In response to a question at elearning africa, cyber risk is the likelihood of a damaging event happening to your information and communication systems leading to a loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability of business information. Anything valuable to you is what an attacker also wants. You would do well to invest in improving your cyber knowledge and skills in a such a dynamic field, skills that will serve you well into the future.
Managing cyber risks contains periodic checks and unending monitoring to assess whether the controls in your business are sufficient to deter, detect, respond and recover from cyberattacks. Where the security controls are less than the desired level of security, more controls are added and where security is so high, the controls are reduced to match value of assets being protected.
Gone are the days when you set-it-up and forget. When you setup an antivirus, for example, do not forget about it, but rather periodically check whether its still performing as it should, it is getting updated and whether it is still configured optimally according to supplier instructions.
Software and device misconfigurations are a popular way attackers enter a business, especially when connected online with their default settings unchanged. Make sure you do not connect a device/software to the Internet without changing its default administrator passwords, at the very least.
Once you let your guard down in one area, that leaves room enough for attacker(s) to enter and ruin your business. This you must not do, as the consequences of a cyberattack are so severe that 60 percent of small businesses go bankrupt. Africa is especially in a critical moment considering that scammers are lurking on popular social media platforms promising high returns at zero risk and aggressively sending sextortion emails and messages laced with malware attachments.
None is immune or too small to fall victim to a cyberattack, from individuals, businesses including nation states. You are proactive in lowering success of an attack when you continually practice recognising tricks scammers use to manipulate you, draw up simple guidelines to handle your business assets, backup your critical business data offline, limit access to business crown jewels and do not panic when hit with a ransomware attack because here is a list of free ransomware decryption tools to unlock your busines data without paying a ransom.
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