Why Is Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees Important?

Organizations’ employees are one of the most significant risks to their cybersecurity, and their negligence is considered the leading cause of data breaches. However, these employees can be a valuable asset for organizations if provided with the required knowledge to identify cyber threats. An enterprise needs to be perceptive when it comes to cybersecurity.

Security awareness training should be mandatory for employees, and there should be an easy-to-implement ongoing training program that considerably reduces the risk of data breaches and security attacks. This blog post will cover human error with what needs to be taught in an effective cybersecurity training program.

What is security awareness training?

Cybersecurity awareness training is a demonstrated educational approach for improving the risky behavior in employees that may lead to compromised security. Cybersecurity training enhances employee resilience to cyber attacks by effectively delivering relevant information on social engineering, malware, information security, and industry-specific compliance topics.

Employees learn to avoid phishing, malware, and other social engineering attacks, identify potential malicious behaviors, follow security best practices and IT policies, report possible security threats and adhere to compliance regulations.

Why do businesses need security awareness training?

As cybercrimes continue to evolve, security awareness training helps organizations reduce help desk costs, secure their overall security investment, and protect their reputation. Implement a training program that significantly lessens the risk of data breaches and security threats via phishing simulations based on real-world cyber attacks and training covering related compliance and security topics.

Training your staff on cybersecurity safety and best practices creates a sense of empowerment. You can rest assured that your employees will be confident in decision-making while browsing the Internet, filtering through suspicious emails, or creating new passwords. Cybersecurity training will increase your employees’ cybersecurity knowledge and give them the practical skills to protect your organization from potential risks or data breaches, ransomware threats, and network attacks.

Best ways to improve cybersecurity awareness for employees

Here are the best practical tips to help you create the most effective security awareness training program for your organization.

1. Start with CEO leadership

Cybersecurity awareness is finally getting the attention it deserves. As the number of data breaches and security threats continues to rise, more emphasis should be on managing cyber risks to lower the chance of potential attacks. Cybersecurity is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, but resilient companies need strong CEO leadership. If the company CEO takes cybersecurity seriously, it will penetrate the organization and form a culture of increased cybersecurity awareness.

2.Know your organization’s tolerances

Your organization should evaluate the threat landscape and detect the top risks in creating an efficient cybersecurity awareness program. It will give you a better understanding of the real-world threats that can compromise your organization’s security. Your risk tolerance should be defined at the outset for implementing the proper security measures depending on the actual threats faced. Identifying the risks correctly can help effectively target your security awareness program.

3. Focus on high-risk groups

An essential factor in making an effective security awareness program is ensuring that the proper training is targeted at the right people. All employees are susceptible to cyber risks, but some have a higher threat profile than others. For example, your Finance and HR departments are targeted mainly by cybercriminals because of their privileged access to sensitive data. Your senior executives, CEO, and CFO are also the main target due to high-level access to valuable information. If a senior executive becomes a target, the results could be devastating.

4. Deploy phishing campaigns

Phishing is a significant threat to organizations’ privacy and security. It’s one of the most common cyberattacks against organizations. It gets you into providing sensitive information, such as credit card information, login credentials, or other restricted data. The simulations implemented in a safe environment test whether employees identify or become victims of a phishing scam. Moreover, deploying a phishing campaign provides training on detecting, avoiding, and reporting these attacks to protect organizations.

5. Get your policy management up to date

Policies are essential in making boundaries for individuals, relationships, processes, and transactions within your company. These provide a governance framework and help define compliance, essential in today’s increasingly complicated regulatory landscape. An efficient policy management system has a consistent approach to creating policies, adds shape to organization procedures, and makes tracking staff responses and attestation more straightforward. As a result, it can help you streamline your internal processes, efficiently target the flaws presenting the highest risk to data security, and demonstrate compliance with legislative requirements.

What Topics Should Security Awareness Training Cover?

A significant portion of cybersecurity incidents stem from human error. To address this, Employee Training in IT Security is essential for fostering secure habits and mitigating risks. However, not all training programs are equally effective—data-driven approaches can bring about lasting behavioral changes.

Here are four common methods to cover cybersecurity threats and prevention in awareness training:

1. Classroom-Based Training:
This traditional approach allows employees to step away from work for expert-led sessions on topics like password security and phishing. While immediate feedback and interaction are benefits, drawbacks include high costs, long sessions, and lower retention rates.

2. Visual Aids:
Posters, handouts, and videos simplify complex concepts, making them easy to understand. They are cost-effective but lack interactivity and may lose impact over time if not engaging.

3. Phishing Simulations:
Simulated cyberattacks are a powerful way to instill cyber threat awareness by testing responses. While effective, they can be emotionally taxing if not handled with care. Proper execution ensures lasting behavior changes.

4. Computer-Based Training:
Dynamic online modules with quizzes and multimedia formats provide flexibility and up-to-date training for evolving threats. Focus on security behavior changes over compliance checklists to maximize impact.

A well-rounded program fosters a culture of security while reducing vulnerabilities.

Security Awareness Statistics

What do recent figures tell us about the state of cybersecurity employee awareness? Let’s take a look.

• In 2023, 70% of data breaches were caused by the human element.
• The average cost of a data breach in 2022 reached an all-time high of $4.35 million.
• Shockingly, in 2020, only 1 in 9 businesses (11%) offered a cybersecurity awareness program to non-cyber employees.
• 1 in 3 data breaches involves phishing.
• 20% of organizations experienced a breach due to a remote worker.

