The importance of a holistic approach to Cyber Security

Dealing with the constant threat of cyber attacks has become commonplace for businesses, as barely a week goes by without news of another cyber incident making the headlines. Phishing threats leading to ransomware attacks and data theft have risen steeply, increasing pressures on IT teams to ensure that they have implemented robust defences to keep attacks at bay.
 

As the number of firms reporting cyber incidents has grown, it has become a case of when, not if, your organisation will suffer a breach. Unfortunately, there are no silver bullet tools that will fix every vulnerability and halt every attack. However, a holistic approach combining strong preventive defences, with reactive measures can help you contain, eradicate and remediate threats.
 

1. Preventative defences
 

At Nviron, we principally categorise preventive defence measures into two groups;
 

• Perimeter Security
   
• End User Security
   

Perimeter security focuses on safeguarding your network boundaries, including things such as Firewalls and Mail Filtering. Identifying and stopping threats before they have breached your perimeter ensures that the integrity of your network is maintained.
 

End-user security focuses on security services which are more aligned to the user and the devices which they use to access your network. It can include things such as Anti-Virus, Endpoint Detection and Response, Device Management and Web Filtering.
 

By delivering these services through a Security as a Service (SECaaS) model, Nviron can help your organisation reduce the burden on your in-house teams whilst benefiting from the expertise of an IT services company. The SECaaS model also enables cost-effective access to enterprise-class security solutions, without the traditional cost and maintenance of hosting and managing such solutions in-house.
 

2. Reactive measures
 

Unfortunately, despite strong preventative measures, breaches can and do occur. New exploits are created daily and malicious attackers are relentless. This makes reactive measures a key component of a holistic approach to cyber security.
 

If a cyber-attack has breached your defences, you need to swiftly contain, eradicate and remediate the threat before it can cause significant damage and disruption.
 

As a minimum, reactive measures should include regular and secure backups of your data. Ideally, these should be held off-site and separate to your primary network. In the event your perimeter security is breached, this will ensure that any virus that has breached your primary network will not be able to affect your backups as well.
 

Following the same principles as the SECaaS model, Nviron offers Backup as a Service (BaaS). With BaaS, Nviron take on the responsibility of ensuring your data is backed up and stored in a remote, cloud-based repository. The data is air-gapped to your production environment, keeping it safe should any malicious code find its way into your network. This ensures the integrity of your data, meaning it can be restored to your production environment in the event your primary data is corrupted and/or lost.
 

Taking things one step further than BaaS, a solid disaster recovery strategy is an important reactive measure to consider. Nviron’s Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) not only copies your data to our secure cloud environment, but we also take copies of your applications. In the event you should suffer a disaster with your primary environment, a secondary environment can be spun up which your users can access. DRaaS is designed to minimise downtime in the event of a disaster to your production environment and therefore avoid intolerable revenue losses and irreparable reputational damage.
 

The benefits of delivering security through a SECaaS model can include:
 

• Cost savings – With businesses looking to streamline costs, Nviron’s SECaaS is available in subscription tiers so you only pay for the services you need and use.
   
• The latest security tools and updates – For anti-virus and other security tools to be effective they must be kept up to date with the latest patches and virus definitions. When you deploy SECaaS throughout your organisation, these updates are managed on your behalf.
   
• Faster provisioning – Once you implement SECaaS within your organisation, your users can be given access to the tools immediately. There are no lengthy installs, and the solution can be scaled as required.
   
• Free up resources – SECaaS frees up your internal teams and provides confidence that your IT security is being managed competently by a team of specialists.
   
• Preventative defences form a strong security barrier surrounding your organisation and Users to stop the majority of incoming attacks, but it’s impossible to stop everything from getting through. Businesses also need to invest in robust, reactive measures such as BaaS and DRaaS to contain, eradicate and remediate successful attacks as part of a holistic security approach.
   

To discuss your security requirements in more detail, or explore how Nviron can help maximise your security posture, please Click Here to speak to one of our specialists. Alternatively, existing customers can contact their designated Account Manager.