Fortify your cyber security with the Essential Eight
The Essential 8 cyber security strategies your business needs to stay safe and in control.
Cybercrime is on the rise.
To give your business the best chance of protection against common cyber threats, exploits and vulnerabilities, the Australian Cyber Security Centre strongly recommends a series of mitigation strategies and standards known as the Essential Eight.
The Essential Eight is a list of eight strategies for protecting against cyber attacks. It is designed to provide a simple, effective and prioritised approach to securing IT systems. These eight strategies cover the most important areas of cybersecurity and are designed to protect against the most common types of attacks.
Implementing the Essential Eight makes it much harder for cybercriminals to compromise your data and systems while improving the overall security of your organisation's IT systems.
The Essential Eight comprises the following key mitigation strategies that can be tailored to your business’ cybersecurity posture and maturity level.
The essential eight strategies are designed to help protect your computer and online information from hacking and other cyber attacks by making it harder for attackers to gain access, covering vulnerabilities, and keeping track of any security incidents.
Administering application controls: By implementing these controls, malicious codes and unauthorised programs, installers and scripts are prevented from executing.
Patching vulnerable applications: Common applications such as Microsoft Office, PDF viewers, flash programs and web browsers may contain vulnerabilities that are found and exploited by cybercriminals to release malicious code and ransomware and must be found and updated regularly.
Managing macros settings: While macros can offer users powerful shortcuts to implement routine tasks, unvetted macros that are easily found on the internet can act as vehicles for malicious code and should be restricted.
User application hardening: To reduce vulnerability, administrators can block or disable users from activating artefacts that use Flash or Java, unauthorised web browsers, PDF viewers and unnecessary Microsoft features.
Restricting administrative privileges: Seasoned cybercriminals love to target administrator accounts to gain broad access to information, networks and systems. User roles, privileges and permissions should be reviewed regularly to prevent a serious exploit from occurring.
Patching operating systems: Vulnerabilities in operating systems are commonly exploited to further compromise systems and networks. Keeping operating systems updated and the timely removal of unsupported versions of programs are critical to reducing risk.
Implementing and strengthening multi-factor authentication: By enabling multiple levels of user authentication cybercriminals will find it much harder to gain access to sensitive data and systems and to authorise privileged actions.
Initiate daily backups: Implementing routine backups enables data, software and system configurations to be restored, minimising the disruption for businesses that have been subjected to an attack or ransomware incident.
Whether you are an SME or a multi-national enterprise, keeping up to date with the Essential Eight should be the baseline for every business.
IT Strategic are experts at keeping you up to date with the Essential Eight.
Our service includes:
An in-depth review of your current cybersecurity posture
Assessing and classifying your Essential 8 maturity level
Immediate patching and addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities
Developing and implementing an ongoing cybersecurity maintenance plan
Detailed reports, spot tests and regular checks of common vulnerabilities
Implementing powerful antivirus, endpoint detection and response security powered by real-time system monitoring and AI
Friendly, jargon-free advice and service.