There’s a good reason that cyber security is a primary concern of any organization these days. In just the last few weeks, many high-profile incidents have dominated the headlines, from the story about hackers leaking content from Disney’s employee Slack channels to the Ticketmaster breach that may have compromised more than 560 million people’s personal information, including phone numbers and credit card details.
Yet despite these prominent examples, it’s a misconception that only large corporations are at risk of cyber threats. In fact, nonprofits are equally, if not more, vulnerable. In its recent guidelines, the U.S Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has even classified these organizations as ‘high risk’ for cyberattacks, underscoring the need for comprehensive protection.
One of their main recommendations for mitigating potential threats was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of various aspects of your IT infrastructure and ecosystem to root out any weaknesses that could expose your data and other resources to unauthorized access.
To accomplish that, a cyber security audit will be a crucial tactic for enhancing your cyber security posture. Below, we explore this concept in depth, breaking down the basic steps for assessing your approach to proactively protect your data and ensure you can continue focusing on fulfilling your mission.
Understanding the threats to your cyber security
Social engineering tactics like phishing and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks are just a few of the common threats nonprofits could face in today’s business environment. Or your organization may follow in the footsteps of a several B.C. libraries that experienced a ransomware attack in recent months.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals often target nonprofits specifically because they know these organizations may have less robust security measures compared to large, well-resourced corporations and that they depend on using their data to support the community. Microsoft research even indicated that 17% of targeted state-sponsored cyberattacks in 2023 impacted non-governmental organizations, the second-highest targeted industry sector.
The cause of these attacks isn’t just the sophisticated methods hackers are constantly honing to breach your systems. Human error is also a concern, with ill-advised employee actions potentially opening you up to privacy violations, like in the case of a Calgary woman whose tax information was inadvertently shared with another resident after a government employee mishandled an internal process.
In response, nonprofits must implement industry best practices within their organization to protect their data and the trust of their stakeholders. However, that can be challenging when operating on limited funds, so choosing an IT provider may be critical, especially one who specializes in non-profit IT solutions. This will help you ensure you experience cost-effective cyber security and adequately tackle all of the necessary action items for keeping organizational assets safe,
What is a cyber security audit?
Before your organization can implement adequate protection measures to ensure data protection for nonprofits, you need to understand your IT ecosystem’s current cyber security posture so you can then determine your path to getting to where you need to be.
A cyber security audit is your tool in achieving this goal. This process involves using various technologies and proven methods to assess the effectiveness of your current security to ensure you comply with your internal standards and any industry regulations. Your internal team can conduct the audits. You can also work with a third-party organization that specializes in measuring your baseline and has a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity tactics needed to protect you against risk.
They may look at the security of your data architecture, network, physical devices, and software. The audit will also look at how closely your employees follow internal processes and procedures for handling your resources.
How to Conduct a Thorough Cyber security Audit
A properly executed cyber security audit is crucial for adequately identifying gaps in your protection. Otherwise, you may miss out on getting a complete picture of the effectiveness of your current measures. Then, you will continue operating without optimized IT that ensures you focus on your organization’s mission disruption-free.
Here are a few steps you can take and questions you can ask to accomplish a thorough cyber security audit. Depending on the answers and outcome, you will have a straightforward and comprehensive list of recommendations for improving your overall security. Remember, this is never a “one-and-done” process: you need to do this regularly to make sure you optimize your approach.
Look at your cyber security solutions
- Have you implemented industry-standard cyber security best practices, such as managed detection and response software, email filtering, ransomware protection, or dark web monitoring?
- Are your network’s access points properly covered by advanced monitoring systems?
- Have you installed anti-virus and antispyware solutions?
- Have you considered the physical security of your devices, including making sure they are safely stored in your office or remote employee’s homes?
Assess your ongoing maintenance activities
- Do you have an established schedule for consistent patch management and system updates?
- Is there an established process for doing regular perimeter security checkups
- Do you regularly test the functionality of your hardware, your backup processes, and other critical IT infrastructure elements?
- Have you established 24×7 continuous monitoring of all key network elements, including your server, workstations, and firewall?
Examine your data security practices
- Do you have strong access controls and appropriate permissions established for your end-users?
- Have you implemented mechanisms to protect your data while it’s in use or at rest in storage?
- Does your organization have robust processes for backing up data for disaster recovery purposes?
- Are you monitoring your traffic and activity, including your ingoing and outgoing email, instant messages, and the usage of your files and documents?
- Have you implemented all the available features offered by your cloud providers to secure the environment?
- Are you meeting the legal and regulatory requirements of the regulations that affect your industry?
Inspect your users
- Do you have any unused or unnecessary user accounts that can be leveraged by hackers to enter your system?
- Are your passwords strong and unique and do you have a process for regularly updating them?
- Have you examined the data that is currently externally shared with guest users, and can you reduce the sprawl to only necessary parties?
- Have your employees been recently trained on cyber security awareness to ensure they understand evolving threats?
- Do you have an established agreement with service providers and other members of your supply chain to make sure that they have also implemented secure best practices?
- Do you have a solid incident response plan that outlines the tasks you must execute in responding to and recovering from a cyber security incident?
Improve your nonprofit’s cyber security approach with Bulletproof IT
To safeguard your organization’s digital assets, you should proactively assess all of your systems and protocols to determine whether they are adequately achieving that goal. Thoroughly evaluating your vulnerabilities lets you highlight areas of improvement and stay ahead of any potential incidents.
Importantly, working with a qualified IT provider can help you get meaningful and actionable results from your cyber security audit. At Bulletproof IT, we specialize in implementing essential cyber security solutions and improving your processes to ensure your infrastructure performs optimally. Our managed IT services include leveraging our extensive knowledge to meticulously examine your technology and bring it up to part with industry recommendations.
Contact us today to address any issues in your cyber security posture that are holding your nonprofit back from solid data protection.