Is there a heightened cyber threat?

“Employees should report any suspicious emails rather than delete them and firms must step up their vigilance against cyber-attacks in the face of a heightened threat from hackers, the UK’s data watchdog has said.” – The Guardian, March 2022

The National Cyber Security Centre has released guidance in terms of actions to take when the cyber threat is heightened – here’s how you can improve your security:

Phishing Response:
Ensure all staff have knowledge on how to spot, and report phishing emails. As a firm, ensure you have a process in place to deal with any reported Phishing Emails from your staff. (Contact us if you need help setting up this process)

As a company, building a culture where users can report phishing attempts gives you important information about the types of phishing threats you receive and could help you deal with future threats.

Access Controls:
Ensure passwords are unique to the business system and not shared across non-business systems. Make sure that multi-factor authentication is enabled where possible, and check that it is properly configured. Identify the risks areas such as reviewing any user accounts that have administrative privileges and remove any old, unused, or unrecognised users.

The NCSC has a number of guides on these topics, which we will link below:
Strong Passwords
Multi-Factor Authentication
Secure Admin Guidance

Incident Plan:
Ensure your incident response plan is up to date and tailored for your business.

Good incident management will reduce the impact of a breach. Being able to detect and quickly respond to incidents will help to prevent further damage, while also minimising the financial and operational impact.

A template workflow for an incident response plan would look something like:
Overview, Analyse & Contain, Fix/Remove/Stop incident, Recover and Review

If you need help to implement the above or would like to ask us any questions regarding your IT environment, please contact us.