National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Takeaways

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is coming to a close. Whether you have participated in the initiative or just read about it for the first time, please consider the importance of this government sponsored campaign. Over the last four weeks we have asked hard questions about cyber security. These included questions about your persona, and words you should avoid in defense of a cybersecurity breach. In the end, the point is to correct the mistakes we are making, and to educate those that are unaware of the problems around them. As a parting thought, please consider these top 19 (plus one) recommendations everyone should take away from this month (in no specific order). Doing these cybersecurity basics will help everyone just stay more secure:

1. Use standard user accounts and not administrative privileges for daily work
2. Never share passwords
3. Never reuse passwords
4. Never store passwords in clear text
5. Securely document and store passwords
6. Minimize the number of account aliases
7. Minimize the number administrative and root accounts
8. Rotate passwords frequently
9. Ensure passwords meet complexity requirements
10. Require multifactor authentication when appropriate
11. Implement application allow listing
12. Enforce the principle of least privilege
13. Automate password management
14. Eliminate hardcoded passwords
15. Deploy adaptive access controls
16. Monitor session activity to sensitive systems
17. Understand obligations for compliance
18. Monitor user behavior
19. Segment your network
20. If you are NOT having fun, you should get a different job (19+ plus one)

Finally, if you are wondering why these are so important and seem so random, stay tuned. We will have details on each of these coming in the beginning of 2018. They are not as random as you may think. ?

For more on how BeyondTrust can help improve the maturity of your privileged access management and vulnerability management programs, contact us today.

Be sure to check out our entire Cybersecurity Awareness Month blog series.