Surprising? Yes, but not unexpected. Many employees lack proper employee cybersecurity training, tools, and support to defend against threats. Strengthening workplace cybersecurity through regular training and effective cyber risk management can help bridge these knowledge gaps and protect businesses from becoming the next statistic.

Conclusion

Employees play an essential role in running a secure business. A negligent and untrained workforce can put your organization at risk of data breaches. Organizations should adopt a reliable security training program encompassing the crucial guidelines to prevent imminent cyber incidents. While searching for cybersecurity awareness training for employees, choose a service that goes beyond security training and focuses on skills and implementation.

For small to medium-scale businesses to maintain a cybersecurity-focused IT team. That’s why they partner with managed services providers and IT solutions providers. They take care of their IT and cybersecurity needs and conduct training programs for the employees to add a layer to cybersecurity. Similarly, Protected Harbor is one of the leading IT solutions makers who care for all your business needs. With our expert tech team available 24×7, 99.99% uptime, remote monitoring, and proactive cybersecurity strategies we strive to satisfy our customers. Learn about our Protected Harbor cybersecurity and awareness training and figure out how you can protect your organization against cyber attacks. Contact us today!

What’s a fully managed backup and data recovery service

Data backups are the core of the online business. Through data backup and recovery, you can create and store copies of your business data that you can use to protect your organization against data loss. Data backup aims to recover the lost data due to a primary data failure caused by a malicious attack, hardware or software failure, data corruption, or accidental deletion of data.

You often hear about major data breaches and incidents that render your data unusable and inaccessible. These can cause downtime to your business and other critical issues. Whether you lose data due to a malicious attack, an human error, or a system failure, you should have a data recovery plan.

Protected Harbor data backup and recovery is a fully managed service and a comprehensive solution to restore and backup data. We help you face your security challenges by providing a secure backup solution to recover data loss, whether on-premise, cloud, or hybrid. Our on-premise services save data directly to your BDR appliance, and we use additional offsite backups for protecting cloud services.

Our services not only recover your business from downtime but also keep it running continuously through every disaster, from human errors to malicious attacks. Protected Harbor’s fully managed services will combine data backup and recovery into a single comprehensive plan if you want to cover all of your bases.

On-premise backup and disaster recovery solution

It is essential to understand that backup and disaster recovery are crucial to minimizing the outcomes of unexpected downtime on your business. Organizations can lose revenue due to data loss caused by natural disasters, security breaches, human error, and ransomware attacks. Any rest in the industry can hinder customer interaction, reduce employee productivity, halt business processes, and destroy data.

There is a need to understand the importance of backup and disaster recovery. For this, you have to differentiate between both. Backup is a process of creating extra copies of data, while disaster recovery refers to the quick restore access to IT resources, applications, and data after an outage.

On-premise backup and disaster recovery processes can help you restore data rapidly. Keeping sensitive data on-premise may seem appealing while complying with strict privacy and data regulations. Disaster recovery from an on-premise environment can be challenging because your entire data center would be impacted if a power outage or natural disaster hit.

Protected Harbor backup and disaster recovery services offer a comprehensive, fully managed solution to handle on-premise backup. BDR framework is a dynamic process that helps organizations prepare for uncontrollable events. Our IT professionals make strategic plans to store and backup data securely and eliminate risks.

Cloud-based BDR service

There is no way to analyze and predict the future. Due to the rise in cyber-attacks, hardware and software malfunction, natural disasters, and data breaches have become essential to back up and recover data to prevent downtime in your business. Gone are the days when companies used manual recovery methods. Now, BDR solutions provide fast, secure, monitored, and rapid data backup and recovery through a cloud-based architecture.

Protected Harbor guarantees you can access applications and data anywhere, even during a major disaster. Today’s businesses need to be always available. That’s why acquainted BDR solutions are not enough to meet their needs. We offer backup and disaster recovery solutions for all platforms.

Cybercrimes are more common these days. Our backup encryption can help you protect your data from malicious and ransomware attacks. Protected Harbor backup and disaster recovery services avoid the fear of ransom scenarios and data loss. Our application-level monitoring helps you prevent unauthorized software and applications from corrupting backups.

Cloud-based BDR solution provides data protection reliability, speed, and continuous uptime. Not all businesses have the exact requirements for saving and restoring corporate data. Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions provide scalable, flexible, and budget-friendly data protection services.

Data backup and recovery plan testing

Data recovery plans are designed to protect organizations against disasters, but sometimes it’s not enough. You can’t determine that a running process or disaster recovery plan will never fail after a disaster. Many incidents occur when organizations discover that nothing was backed up after and while data gets lost.

The purpose of disaster recovery testing is to find the flaws in your recovery plan. So you can solve the issue before any permanent damage. For managed service providers, it’s essential to provide disaster recovery testing.  Perform regular testing to ensure that your data recovery system is restoring data efficiently.

Protected Harbor performs disaster recovery testing by following compliance standards. We do regular testing because scarcely backup testing can put your organization at data failure risk during breaches and disasters. Putting off testing can prove devastating, especially if your company is going through a major disaster.

Protecting Your Data

Companies are increasingly relying on technology to manage their day-to-day operations. As a result, data loss prevention has become a top priority for businesses of all sizes. One effective way to ensure business continuity and protect against data loss is to use cloud backups.

Cloud backups provide a secure, reliable, and cost-effective way to store business data, and they can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. This makes them an ideal solution for businesses with remote or mobile workforces.

