From Data Breaches to Data Insights: Freelancers Driving Cyber Resilience
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Cyberattacks have become more frequent, and 80% of victims are small businesses. From phishing links sent via emails, to SQL injection on vulnerable websites, hackers are actively looking for the next victim. In most cases, these attacks are geared towards stealing and exploiting data. Vulnerable data is often used for impersonation, wire fraud, and even ransom-based attacks where victims have to pay to recover their data.
Data breach is a harsh reality for businesses today, and it’s one of the leading causes of loss in terms of finances and reputation. Apart from stealing funds by exploiting data, no one likes to risk trusting a business that has suffered data breaches.
While cyberattacks and data breaches are a major concern, they ironically provide valuable insights for businesses. How? The old saying “once bitten twice shy” applies. No one wants a repeat of a negative event, so when there’s a cyberattack it automatically sets everyone on the defensive. Typically, this means a total security overhaul with an in-depth analysis of how a data breach occurred and what vulnerabilities were exploited.
What is a Data Breach?
Basically, a data breach is any unauthorized access to sensitive information – think of it like a digital break-in. Typically, data breaches happen through sophisticated hacks, ignorance, and unintentional human errors. By nature, data breaches exploit the vulnerabilities in a system to access and steal sensitive information. For instance, a phishing attack targets unguarded email users by sending seemingly legitimate messages. Within the message is a call to action that is embedded with a malicious program that once clicked would give the hacker unauthorized access to the email. Once in, the hacker could easily gain access to other sensitive information about the victim, and even go as far as impersonating the victim to commit fraud.
Needless to say, the consequences of data breaches are costly and far-reaching. It goes beyond immediate financial losses. Data breaches often cause heavy damage to the reputation of its victims – business or individual, which typically involve loss of trust and costly legal battles.
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Turning Crisis to Opportunity: Data Insights from Breaches
No doubt, data breaches are proof of critical security failures. But, they can also serve as critical learning points. Usually, every data breach leaves behind digital footprints that reveal the vulnerabilities that were exploited. The raw data from a breach – logs, entry points, compromised accounts, etc., is all that’s needed to switch a heavy loss into a security turning point with potential gains. This is the secret behind why businesses spend a fortune hiring security analysts after a data breach. It takes an expert to critically assess a crisis and come up with an action plan to both manage the effect of the crisis and prevent future occurrences. Their work goes beyond patching a few loopholes to actually revamping security systems from top to bottom. In some cases, penetration tests are carried out to test the strength of a security system and expose other vulnerabilities.
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How Freelance Experts Help in Optimizing Cybersecurity
Sometimes, hiring cybersecurity experts is way too expensive – for both businesses and individuals. While large businesses often have a dedicated IT team that can handle security patches, small to medium-scale businesses usually don’t have the budget for it. “This is where freelance cybersecurity experts from platforms such as Pangaeax come into play—offering organisations access to vetted, on-demand professionals for critical security tasks and incident response.”
Freelancers are independent experts that are highly skilled in general and niche areas of cybersecurity. In most cases, hiring one or two freelancers is equal to hiring a full cybersecurity team. Unlike in-house IT teams, freelancers offer flexibility and affordability to their clients. Here’s how they help:
Identifying weaknesses through penetration tests:
Data breaches happen due to security loopholes that cybercriminals exploit. As such, it’s important to first identify and block these loopholes. Freelance experts typically expose these vulnerabilities by conducting penetration tests. This is done by scanning the targeted system for vulnerabilities and then simulating different kinds of cyberattacks on a website, mobile app, or security system. The results of a penetration test shows the security status of any targeted platform, and provides recommendations for boosting security.
Real-time crisis control:
When cyberattacks happen, it’s important to shut them down to reduce the scale of impact. Thanks to their expertise, cybersecurity freelancers are skilled with handling cyberattacks in real-time. They could do this by using remote access tools to assess a compromised system, and respond directly to the cyberattack. This usually involves quickly detecting and shutting off access points.
Setting up security mechanisms against cyberattacks:
Cybersecurity experts know that the best way to stay secure against cyberattacks is to set up multiple security measures. Some of the popular security mechanisms that are put in place against cyberattacks include:
- Password management: Most times, data breaches happen when passwords leak. As such, it’s better to use secure password managers that are not connected to general systems. Cybernews Nordpass review highlights some of the best password managers with top-notch security features to prevent leaks.
- Multi-factor authentication of any attempt to access a website, app, system, or platform; This usually includes; one-time passwords (OTP), secure third-party generated authentication codes, fingerprints, and even facial identification.
- Limited access based on roles and authorization level; This ensures that whoever gains access to sensitive systems can only execute limited tasks – hence even if a hacker gains access, there’s little damage they can do.
- Session time-outs; this basically prevents prolonged access to background systems, thus ensuring that cyberattack operations are automatically cut short.
- IP blacklist; this ensures that any IP address or URL listed cannot gain access to background systems. It also comes with a list of IP addresses that are permitted to access servers and backend systems.
- VPN installation: a VPN (Virtual Private Network) creates an encrypted connection to a remote server which allows users to browse the internet securely. Basically, all your internet activity – from browsing websites to sending emails and downloading files, travels through the VPN secure tunnel which cannot be accessed by third-parties. With this installed, business websites, apps, and other background processes are fortified against data breaches.
- Cybersecurity training for employees: Most times, ignorant employees are the victims of phishing attacks. It’s why cybersecurity experts often prefer providing basic training on security awareness and reactions for employees. An informed employee will be able to identify suspicious links and manage basic security processes.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that not all businesses will be able to afford hiring an in-house IT security team. Given the fact that cyberattacks are growing more frequent, it’s only fair to find an alternative just in case. Freelance data security experts are great with providing all the services of traditional IT teams at a fraction of their cost. What matters is knowing where to find them, and vetting before hiring.
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