Ashner Solomon |

Security Risk Assessments Unearth Crucial Insights

A thorough and accurate risk assessment can unearth a host of crucial insights from even the deepest and darkest alleys of your IT environment to ultimately empower your decision making. Having actionable insights at your disposal can help you build strategies to reduce risk levels in practical ways instead of shooting in the dark by testing various tools.

Here are some of the most important details that become more apparent and unambiguous with every risk assessment.

Baseline of the System

A risk assessment helps you chart out the lifecycle of all data that is collected, stored and managed in your entire network.

Identification of Threats

A meticulous risk assessment identifies all the possible threats, such as intentional, unintentional, technical, non-technical and structural, that your business data is exposed to.

Identification of Vulnerabilities

With each assessment, you get the latest list of vulnerabilities prevalent in your network with respect to patches, policies, procedures, software, equipment and more.

Current Status of Existing Controls

From the assessment report, you can also understand the existing security and privacy controls protecting your business against vulnerabilities.

Probability of Impact

An accurate assessment report is fully capable of anticipating the probability of a threat that might exploit one of your network’s existing vulnerabilities.

Strength of Impact

Risk assessment also helps you gauge the possible impact of any threat hitting your business.

Imagine how easy it would be for you to build and implement a strategy to fix the security loopholes in your business while maintaining a well-documented record of your efforts.

(more information in next weeks blog)

First Step to Compliance

Posted 7 months ago by Ashner Solomon

First Step to Compliance: A Thorough and Accurate Risk Assessment

Complying with data privacy and protection regulations wouldn’t give several business owners sleepless nights if it only meant installing a predefined list of security solutions. Compliance goes way beyond this and for good reason. In principle, regulators, local or international, want businesses to:

assess the type of data that is stored and managed

gauge the potential risks the data is exposed to

list down the remediation efforts needed to mitigate the risks

undertake necessary remediation efforts regularly

most importantly, document every single step of this seemingly arduous process as evidence

Each of the above steps are mandatory and non-negotiable. A closer look will tell you that installing a list of expensive security solutions comes only after the first three steps in the process have been followed. Skipping past these initial steps and acting merely on presumptuous knowledge is tantamount to leaving your business’ future to sheer chance. It’s anyone’s guess what that would lead to.

That’s why we’re going to explain to you why a thorough and accurate risk assessment is truly the first step towards achieving compliance. Moreover, when repeated regularly, it can help you demonstrate continuous compliance while keeping cyberthreats at bay.

(more information in next weeks blog)

How To Spot Phishing Emails

Posted 9 months ago by Ashner Solomon

7 WAYS TO SPOT A

PHISHING EMAIL

One of today’s biggest phishing risks is email spoofing. This form of phishing involves cybercriminals mimicking official corporate communications to lure unsuspecting employees into interacting with them. In this scheme, emails purporting to be from large firms, such as Amazon, Microsoft or DHL, are malicious. Discerning what is real versus what is fake can help your organization prevent costly cybersecurity breaches.

CHECK THE SENDER’S

DOMAIN AND EMAIL ADDRESS

Legitimate companies send emails from their official domain, like “microsoft.com,” and not variants like “microsoft.business.com.” If a domain looks odd, check the address on the company’s website.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE

HEADER AND FOOTER FOR CLUES

If the header or footer is inconsistent with other messages from that brand or
has missing information or is just slapdash, it’s likely the message is a phishing attempt.

LOOK AT THE

SUBJECT LINE AND PREHEADER

Does the subject line or pre-header of a message seem a little “off” to you? Are
there odd phrases, emojis or unusual things in the subject line and/or pre-header? If yes, it indicates phishing

ANALYZE THE

CONTENT AND IMPLIED URGENCY

Claiming an action is urgent, offering a special that’s too good to be true or insisting a company must make a payment before services are cut off are all hallmarks of phishing.

BEWARE OF

FORMATTING RED FLAGS

This is where many of us catch phishing attempts. If the message has strange
formatting, spelling mistakes or bad grammar, or the colors, logos and fonts are
“off,” it’s probably phishing.

BE WARY OF

UNEXPECTED ATTACHMENTS LIKE PDFs OR WORD DOCS

If you aren’t expecting an attachment or an attachment looks suspicious because it has a strange name, it might be malware or ransomware, which are frequently deployed through phishing.

USE CAUTION IF A MESSAGE ASKS

YOU TO LOG IN THROUGH A NEW LINK

Consider the links that a message asks you to click to see if they go to the company’s actual domain or log in on their site directly. Fraudulent password reset requests are a staple of phishing.

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY WHEN IT COMES TO EMAIL MANAGEMENT

Phishing is one of the most common attack vectors employees encounter. The good news, however, is that regular security awareness training empowers employees to spot and stop bogus messages, such as fake branded emails, and reduces your company’s chance of experiencing a damaging cyberattack.

Choose a training platform/learning management system that allows you to design training courses and then upload/deploy them to team members. The solution must host a wide range of training courses including employee safety, conduct (anti-harassment), orientation/employee onboarding, cybersecurity, policy changes and more.

We have the right training solution for your business.

http://asylumxcd.com/contact-us