What is the highest targeted industry for security breaches? If you guessed public sector entities, you’re correct! According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 16% of security breaches were against public sector entities.

Large city governments have more resources to work to combat security breaches more effectively and efficiently than small local governments, but local governments are still expected to provide the same levels of IT service and implement strong IT security controls. How do you secure your citizens’ data and your IT environment without breaking the budget? Here are 5 tips on what you can do to provide the most value and security to your business at a reasonable cost:

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

• MFA requires all authentication attempts coming from the Internet to provide a second factor of authentication, usually in the form of a passcode. You have most likely used this technology in your personal life with your bank or online shopping. Why not bring the same security to your business?

Secure Data Backups

• Backing up your data is important. It can help you recover from a natural disaster, hardware failure, or security incident, but today’s attacks are evolving and the current wave of ransomware targets backups to make them unusable. Make sure that your backup plans include maintaining a secure copy that is air-gapped from your network to protect against this growing threat.

User Security Awareness Training

• Your users can be our first line of defense or our weakest link. Arm them with the training and information to make the right decisions when it comes to IT security. This should be done through a combination of user training and simulated phishing attacks performed on an ongoing basis.

Advanced Email Security

• All of our businesses rely on email to function, and the criminals know this. Email is the most targeted attack vector today and we need a better way to protect it. Advanced email security can sometimes block up to 80% of all messages before they reach a user’s inbox by looking for things like email spoofing, malicious links, and malicious attachments.

Web Filtering

• The Internet is a part of daily life for your users, but according to Symantec, an average of 1 out of every 13 website requests leads to malware. Protecting your users from the security threats on the Internet is a basic requirement that must be addressed.

You don’t have to skimp on protecting your business due to budget restraints. Contact CMA today to see how we can help you implement these top 5 IT controls with minimal investment.