Although cyber security systems are essential, they can only offer so much protection. Many of today’s businesses have networks operating on multiple platforms. While there are benefits to a heterogeneous environment, securing it can be challenging because of the added complexities, particularly during deployments.
Stay more secure whenever you deploy with the following best practices.
1. Enforce strong login policies
Deployment or not, it’s crucial to enforce strong login policies as part of an organization’s cyber security measures. It prevents unauthorized persons and bad actors from accessing and compromising networks and systems.
Require long passphrases or complex passwords with a combination of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols. Also, consider multi-factor authentication in high-security environments.
2. Manage data access
Not everyone in your organization requires the same level of access to data. Therefore, limit user privileges by granting access controls only where or as needed and set permission levels to prevent damage from potentially malicious users. Security policies may also include allowing or denying access based on user accounts or conditions like IP address, date, or whether a request was made in an encrypted session.
Also, restrict physical access to critical systems by securing rooms and disabling unauthorized hardware usage. A further step would be to prohibit users from deleting data, particularly mission-critical data, or to require multi-factor authentication.
3. Encrypt and backup
Encryption secures stored sensitive information, protects data in transit, and prevents unauthorized access to the environment from someone intercepting the transmission. Besides encrypting data, enable versioning and logging as well.
Versioning allows you to retrieve and restore backup data if something causes data to be lost during deployment. Moreover, maintaining logs leaves an audit trail you can refer to when something goes wrong.
4. Improve visibility across environments
Maintaining visibility across different environments can be a pain point for your IT teams with multi-platforms. While IT professionals are familiar with different systems, most are trained on specific systems only. As a result, chances are they may be unaware of certain security flaws and vulnerabilities, leaving you blindsided in some areas if you lack the necessary specialists.
Capture full visibility on all platforms during deployment by having solid cyber security systems that efficiently handle risk monitoring on different environments and systems.
5. Update & upgrade
Keeping applications, systems, and networks up-to-date with the latest patches and service packs is one of the most fundamental cyber security measures. Developers release updates regularly to address vulnerabilities and security flaws malicious actors can exploit.
In general, the newest versions of programs will be more secure than their older, frequently patched counterparts. By updating and upgrading, you reduce the risk of attacks when your system is at its most vulnerable.
6. Harden systems
Give your cyber security systems a leg up by hardening areas where possible. System hardening is the process of eliminating attacks by reducing vulnerable surfaces through patching and disabling non-essential services.
Limit access to critical system infrastructure, particularly during multi-platform deployments, by removing unnecessary programs, permissions, ports, user accounts, and other features. Taking this measure leaves threat actors with fewer opportunities to gain entry and exploit the system.
7. Check configurations
A heterogeneous environment is highly susceptible to misconfigurations in its security and privacy settings, leaving your networks and systems at risk, deployment or not.
You could hire IT personnel to manage the security settings. Protect them against potential threats by checking configurations frequently. As an alternative, consider automating the process of detecting misconfigurations, along with anomalous or suspicious data access behaviors.
Reduce the risk of deployments with Vulcan Cyber
Keep in mind that an organization’s security risk heightens further during deployments. So whether you’re deploying across multiple platforms or on a single one, prevent threat actors and attacks from compromising environments and systems with the above precautions and robust cyber security systems.
Work with Vulcan Cyber to manage cyber risk end-to-end, at scale, and across all attack surfaces. Sign up for a free trial today so you can start deploying without worries.
