Ways to Protect Your Business – Cybersecurity in Post COVID

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In the this COVID age the subsequent execution of social distancing is the new normal, business processes have changed, and new economic truths has been set. Every business must review and address their cybersecurity measures and technology infrastructure to stay relevant.

Even before COVID, organizational policies often lagged behind the current IT initiatives. In the Post pandemic rebuilding period, IT policy and documentation will need to catch up. There may be some changes made to address the pandemic, these needing to be established; firms need to be changed with more secure and enduring solutions. These changes must be viewed through vigilant eyes, leading towards a more secure and agile future for businesses.

As we recover from this pandemic, we can anticipate the below features of the post-COVID business world, including:

• Increased remote workers.
• Fast-tracked migration to cloud – infrastructure and applications.
• Accelerated use of online collaborative tools.
• High rise in e-commerce.
• More cyber-attack surfaces due to increased remote working.

In a post-COVID-19 world, these areas will require Very high attention:

1.Remote working: Companies should consider establishing Virtual Private Network (VPN) through the deployment of secure connectivity solutions for employee workstations. This ensures identity and access for a Tele-worker meets organizational security requirements. In addition, get the required on-demand bandwidth for video teleconferencing, across and between geographically dispersed sites.

2. External Cyber Protection: Organizations may protect their external boundaries by deploying network access control (NAC) to verify and validate external devices before letting them to connect the office systems. Furthermore, executing remote endpoint data collection and investigation to identify unauthorized activity.

3.Collaboration Tools with enhanced security: While video conferencing has played a vital role during this pandemic, companies should go for enhanced secured collaboration tools. Additionally, they should explore emerging technologies, such as virtual reality or AI powered chatbots for content delivery, which can enhance their operations.

4. Latest Cybersecurity Policy: Organizations should refresh their cybersecurity policies to address COVID ‘triggered’ IT architecture, and processes. Additionally, they should consider risk assessment and identifying mechanisms, such as, single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and automatic logout from unattended devices.

5. Cyber Breach Response (CBR): Companies should refresh and update CBR and disaster recovery plans to address current operations. They should also synchronise and cross-reference CBR with disaster recovery, business continuity, and crisis management plans to create all-inclusive crisis planning document for quick reference.

6. Financial Protection and Recovery: As cyber risk is not merely a technology or operations risk; it is important to manage both cyber infrastructure and financial exposures. Organizations should go for cyber insurance, which can provide a cost-effective and critical monetary backstop in the wake of a cyber-attack, especially during pandemic situations like COVID-19.

7. Post-pandemic operations: Companies should consider: monitoring central collection and analysis of cybersecurity alerts, imposing regular software updates to remote workers’ computing devices. Finally updating VPN profiles and firewall rules so staffs receive appropriate role-dependent privileges for access.

This COVID pandemic has highlighted the need for organizational resilience in compelling terms. The post-pandemic recovery and preparation stage presents the opportunity for firms to rebuild to a new normal, with resilience as an universal goal.

Manickavel Muthusamy

Entrepreneur, Co-Founder & CEO

Expert Solution Technologies Canada Inc.

Toronto, Canada

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Bio -Manickavel Muthusamy is the CEO & Co-Founder of Expert Solution Technologies Canada Inc.  

An Entrepreneur with in-depth understanding of Sales & Marketing of IT Services, Outsourcing and Global Delivery, worked with leading MNCs in multiple geographies including India, Canada and USA in his career spanning over 22 years. Currently owning a software firm in Canada helping Small & Medium Size business with a wide range of accounting technology solutions & services