Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Over the past 6-12 months, several in ORION’s community have had to deal with security issues, including denial of service attacks, malware intrusions and network infiltrations. With our expanded mandate of providing security guidance to our constituents, ORION has gathered some tip which can help protect your institution’s infrastructure. To round out our Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we present:
Twelve Tips for Improved Attack Prevention
- Cybersecurity awareness campaigns should be conducted consistently for all stakeholders of the institutions
- Compliment awareness campaigns with regular phishing test campaigns
- Centrally manage all servers, especially public-facing ones (i.e., web servers, registration databases, etc.)
- Make strong password and multi-factor authentication mandatory for all users (especially managers, technical staff and anyone else with access to sensitive /critical systems)
- Scan all systems for security vulnerabilities and have their software patched at least once in a quarter
- Conduct security penetration testing annually
- Configure all critical devices so that they log sufficient information to aid in forensics and incident investigations
- Create and maintain a security incident playbook that specifies strategies for dealing with various scenarios
- Cyber insurance can help mitigate the risks associated with security incidents or data breaches by offsetting the recovery costs, costs for forensics, and breach coaching assistance
- Network segmentation and security monitoring are not mutually exclusive, but rather go hand in hand to enable defense-in-depth
- A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will help deal with security-related situations
- Foster ongoing dialogue among your institution to enable a coordinated response to security incidents and data breaches
As the security threat landscape continues to grow and evolve, all stakeholders in ORION’s digital community will need to continually stay on their guard. Adherence to best practices and greate coordination among ORION network members may prove the best weapons in an uphill battle.