Cybersecurity Awareness Month may be over, but cybersecurity awareness shouldn’t be.

Sophos Guest Blogger

November 18, 2021

2 Min Read
Cybersecurity Awareness: 5 Tips for Partners
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National Cybersecurity Awareness Month has passed, but cybersecurity really needs to be acknowledged and taken seriously all year round, given the devastating nature of today’s threat landscape–especially ransomware. With that said, it doesn’t hurt for partners to have an excuse to check in on the cybersecurity hygiene of their own organizations as well as their customers today.

The Impact of Ransomware

According to findings from Sophos’ State of Ransomware 2021 global survey, the average cost of remediating a ransomware attack more than doubled in the last 12 months. Remediation costs–including business downtime, lost orders, operational costs and more–grew from an average of $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021. This means that the average cost of recovering from a ransomware attack is now 10 times the size of the ransom payment.

To ensure partners and the customers they support are best protected against ransomware and other cyberthreats, here are five cybersecurity practices that partners should double down on during Cybersecurity Awareness Month and every month throughout the year:

  1. Acknowledge that attacks are inevitable. No one is off limits. Assume you and your customers could be targeted and plan accordingly.

  2. Adopt a “3-2-1” method to backing up your data. Backups are the No. 1 method that MSPs can implement to successfully restore their or their customer’s data. Follow the 3-2-1 method of backups: three different copies of data, using at least two different backup systems, with at least one copy stored offline and offsite.

  3. Complement security technologies with human experts. Cybersecurity software solutions provide the scale needed to thwart attackers, but it can’t do the job alone. Shore up the technology side of your defense with human-led threat hunting teams, who have the expertise to catch the red flags of an attack that your technology might miss. If you don’t have those skills in-house, look into outsourcing threat hunting.

  4. Protect your network with layered protection. With the bad guys deploying multifaceted attacks, it’s more important than ever for MSPs to ensure they and their customers are deploying layered protection at as many entry points into their network as possible, to keep adversaries out of their environment.

  5. Employee awareness. Today everyone is crunched for time, and basic IT security measures may not be a priority. That’s understandable, but also something that cyber attackers are depending on. It’s more critical than ever that everyone within every organization has completed some basic IT hygiene steps: stronger passwords (made stronger by two-factor and multifactor authentication), knowing how to spot phishing emails and who to notify in the event of one.

 This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

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