In addition to cloud backups, businesses should also consider using data recovery software or data recovery companies to help them recover lost data in case of a system failure or data corruption. These services can help businesses minimize downtime and return to normal operations quickly.

When choosing a cloud backup or data recovery service, it’s important to consider factors such as service level agreements, pricing models, and the level of support provided. For example, some services offer 24/7 support and guaranteed response times, while others may only offer support during regular business hours.

Another important consideration is the type of storage media used for backups. While SD cards and other physical storage devices can be useful for some applications, they are not always the most reliable or secure option. Cloud backups offer a more secure and scalable solution and can be easily integrated into existing IT infrastructure.

Final words

Off-site storage and backup processing are only part of disaster recovery planning. Organizations should also create written, comprehensive disaster recovery plans that encompass all of the company’s core activities and functions. The plan should include processes that have been recorded and tested and that, if implemented, will assure the continuous availability of vital resources and the continuity of operations.

We provide backup and disaster recovery services by simplifying the process and storing all your data in cloud storage and secure remote servers. Protected Harbor maintains your backup schedule and provides 24/7 monitoring and expert-level support. Avoid operational and financial impacts of data loss by having a strategic plan for data recovery.

Common mistakes organizations make while migrating to the cloud.

Cloud service providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure allow organizations to host their data effortlessly without a need for specialized hardware. Many small and large organizations are rapidly moving to the cloud from traditional hardware IT infrastructure. Cloud services provide the benefit of just paying for the resources you actually use, which save you from additional cost.

Cloud environments are generally reliable, scalable, and highly available, prompting both start-ups and enterprise-level businesses to take advantage of migrating to the cloud.

“The sun always shines above the clouds.” But what’s missing in this quote is that beneath the cloud, there are often torrential downpours, high winds, and lightning. The same is the case with cloud computing. However, cloud computing provides a lot of benefits, there are some pitfalls as well.

This guide has compiled organizations’ common mistakes while migrating to the cloud. Avoid these common mistakes to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud that showers your organization with benefits.

1. Migrating to the cloud without governance and a planning strategy

It’s simple to provision resources in the cloud, but there are unplanned policy, cost, and security problems that can be incurred. Here planning and governance are essential. A related mistake IT managers make is that they do not understand who within the organization is responsible for a specific cloud-related task, such as data backups, security, and business continuity.

Making a shift to a cloud platform with proper planning and governance can significantly level up your organization’s productivity and eliminate the infrastructure-related roadblocks. Moreover, you can get the highest return on investment with a cloud migration while starting with clearly defined business objectives, governance, and a planning strategy.

2. Migrating all data at once

You have assessed the cost and benefit, run tests to ensure your applications are correctly working, and are ready to shift to the cloud. You may want to migrate all of your data to the cloud at once to speed up the process, but it can cost you more downtime in the long run.

When you migrate to the cloud, you are more likely to experience some issues. Therefore, if you shift all data at once and a problem occurs, you can lose your business-critical or sensitive data. To avoid this situation, execute your cloud migration in steps. Start with the test or non-essential data and then proceed with the critical data.

3. Not designing for failure

Being a pessimist can put you at risk while migrating to the cloud. As the traditional IT infrastructure, cloud servers are also prone to downtime. In this case, the best workaround is to design for failure. Amazon mentioned that “there is a need to design for failure in its cloud architecture best practices, and if you do so, nothing can defeat you.” Designing for failure includes setting up for safety to ensure that any outage that occurs results in minimal damage to the company.

I am designing a cloud infrastructure by keeping failure and downtime in mind, incorporating a fault-tolerant cloud-optimized architecture. The recovery strategies should be in-built into the design to ensure minimal damage and optimal output even when the cloud architecture faces downtime.

4. Neglecting security aspects

However, cloud service providers offer a security layer, but it is prone to security threats if the application has flaws. Any potential risk can cost you a lot if your IT infrastructure has flaws while migrating to the cloud. It is even more critical while dealing with sensitive data, such as healthcare or financial data.

The implications of attack in the case of financial data are severe. Potential security risks include account hijacking, data breaches, abuse of information, and unauthorized access. Data encryption and robust security testing are a must while migrating data to the cloud. Neglecting cloud security can put an organization to severe damage. It is always recommended to go through the Service Level Agreement (SLA) that you sign with the cloud provider.

5. Not controlling cost and prioritizing workloads

Once you see the power of cloud computing, it can stimulate enthusiasm for cloud-based projects. But if you start the process by defining use cases and understanding the cost modeling, it will help you keep track of cloud computing costs. Consider a common scenario_ when organizations use cloud services, they sometimes migrate large data sets or non-priority workloads to the cloud that might be better handled in another way.

As the data scales, the cloud cost exceeds it, and added expenses can obscure the financial benefit offered by the cloud. Having a robust understanding of what you want to achieve from a business point of view and developing a cost-based assessment will ensure that you get the cloud benefits.

6. Inadequate understanding of organization infrastructure and networks

It is essential for organizations to thoroughly understand their assets and workflow before migrating to the cloud. Organizations have inadequate knowledge of how their systems and data need to work together. As a result, they fail to create a complete map of their network and infrastructure and deliver failure.

Each cloud service provider offers unique attributes. Organizations can’t compare these providers when they do not fully understand what they need in a provider. Moreover, when organizations move their data to the cloud without proper understanding, it can cause breaks in their IT infrastructure that negatively impact consumers.

