Cyber Security Tips for the Office

Ensuring robust cybersecurity measures in the office is paramount to safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining a resilient business environment.

No matter what industry you work in, your business is at threat to cyber attacks. Implement our Cyber Security Tips to start off your week correctly and take a look at your business’s infrastructure to see if you are implementing the following tips for being cyber secure in the office.

1. Cyber Security Assessment 365

Starting us off strong with our Cyber Security Tips is the Cyber Security Assessment 365 (CSA365). This helps you to assess your organisation’s cybersecurity status and to create a fact-based action plan to improve overall cybersecurity. It’s the perfect way to maximise security and to demonstrate you are taking security seriously.

2. Employee Training and Awareness

You will experience immediate benefits if you invest in regular cybersecurity training for all employees. It’s important to educate them about:

• the latest phishing threats
• social engineering tactics
• email security advancements
• the importance of URL protection checks
• other required anti-ransomware

A knowledgeable workforce is your first line of defence into protecting your office from cyber attacks, so make sure to start from within and educate all your members of staff.

3. Cyber Essentials Certification

At CSG, we provide our partners with Cyber Essentials Certification, a scheme that has been designed by the UK Government in order for businesses to adopt good practices within IT. Due to the rigorous testing organisations must go through, it can be difficult to achieve, which is why it’s suggested to use experts within the industry, such as ourselves. The certification will align your organisation with a set of standard controls that is designed to help you combat Cyber Crime.

4. Next Generation Firewall

At CSG, we use the Sophos XG Firewall Security Appliances, a software that provides next-generation protection whilst exposing risks, blocking threats and automatically responding to incidents. Why use Sophos XG for this?

• Will show who is at risk, identify unknown apps, advanced threats, suspicious payloads and more
• Sophos XG has the latest technology to protect your network from ransomware
• Thanks to Sophos Security Heartbeat™ it finds the source and will limit access of any infection
• XG is fast – using intel multi-core technology, solid-state drives and accelerated in-memory content scanning
• CSG will manage all your products through Sophos Central
• CSG will provide up-to-date reports so you can be aware of everything

What makes XG Firewall perfect for organisations that have employees working from different locations is how XG Firewall makes it easy to extend your secure network to employees anywhere. With free, easy-to-use VPN client, your remote workers can gain easily accessible and secure resources on the corporate network. Mobile VPN allows mobile devices to make use of built in or app-based VPN options- including IP Sec and SSL VPN- for secure access to your Next Gen firewall-protected network.

5. Endpoint Protection 

When searching for cyber security tips, the protection that you use is crucial to implementing an effective cyber resilient strategy within your organisation. It is important that businesses have the complete, layered protection that is required to protect yourself against cyber criminals. With the damages now running into the billions for businesses, it’s more important than ever for you to protect yourself properly.

For our clients, we implement Sophos Intercept X and Endpoint Protection Advanced which not only gives you anti-ransomware and anti-malware protection, but it also provides anti-exploit protection as well. The other key features include:

• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
• Anti Ransomware
• Deep Learning Technology
• Exploit Prevention
• Managed Threat Response
• Active Adversary Mitigations

Research indicates Ransomware attacks have risen by 13% over the last years, with an average cost of £1.85million per incident (Sophos, 2023). Discover more about CSG’s Endpoint Protection Services and how we can support you.

6. Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Our MDR experts proactively hunt for and validate potential threats and incidents, whilst using the all of the information that they gather to determine the scope and severity of the threat. This also protects you from any other potential similar threats by getting to the root cause of the issue.

Intercept X combined with EDR creates a proactive system that never sleeps, and is constantly detecting threats and building walls to protect your system from any potential breaches. It digs deep and gets to the route cause of the issue to prevent any similar threats from having impact. Just like how the human body fights infection by creating anti-bodies, this system does the same thing. The threat hunters detect the issue and get to the route cause, then they create blockages to make your machine immune from the same threat happening again.

MDR teams investigate and respond to incidents every day, giving them much greater fluency in using the threat hunting tools. This enables them to respond more quickly and accurately at all stages of the process, from identifying the signals that matter to investigating potential incidents and neutralizing malicious activities.

Working as part of a larger team also enables analysts to share experiences and learnings, further accelerating response. Learn more about the service.

7. Control Access Permissions 

Restrict access to sensitive information based on job roles. Employees should only have access to the data necessary for their responsibilities. It’s important to regularly review and update access permissions as roles within your organisation change. Sophos Central and Sophos Mobile is the only protection available that lets you build and manage multiple lines of defence from email-borne threats: such as secure email, cyber security awareness training plus next generation endpoint protection.

You can get regular Cyber Security Tips straight to your inbox when you sign up for CSG’s Cyber Security support. Learn more about the latest changes in Microsoft and how to ensure that you’re fully secure by following our social media pages.

8. Mobile Device Management

CSG improves your productivity and security using Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and Mobile Threat Defence (MTD) solutions that helps you spend less time and effort to manage and secure traditional and mobile endpoints.

The key features include:

• Productivity – we all know that not everyone likes to do things the same way, such as using certain mobile devices for work. For Sophos Mobile users, any member of staff can work the way they want, on whatever device they want, in a secure way
• Security – put your mind at rest when it comes to your business data – our service means that your data doesn’t go adrift and isn’t threatened by any type of malicious software
• Simplicity – CSG makes the process easy to configure, manage and maintain
• Value – user-based pricing means that you are in control of the pricing so you can afford the best protection

9. Incident Response Plan 

Develop and review a response plan with clear steps for reporting and addressing security incidents. Having a well-defined plan can minimise the impact of a cyber attack and aid in a swift recovery. At CSG, we provide our clients with a Machine-Accelerate Human Response. This is where Intercept X, when paired with EDR, forms a dynamic and vigilant system that operates tirelessly, continuously identifying and thwarting potential threats while constructing robust defences to safeguard your system. Delving deep into the root cause of issues, it proactively prevents similar threats from causing harm.

At CSG, our Security Operations Centre (SOC) platform is driven by Sophos Managed Detection & Response (MDR). Unlike simply alerting you to detected threats, our MDR goes the extra mile. Our team of expert threat hunters and response professionals take precise actions, working diligently to address and resolve issues at their core. This proactive approach effectively diminishes the threat, ensuring a robust security response.MDR providers offer a significant advantage over exclusively in-house security operations programs due to the extensive experience of their analysts. By supporting multiple clients, MDR vendors encounter a much larger volume and diverse array of attacks than any single organization could experience. This exposure grants them a level of expertise that is challenging, if not impossible, to duplicate within an in-house setup.

10. Regular Security Audit

Conduct regular cybersecurity audits to identify vulnerabilities and areas for improvement. This proactive approach allows you to address potential issues before they can be exploited.