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There’s a ton of different ways to implement a cyber security strategy these days. Various vendors and suppliers have their own products and methods. With all the choices out there, the Essential Eight cyber strategy is a good place to start. With the Essential Eight, you’ll get a at least a starting point as a basis for your cyber security strategy. Fortunately, it’s easy to implement, it’s not going to break the bank and it will co-exist with other cyber security strategies. The Australian Signals Directorate’s cyber security teams have developed the Essential Eight program. The Essential Eight is a baseline strategy that your business can deploy as a starting point to mitigate against cyber incidents. What is the Essential Eight Cyber Strategy? The essential eight is a set of initiatives that you can implement within your business. Once you’ve deployed the Essential Eight, it’s going to make it harder for the ‘Bad Actors’ to get access to your environment from the outside. The Essential Eight strategies are: Application white listingApplication patchingMicrosoft Office macro configurationApplication hardeningRestricting administration privilegesOperating system patchingMulti-factor authenticationDaily backups To implement many of the ASD’s initiatives, you may not need to put in a lot of effort. …

Conventional authentication policies that depend on usernames and passwords alone are no longer secure. As our data evolves, the way we protect access to that data needs to change. Identity attacks are the easiest way into your systems. As we move data from a complete on-premise environment to cloud applications and hosted services, the perimeter of your security footprint has moved. Poor authentication practices are #2 in the list of security risks published by OWASP. Confirmation of your staff’s identity is critical to protect against authentication-related attacks. Cyber criminals know about the security challenges you face. They are actively finding ways to trap your staff into handing over credentials. They are also relying on people’s tendency to re-use passwords everywhere. Often, they’ll use the same password across their work and personal accounts. Here are 5 ways an attacker could gain access to your systems if you only have username and password authentication. There’s no doubt that someone is trying these attacks on your business right now. #1 Broad-based phishing campaigns Why are phishing emails still the number one way of gaining access to someone’s credentials? Simply, the numbers are in their favour. After all this time they are still effective. …

Even though Microsoft’s Office 365 is an easy-to-use platform, securing your data in the cloud is not that simple. Implementing a few Office 365 security best practices can at you’ll have your data in a safer place than it was yesterday. Office 365 is constantly evolving with new features being added every month. Keeping on top of your security posture is critical. Out of the box, Office 365’s settings for data security are fairly weak. We’ve seen organisations that have been in a far worse position than they thought when it came to cloud security. By modernising their security, many business are incorporating a zero trust methodology. This helps to secure sensitive data and improve their ability to defend against modern cyber threats. Office 365 can form part of that zero trust framework if security is planned right. To help get your business in a better position, we’ve put together a list of our top Office 365 security best practices. We aim to configure these principles for all our clients. By implementing this list, we’re sure that your data will be safer and you’ll be back in control. Office 365 Security Best Practices Start With Your Password Policy Password policies …

Out of the box, Microsoft’s Office 365 email security provides some good levels of protection around basic spam and malware filtering. If you want something more substantial that will suit your business, it’s most likely that you need to look at 3rd party products to fill the gap. The Office 365 suite isn’t a one-site fits all platform. Microsoft have built the platform with all it’s tools as a great starting point. In many cases, adding 3rd party products can enhance the functionality and security than the uplift that Microsoft would charge for similar services. You will need to plan your strategy to help thwart the security attacks on your Office 365 email. Industry pundits are already suggesting that phishing scams will be more of a problem than hacking or ransomware. When you’re moving your business to the cloud, managing all the security requirements adds another layer of complexity and consideration. It’s important to make sure you know what you need and what you are getting. What’s in the box with Office 365 Exchange Online Protection? Exchange Online Protection (EOP) includes a lot of features that you would expect in many on-premise email filtering platforms. With Office 365, the included …