, can allow for the development of highly personalized social engineering attacks that hone in on careless and vulnerable employees.
About Tangram Insurance Services
Located across the Golden Gate Bridge, just outside of San Francisco, Tangram Insurance Services is a full-service Managing General Underwriter and Program Manager offering specialty programs. We focus on industry-relevant coverage, competitive pricing, and practical business and risk management solutions for your clients. Since we are not all things to all people, we make sure to create outstanding custom-built solutions that matter to those businesses, and the brokers who serve those industries. Contact us at (888) 744-9810.