7. Not having an exit strategy

An exit strategy outlines meditations regarding extracting your applications from a cloud whenever required. Many organizations think an exit strategy is unnecessary as they don’t expect to get back from the cloud. However, it’s essential to have an exit strategy, even if you never use it. It also needs to be considered for changing service providers, not just bringing workloads back on-premises.

Conclusion

Organizations need to consider all mentioned aspects while migrating to the cloud. Taking these considerations into account before migration can help organizations reduce potential risks. Cloud migration is a complicated process that can benefit from professionals’ assistance. Help your organization avoid these mistakes by working with experienced partners.

Cloud migration is a complicated process, and disregarding any piece or feature can jeopardize the migration’s success. Protected Harbor guarantees 99.99 percent uptime with a remote tech team available 24×7, remote desktop, complete cybersecurity, and more. With the appropriate mix of business processes, technology, and people, you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits of cloud computing that so many businesses are currently reaping. Just make sure you’re aware of the pitfalls and typical blunders we’ve discussed that can sabotage your cloud migration. Contact us today to migrate to the cloud.

AWS VS Azure Serverless CRS/ Event Sourcing Architecture

For the past few years, serverless cloud computing has been the talk of the town, especially when it comes to resource efficiency and cost reduction. However, only cloud-optimized design patterns and architectures can make this achievable. The cloud is transforming how software is planned, produced, delivered, and used. It works by focusing on the development of small and independent businesses.
This article will examine the serverless CQRS and event sourcing architectures of Azure and AWS. Let’s get this party started.

CQRS and Event Sourcing Pattern

Command and Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) is a pattern that can be leveraged where high throughput is required. It provides different interfaces for reading data and operations that alter the data. CQRS addresses various problems. In conventional CRUD-based systems, conflicts can arise from a high volume of reading and writing to the same data store.

The event sourcing patterns are used with the CQRS to decouple read from write workloads and enhance scalability, performance, and security. Microservices replay events via the event store to compute the appropriate state. The event sourcing patterns work efficiently with the CQRS because data can be reproduced for a particular event, even if the query and command data stored have different schemas.

AWS Lambda VS Azure Functions

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service software executing code in response to a triggered event. It automatically manages all the computing resources for streaming regular operations without provisioning or managing servers. AWS lets you trigger Lambda for over 200 services and SaaS applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. It performs resource management, such as server and operating system maintenance, code and security patch deployment, automated scaling and power provisioning, code monitoring, and logging.

Key Functionalities

• Develop custom back-end services
• Automatically respond to code execution requests
• Run code without provisioning or managing infrastructure

Azure Function helps you accelerate and simplify serverless application development. You can develop applications more efficiently with a serverless compute, event-driven platform that helps resolve complex orchestration issues. Unlike AWS Lambda, Azure Functions provide multiple feature deployment options, including One Drive, KUdu Console, GitHub, Visual Studio, DropBox, and Zip,

Key functionalities

• Schedule event-driven tasks across services
• Scale operations based on customer demand
• Expose functions as HTTP API endpoints

AWS Dynamo DB VS Azure COSMO DB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database that provides predictable and fast performance with seamless scalability. It lets you offload the administrative burden of scaling and operating a distributed database without hardware provisioning, replication, setup and configuration, cluster scaling, or software patching. Moreover, it provides encryption at rest, eliminating the complexity and operational burden involved in protecting sensitive data.

Critical features of AWS DynamoDB include

• Automated Storage scaling
• Fully distributed architecture
• Provisioned throughput

Azure COSMO DB is a fully managed NoSQL database service for advanced application development. With CosmoDB, you can get guaranteed single-digit millisecond response times and availability, instant and automatic scalability, backend by SLAs, and open-source APIs for Cassandra and MongoDB. You can enjoy fast reads and writes with multi-region and turnkey data replication. Moreover, it provides real-time data insights with no-ETL analytics.

Key features include

• Fast, flexible application development
• The guaranteed speed at any scale
• Fully managed and cost-effective serverless database

AWS Cognito VS Azure B2C

Amazon Cognito gives authorization, authentication, and user management for your mobile and web applications. Users can directly sign in with a username and password or use a third party, such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Google accounts. The two main components of AWS Cognito are identity pools and user pools. Identity pools let you grant users access to other AWS services, and user pools are user directories providing sign-up and sign-in options for application users.

Features of Amazon Cognito include

• Built-in, customizable web UI
• User profiles and directory management
• OpenID Connect providers

Azure Active Directory B2C is an identity management service enabling custom control of how users can sign up, sign in, and manage profiles using Android, iOS, .Net, and single-page (SPA). You can provide your customers with the flexibility to use their preferred enterprise, social, or local account identities to access applications. Azure B2C is a customer identity access management (CIAM) service capable of supporting millions of users and authentications per day.

Features of Azure B2C include

• Strong authentication for customers leveraging their preferred identity providers
• Integration with databases and applications to capture sign-in
• Customization for each registration and sign-in experience.

AWS API Gateway VS Azure API Management

AWS API Gateway is a fully managed service making it easy for developers to create, deploy, monitor, maintain, and secure APIs at any scale. These APIs are the “front door” for applications to access business logic, functionality, or data from backend servers. Through API Gateway, users can create WebSocket and RESTful APIs enabling real-time two-way communication applications. Moreover, it supports serverless and containerized workloads and web applications.

Azure API Management is a way to create modern and consistent API gateways for back-end services. It helps organizations publish APIs to external and internal developers to unlock the potential of their benefits and data potential. Each API consists of one or more operations, and it can be added to products. Today’s innovative organizations are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Moreover, it lets organizations build applications faster and deliver prompt value to customers using the API-first approach.

