Advanced Security Offerings

publish date: February 8, 2021

For the last several years, you have heard us talk about the importance of security. It is our opinion that the importance of security will not wane in 2021 and will more than likely continue to accelerate. For the purposes of this article, we are going to divide security into two main categories: essential and enhanced. With security news being prevalent and top of mind the last few years, we believe more businesses are now operating in the essential security tier. They are keeping their hardware current and operating systems/software up to date and patched. They understand the importance of a good backup and keeping both a physical copy and also a copy in the cloud. They have upgraded their firewalls to new models, which adds a layer of threat detection. They know that their laptops and workstations need to be protected with antivirus software. They have policies in place that require frequent password changes and require some complexity. Here are some examples.
 

Essential Security Measures:

• Patching for servers
• Antivirus software
• Forced password change frequency and complexity requirements
• Current hardware that is under warranty and has support available from the vendor
• Current OS and software that is under warranty and has support available from the vendor
• Backup and disaster recovery
• Firewall
• VPN’s for remote work

 
However, if businesses are only doing the above, they are leaving their companies open to risk. Here are some examples of enhanced security measures that every business should be doing.
 

Enhanced Security Measures:

• MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication)
• Advanced Threat Protection add-on for Office 365
• Employee security awareness training
• Email encryption
• IT policies
• Password management software
• Patching for workstations
• Quarterly vulnerability scanning
• Cyber insurance
• Limiting domain administrator access as well as the number of local administrators
• Penetration testing

 
If you look at your business and find yourself checking the boxes in the essential section, you are to be congratulated for keeping your eye on the ball and making sound investments around security. To really protect your business from a cyber-incident, you will want to start working through the list of enhanced security measures. Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone and Intellicom is here to help! We have solutions for everything on the list. To find out more, engage your Intellicom account manager at sales@intellicominc.com.