Most experts are expecting cyber attacks in 2022 to be more common—and more crippling—than ever. What will 2022 look like for you? With the year just getting under way and the National Cybersecurity Alliance’s Data Privacy Week upon us, there’s no better time to think about your company’s current cyber risk posture and where you want to progress to by year’s end.

At Trava, we’re fortunate to meet with a lot of different companies and see cyber security programs in all states of maturity. Some companies employ dedicated cyber security professionals while others try and manage cybersecurity with limited IT resources—or not at all. Some have a regular cadence of cyber risk assessments, with established policies and standards and a set of checkpoints, while others have not taken the first critical step of understanding where they are at risk.

Many small and medium-sized companies just aren’t there yet—whether because they have limited funds, a lack of knowledge, or a mistaken belief that cyber attack can’t happen to them. Those companies typically approach their cyber security with some combination of the following:

  • telling their employees to use an endpoint protection agent typically designed for antivirus
  • putting up a firewall to help protect against certain traffic
  • having a few “acceptable use” policies
  • implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their main systems

Unfortunately, selecting a few items off an a la carte menu is not a holistic approach to cybersecurity or risk management, and it could leave a company open to attack. A comprehensive cyber risk management approach blends people, processes, and tools for multilayered protection against cyber threats.

To get to a point where you can sleep better at night, ask yourself these three questions:

  1. Do you have the right processes in place to ensure security? Are they being followed? Documented? Improved?
  2. Do you regularly check your infrastructure both internally and externally to ensure you are not vulnerable?
  3. Do you make sure your people know proper security hygiene for operating in our interconnected world—even outside their work environment?

Gather information. Engage colleagues in the discussion (the “people” part of the equation is an important one). Then, decide how to prioritize which areas of vulnerability to shore up first—and whether to seek help from outside the company if you are unsure what your vulnerabilities are or how to choose which to start with.

You need expertise. But your next step does not have to be a new hire. Nor do you have to conduct assessments and make sense of feedback on your own. Trava’s cyber risk assessments include a full range of packages designed to make the complicated task of evaluation easier. Our vCISO (virtual Chief Information Security Officer) services connect you with a high-level professional who can advise on how to allocate your cyber risk management budget, prioritize the risks of greatest severity, apply for compliance certifications, among other services.

Begin the inquiry now. And this time next year, expect to look back and see that, while 2022 may have lived up to its hype regarding cybercrime, it was also the year that your company achieved an important milestone: Implementing a holistic approach to cyber risk management that is keeping it as safe as possible in dangerous times.