Conclusion

If you want to exploit the full potential of serverless cloud computing, all non-functional requirements should be known before developing an application. Know your business requirements and choose the right cloud service provider with the correct services and features. This prior knowledge will help you find exemplary architecture and design patterns and combine them. Software developers and software architects should give more thought to the event sourcing architecture in the case of distributed systems.

Protected Harbor is the market’s underdog player that consistently exceeds consumer expectations. It has endured the test of time with its Datacenter and Managed IT services, and all clients have said: “beyond expectations.” It’s no surprise that businesses prefer to stay with us because we offer the best cloud services in the industry and the best IT support, safety, and security. This is the road to the top of the heap.

The Top Books Every CIO Needs

World Book Day is a celebration of reading held every year on April 23. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) organizes World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, every year to encourage reading, publishing, and copyright.

In honor of World Book Day, Protected Harbor is celebrating by highlighting some of the top books every CIO and business owner needs on their desk. These books will help you stay ahead of the curve with their invaluable insights and advice on entrepreneurship to innovation. These are the books we trust. Curated by the system engineers and data infrastructure staff here at Protected Harbor, these books will help your leadership build a culture of excellence and empower employees to deliver extraordinary customer experiences.

C Programming Language By B. Kernighan & D. Ritchie

Commonly known as K&R (after the author’s Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie)- Richard describes this book as his first “professional” programming book – it made a complex programming language easy to understand, and that approach of communicating he still uses today.

World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies by Ken Auletta (2001)

Richard says it was the first major battle with “big tech” before such a term existed. That book taught him the power of data and the internet revolution.

– Richard Luna, Protected Harbor Founder & CEO

In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters

Jeff says this is an engaging assessment of the business situation in the United States in the early 1980s. Overall, he is struck by anti-merger theories that promote simplicity, smallness, and simple shape. This is a classic business book.

– Jeff Futterman, Chief Operating Officer

The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

This book shows the importance of market disruption, and Nick was stunned. It explains how large, successful companies can collapse “by doing everything properly.”

– Nick Solimando, Director of Technology

Windows Server 2019 Automation with Powershell Cookbook

It’s a must-read for beginners-intermediate experienced, according to Justin. Working with these cutting-edge technologies demands knowledge of PowerShell, making it an excellent resource for System Administrators.

– Justin Luna, Senior Systems Engineer

The Cybersecurity Playbook –  by Allison Cerra

The Cybersecurity Playbook: How Every Leader and Employee Can Contribute to a Culture of Security is a wonderful book, according to Fasif. It covers all of the cybersecurity threats the sector is experiencing today and how to prepare. It is easily one of the most outstanding books on practical cybersecurity issues with root cause analysis, and it discusses strategies for preparing. I recommend it from cover to cover.

– Fasif VP, Technical Lead

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity by Alessandro Parisi

This book is highly recommended by Akhilesh, who has a great interest in AI and cybersecurity. It presents and shows popular and successful AI methodologies and models. You’ll learn about the role of machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning in cybersecurity.

– Akhilesh Sharma, Manager

Steve Jobs – By Walter Isaacson

This book is one of the most selling and recommended by thousands, including Sajir, who is inspired by Steve Jobs’ life and suggests this book to anyone looking for motivation and advice to focus on their work and achieve success.

– Sajir Ashraf, Manager

The average CIO spends more than 40 hours a week managing their team, constantly working on different projects, and juggling various tasks. When you consider all of the other responsibilities they also have, it’s no wonder they need an excellent book to help them unwind.

Here we recommend the best books every CIO needs on their desk. Whether you’re looking for a new book to add to your reading list or want to try something new, you’ll find a book recommendation for every reader on this list. From new releases to old favorites, these are the best books to read on this #Worldbookday. Grab a book, Celebrate World Book Day 2022 with Protected Harbor.

Why is cloud cost optimization a business priority?

For businesses leveraging cloud technology, cost optimizations should be a priority. Cloud computing helps organizations boost flexibility, increase agility, improve performance, and provide ongoing cost optimization and scalability opportunities. Users of cloud service providers like Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure should understand the ways to cloud cost optimization. This article will discuss why cloud cost optimization should be a business priority.

What is cloud cost optimization?

Cloud cost optimization reduces the overall cloud expense by right-sizing computing services, identifying mismanaged resources, reserving capacity for high discounts, and eliminating waste. It provides ways to execute applications in the cloud, leveraging cloud services cost-efficiently and providing value to businesses at the lowest possible cost. Cost optimization should be a priority for every organization as it helps maximize business benefits by optimizing their cloud spending.

Here are some of the most common reasons cloud cost optimization is a business priority:

1. Rightsize the computing resources efficiently

AWS cloud support and many other cloud providers offer various instance types suited for different workloads. AWS offers savings plans and reserved instances, allowing users to pay upfront and thus reduce cost. Azure has reserved user discounts, and Google Cloud Platform provides committed user discounts. There are multiple cases where application managers and developers choose incorrect instance sizes and suboptimal instance families, leading to oversized instances. Make sure your company chooses the proper cloud storage that aligns well and is the right fit based on your business requirements.

2. Improves employee’s productivity and performance

When engineers or developers do not need to deal with many features to optimize, they can easily focus on their primary role. Implementing cloud cost optimization can free up the DevOps teams from constantly putting out fires, taking much of their time. Cloud optimization lets you spend most of the time and skills on the right task to mitigate risks and ensure that your services and applications perform well in the cloud.

