Best practices to protect your enterprise from cyber-attacks

Globally, cybercrimes are on a rise, making headlines every week by targeting both large and small enterprises. According to Gemalto’s 2015 Breach level Index, there were 1,673 reported incidents of data breaches in the year compromising more than 707.5 million records worldwide. When compared to 2014, the industry saw a marginal decline of 3.4% in data breaches, while theft of personal information and identities continue to be on the rise.

India had only 20 breaches in 2015, but thesecompromised over 32.1 million records. In July 2015, two of India’s largest private banks, a retail brokerage and a state-owned lender all faced security breaches, when their online ser- vices were disrupted. Cybercriminals had hacked into their systems and launched DDOS (distributed denial of services) attacks. According to a report by PwC, the number of cyberattacks on Indian companies have doubled up to 6,284 in the last one year.

As the number of breaches continue to grow, identity theft remains the primary reason behind many of these. Hackers use legitimate identities to gain unauthorized access to an enterprises network to steal data or control the network. An increasingly mobile workforce, proliferation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and cloud computing technologies are adding further complexities for the enterprises, as they need to keep up with the latest advances to secure their data.

Furthermore, while enterprises struggle to protect themselves from external threats, they also need to be cognizant of internal threats. Contrary to what one might think, cyberattacks are also largely initiated by employees. There are multiple reasons why this happens, from disgruntled employees who leverage their user credentials for personal gain to oblivious employees who create vulnerabilities in the network that put the company at risk.

Although there is little that enterprises can do to control when the next breach occurs, they can implement best practices, which can mitigate some of the risks. Here are five ways how enterprises can protect themselves.