3. Provides deep insights and visibility

A robust cloud cost optimization strategy affects the overall business performance by bringing more visibility. Cloud expenditures are structured and monitored efficiently to detect unused resources and scale the cost ratio for your business. Cloud cost optimization discovers the underutilized features, resources, and mismanaged tools. Deep insights and visibility reduce unnecessary cloud costs while optimizing cloud utilization. Cloud cost optimization does reduce not only price but also balances cost and performance.

4. Allocate budget efficiently

Cloud cost optimization eliminates the significant roadblocks, such as untagged costs, shared resources, etc. It gives a cohesive view and accurate information about business units, cost centers, products, and roles. It becomes easier for organizations to map their budget and resources accurately with complete financial information. It gives businesses the power to analyze billing data and the ability to charge back by managing resources efficiently.

5. Best practices implementation

Cloud cost optimization provides businesses to apply best practices, such as security, visibility, and accountability. A good cloud optimization process allows organizations to reduce resource wastage, identify risks, plan future strategies efficiently, reduce spending on the cloud, and forecast costs and resource requirements.

Final words

Cloud cost optimization is not a process that can happen overnight. However, it can be introduced and optimized over time. Cloud computing has a lot of potentials, but organizations should pay attention to cost optimization to take full advantage. It’s not a complicated task but requires a disciplined approach to establish good rightsizing habits and drive insights and action using analytics to lower cloud costs.

Enterprises can control expenses, implement good governance, and stay competitive by prioritizing Cloud cost optimization. Cloud costs must be viewed as more than just a cost to be managed. A good cloud cost strategy allows firms to better plan for the future and estimate cost and resource requirements.

Protected Harbor is one of the US’s top IT and cloud services providers. It partners with businesses and provides improved flexibility, productivity, scalability, and cost-control with uncompromised security. Our dedicated team of IT experts takes pride in delivering unique solutions for your satisfaction. We know the cloud is the future. We work with companies to get them there without the hassle; contact us today, move to the cloud.

Benefits and Challenges of the Zero Trust Security Model

The Cybersecurity threat landscape has evolved so rapidly that it has become difficult to trust anyone in your network infrastructure. Whom can you trust inside your IT infrastructure? In a Zero Trust paradigm, the answer is no one. This trust model is based on network access control. It means that access to a network or device should only be granted after users’ verification and to the extent required to perform a task.

This article will explore the benefits and risks of the zero-trust security model. Let’s get started.

What is Zero Trust Model?

Zero Trust is a security model granting access to only verified and authenticated users. It provides an ultra-safe defense against potential threats by the user, devices, and network access control. Unlike traditional security models, it does not assume that people within an organization are safe. Instead, it requires every user to be authorized before granting any access.

The zero-trust security model is generally based on a three-step process.

• Verify a user’s identity via authentication
• Implement device and network access control
• Limit privileged access.

This model promotes that organizations must not trust individuals/entities outside their network perimeters.

Zero Trust Use Cases

The Zero Trust model has increasingly been formalized as a response to secure digital transformation and a variety of complex, devastating threats seen in past years. Organizations can benefit from the Zero Trust security model.

You are required to secure an infrastructure deployment model, including

• Hybrid, multi-cloud multi-identity
• Legacy systems
• Unmanaged devices
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications

It is required to address critical threats use cases, including:

• Supply chain attacks_ generally involve privileged users working remotely and on unmanaged devices.
• Ransomware_ a two-part problem, including identity compromise and code execution.
• Insider Threats_ extremely challenging while users are working remotely.

Here are some considerations an organization have

• User experience impact considerations, especially while using multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• SOC/analyst expertise challenges.
• Industry or compliance requirements

Each organization has unique challenges because of its business, current security strategy, and digital transformation maturity. If appropriately implemented, zero trust can adjust to meet specific requirements and ensure a return on investment (ROI) on your security strategy.

Benefits of Zero Trust Security Model

Let’s outline the main benefits of the Zero Trust security model.

• This approach requires you to regulate and classify all network resources. It lets organizations visualize who accesses resources for which reasons and understand what measures need to be implemented to secure help.
• Implementing a Zero Trust security model is associated with deploying solutions for continuous monitoring and logging off user activity and asset states. It allows organizations to detect potential threats efficiently and respond to them promptly.
• This model helps expand security protection across multiple containerized and computing environments, independent of the underlying infrastructure.
• It prevents data breaches and has lateral movements using application micro-segmentation.
• A zero trust model ensures organizational security while providing a consistent user experience.

Common Technical Challenges

Here are the most common technical challenges faced by users/organizations while implementing a Zero Trust security model.

1. Network Trust and Malware

Organizations need to ensure that each device and user can safely connect to the internet regardless of the location, without the complexity associated with the legacy techniques. Moreover, they need to proactively detect, block, and reduce the targeted threats, such as phishing, malware, ransomware, advanced zero-day attacks, and DNS data exfiltration. The Zero Trust security model can improve your organization’s security posture while reducing the risk of cyberattacks.

2. IT Resources and Complexity

Security and enterprise access are complex and change continuously. Traditional enterprise technologies are complex, and making changes often take time to use valuable resources. A Zero Trust security model can reduce the time and architectural complexity.

3. Secure data and application access

Conventional access tools and technologies like VPN rely on trust principles resulting in compromised user credentials that lead to data breaches. Organizations need to reconsider their access model and technologies to ensure their business is secure while enabling fast and straightforward access for all users. The zero-trust security model reduces the complexity and risk while providing a consistent and efficient user experience.

Final words

In this article, we have discussed some of the benefits and challenges of the Zero Trust model. The benefits of implementing this framework go far beyond security. But there are still some risks and challenges associated with this approach. Changes in the threat landscape might encourage organizations to invest in a Zero Trust security model for network access control and identity management. These organizations should be aware of all the challenges and risks of this security model.

Zero trust can be provided as a service, as Protected Harbor proposes in its zero-trust network access technique. Before introducing zero trust, you can take a phased approach, starting with your most critical assets or a test case of non-critical assets. Whatever your starting point, a best-in-class zero-trust solution will help you reduce risk and manage security right away. Protected Harbor uses various features, like remote monitoring 24 hours a day, 99.99 percent uptime, malware protection, and more, to provide an unrivaled experience and satisfaction. To learn more about how we do it, go here.

A Complete Guide to Managed Cybersecurity Services

The cyber-world is changing faster than ever, and it leaves organizations, individuals, and small businesses vulnerable to cybercrimes. They need to adopt a comprehensive cybersecurity plan to protect themselves against risks and threats. Implementing and testing controls, and regularly maintaining and monitoring the security management programs using reliable and trustworthy managed cybersecurity services can help mitigate risks and potential cyber-attacks.

Has your business ever dealt with malware, virus infection, or cyberattacks? Cyber attacks’ damage to companies ranges from unauthorized access through a relatively simple attack to a large-scale breach of critical data that can result in prolonged downtime. It damages your company’s reputation and the confidence of your investors and customers. Do not let a cyber incident destroy your organization. Managed services from a cybersecurity company can help you optimize your organization’s security posture.

Managed cybersecurity services are a crucial component of any organization’s cybersecurity strategy. This article will discuss managed cybersecurity services, why it is essential for organizations, and how an excellent cybersecurity company benefits you. So, let’s get started.

What are Managed Cybersecurity Services?

Third-party providers give managed cybersecurity services to administer an organization’s security processes. These small business cyber security services implement, monitor, maintain and enhance an enterprise’s cybersecurity posture. Managed cybersecurity service providers (MSSP) provide security services ranging from setting up infrastructure via security management or incident response. Some services providers specialize in specific areas, while others give complete outsourcing of an organization’s information security program.

As security threats and cyber incidents are becoming increasingly common, many businesses are partnering with managed cybersecurity service providers in addition to their existing small business cybersecurity programs. They provide expert monitoring and management, protecting data and hardware from potential cyber-attacks. MSSP manages and implements security programs for organizations. These include

• Managed firewalls
• Intrusion detection
• Blocking viruses and spam
• Implementing upgrades or system changes
• Setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• Security and compliance audits
• Security assessment and reporting
• System monitoring
• Penetration testing
• Security analytics

Moreover, a good cybersecurity company helps you monitor the security devices and systems in a workspace. Most MSSPs provide a wide range of cybersecurity small business services, such as

• Log monitoring and management
• Device management
• Vulnerability management
• Consultancy services

Managed cybersecurity service providers generally offer a whole suite of managed IT services. They typically provide cyber security to help organizations with their basic security needs.

Why are Managed Cybersecurity Services Necessary?

Organizations need to consider the importance of managed security services to protect themselves from cyber-attacks. MSSPs can be a valuable resource for companies that want to maximize their security but do not have the resources to manage an in-house cybersecurity team. These services provide strategies and designs to give a robust security posture.

MSSPs shield organizations against cyber threats and strengthen their cyber defense. They use a multilayered defense strategy to protect your organization from different angles. It means they do not only safeguard you from external threats, such as network intrusions or malware, but also security from the security breaches caused by employees accidentally or deliberately.

Opting for managed cybersecurity services provide

• Information security assessment_ Examine the maturity of your company’s information security programs, identify their weaknesses and gaps, and provide opportunities for improvement. Choose a good cybersecurity company and identify the risks to your business.
• Data governance_ These services help you handle a large volume of data and enhance your cybersecurity posture through efficient data management.
• Advanced security solutions_ These include anti-malware software, managed firewalls, web filtering, intrusion detection, multi-factor authentication, access management, and patch management.
• Dedicated security analysts_ MSSPs provide specialists who detect critical flaws in your IT infrastructure and recommend security measures to mitigate the risk of a security breach.
• Security information and event management (SIEM)_ tracks security-related incidents in your IT environment, such as suspicious downloads or failed logins. It then examines the incident and creates comprehensive security reports.
• Incident investigation and response_ If a security breach occurs, security experts immediately remediate the threat, assess the damage, and find the attack’s origin.
• Threat hunting_ Security experts proactively identify and isolate evasive threats for existing security solutions.
• Risk and compliance_ They align your GRC operations to business performance drivers using frameworks such as PCI/DSS, GDPR, NIST, NYDFS, ISO, and others with IT security service programs.
• Penetration testing and phishing_ Effective security comes with a clear understanding of your IT infrastructure’s critical flaws and vulnerabilities. Phishing assessment and penetration testing protect your organization against security threats.
• Security awareness training_ Educate your organization’s employees about your security posture’s strengths and weaknesses, and empower them against hackers. Good managed cybersecurity service providers ensure your employees stay ahead of cybercriminals.

Why is it Important to Choose an Excellent Cybersecurity Company?

A robust cybersecurity system is crucial for any organization in today’s digital landscape. Excellent cybersecurity for small business companies can help protect sensitive information and assets from potential cyber threats, prevent data breaches and cyber-attacks, maintain privacy and comply with regulations, minimize business downtime and financial losses, and enhance the organization’s overall security posture, reducing the risk of cyber incidents. In short, it helps to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical information and systems.

There is a wide range of managed cybersecurity service providers today. Identifying your organization’s security needs and engaging a good cybersecurity company to address them is essential. Before partnering with a provider dealing with cybersecurity for small business, security and IT teams need to plan carefully around which operations need to be outsourced. Once you have mapped out your requirements, it is necessary to research the best service providers and shortlist a few of them. Meet them and check customer feedback before hiring them. Because a good cybersecurity company is one that

• Optimize controls
• Improve governance
• Reduce the TCO of the risk
• Optimize security posture
• Strengthen security processes
• Reduce legal risks
• Increase profitability
• Provides scalability

Why Choose Protected Harbor for Managed Cybersecurity Services?

Protected Harbor provides managed cybersecurity services and cyber resilience regardless of the size of your organization. Our cybersecurity services provide organizations with the most effective tools, solutions, services, processes, policies, and practices to protect their intellectual properties, security posture, and financial assets. We provide cybersecurity assessments that help you understand your security posture, detect vulnerabilities in them, and set the baseline for improvement.

Moreover, our managed services include multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, next-generation firewall, device encryption, and email security. We provide a robust solution to defend against cyber-attacks and let you drastically reduce implementation efforts, cost, and maintenance requirements. With our team of highly skilled experts, we allow our clients to build cyber resilience, innovate safely, and grow with confidence. Contact us today for an IT audit.

Why Every CEO Should Understand the Basics of Cybersecurity

With the growing advancement in technology, their risks are also increasing. Online frauds, money laundering, and data leaks are becoming significant problems in the digital world and online businesses. Cybersecurity is becoming critical for smaller and larger corporations alike. Security threats and cyberattacks negatively impact businesses, and according to cybersecurity statistics, the majority of the CEOs are not taking appropriate actions against cybersecurity issues and risks associated with them. Security breaches and data loss cause damage to a company’s reputation and can increase the risk of cyberattacks.

It has become crucial for business owners to take steps to secure their organizations. No matter which industry, every CEO should know these five things about cybersecurity and its threats:

Cyber Risk Management

In the advanced world, every company relies on technology, which means there are more chances of cyberattacks.  For CEOs, it is necessary to know all the risks and damage that cybercriminals can cause to their business. It would be wrong to say that the larger companies are entirely safe from cyber-attacks and smaller companies are not the target value for anyone. According to cybersecurity statistics, hackers have attacked half of the small businesses in the United States in the last 12 months. So CEOs should take precautions to improve cyber risk management depending on the nature of their business.  They need to come up with appropriate contingency plans and correct preventive measures to protect their company from potential threats from cybercriminals.

Implement Data protection and System Protection in a Better Way

For a CEO, it’s his responsibility to keep in touch with the data and IT team to understand better what’s going on in the company and how. It’s unnecessary to have all the technical details, but one should be aware of the type of data they store, where and how it is stored, and at which level the data is encapsulated and secure.

There is a need to protect the system from malware to secure the data. Keep your IT team always prepared to take measures against cyber-attacks and update the systems whenever required because a security threat can enter your plan anytime.

Aware your Employees of Cybersecurity

Train your employees about security threats and breaches, and then put them in a situation and see how they respond to these kinds of attacks. CEOs should train them to keep the company’s information private. According to cybersecurity statistics, 60% of data breaches occur due to former or current employees. For data safety, try to limit employees’ access to it and secure the information. It’s also recommended to change passwords regularly and make separate accounts for each employee.

Avoid Reputational Damage

Cybersecurity threats are becoming significant challenges for CEO and business owners. Cybercriminals are attacking corporations in a sophisticated way, but data loss and breaches cause a tremendous impact on a company’s reputation. Security threats and cybercrime are increasing so fast that it is not only the responsibility of the IT team to handle such incidents, but these are the leaders who should understand the risk and be with the team to plan a quick and effective recovery from cyber-attacks.

Stay in touch with the cybersecurity issues.

Lastly, a CEO must be aware of the latest issues related to cybersecurity because hackers are constantly discovering new ways to attack the systems and get control over them. So the business owner should stay up-to-date on what’s going on in the cyber world.  They should take recommendations from the professionals or hire an expert in the cybersecurity domain for their organization. CEOs should form a strategy with experts and IT Teams according to the latest trends and plan to stand against cybercriminals.

Summary

In Today’s world, most of the business is done online, and the cybersecurity threat has become an issue that needs to be sorted out. Most CEOs are not aware of the cybersecurity threats and risks their company faces every day, and many are aware of them but do not take action or do what needs to be done. Although there’s not any single and optimized solution for this problem, these are some steps that CEOs need to follow and ensure that their organizations are fully prepared to deal with such threats and challenges.

It’s challenging for small to medium-sized companies to build their own IT infrastructure and have a dedicated IT team focusing on cybersecurity. What business can partner with an IT service provider who will manage your infrastructure for you, which will also save you costs. Protected Harbor is among the top IT and cybersecurity providers in the US. We guarantee customer satisfaction with a dedicated tech team that is available 24×7, 99.99% uptime, remote monitoring, remote desktops, and modern cybersecurity solutions. We’ve been helping several CEOs in their day-to-day operations because we understand their business and what they want. Take control of your future, be cyber secured, contact us today!