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Top 3 Low-Cost Strategies to Reduce Cybersecurity Risks Significantly You may be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in cybersecurity products, but if you are not doing the following 4 things, then you may be still at significant risk. More importantly, these services and products does not cost you a lot.   Employee Security Training:  Why Employee Security Training?  (82% of breaches involves human element)  Human error is one of the leading causes of cybersecurity breaches. According to research, 82% of data breaches involve a human element. It could be someone clicking on a malicious link, inserting a USB with malicious software on it or a social engineering using LinkedIn or Facebook. By educating employees on cybersecurity best practices and potential threats, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of incidents caused by genuine mistakes or lack of awareness.  How do to it effectively?  Employee security training should not be considered as a just a check box after you subscribe to one of the readily available solutions in the market. It needs to be ongoing and comprehensive. Read our comprehensive guide on how to run an effective employee security training here.  How much does it cost?  For a company with around 50 employees, the cost is around $2000-$3000 annually for the subscription. A comprehensive approach involves a little bit of planning and may take a few hours of your employees every month.  Installing anti-malware on all your devices?  Why is anti-malware Important?  Imagine an employee clicks on a malicious link and downloaded a file that contains the malware. Your first line of defense is a good anti-malware running on the device. This prevents any further damage from propagating through your network.    How do to it effectively?  Create an onboarding process that will ensure that all new or repurposed devices will have anti-malware applications installed on it before it is handed off to employee. Ensure that your device management system that validates that all systems have anti-malware installed on it.    How much does it cost?  Anti-malware solutions can cost between $3.00 to $7.00 per user/month, depending on the various features that you chose to add.   Continuous Vulnerability Management  Why Continuous Vulnerability Management?  You gave your employees the right level of training, you had a good anti-malware running on every devices. However, new exploits created by hackers can get past these barriers until it is widely known. Malicious players always find new ways to break through these barriers. If they manage the install a malicious code on one of the employee devices, it uses known vulnerabilities to navigate through the system. If you have unpatched devices in your system, it makes it easier for the bad actors to propagate through the system. It’s not just servers that needs to be patched. There can be IoT devices, cameras, sensors, UPS and other such devices on the network. All these devices when unpatched, poses risk.    How do to it effectively?  Until recently, organizations ran periodic vulnerability scanning by themselves or bringing in an external party. But with the explosion of devices in the environment, it is better to have a continuous vulnerability monitoring system in place. These systems scans your entire environment for any known vulnerabilities and giving you daily reports. A good patching process needs to be in place for the tool to be effective.   How much does it cost?  Continuous vulnerability scanning can only cost about $0.80 cents per device per month. If you have 100 devices in your environment, your annual cost is less than $1000. 

Discover how Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is transforming network security for hybrid workforces, enhancing data protection, connectivity, and agility for remote and in-office teams alike. Explore key benefits and insights in this essential guide.

Guide to SASE Vendors 2024  In an era where digital transformation is driving businesses to adopt more cloud-based applications, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has emerged as a critical technology framework. It combines networking and security into a unified, cloud-delivered service. SASE solves challenges such as securing remote workforces, managing data protection in cloud environments, and ensuring optimized network performance across multiple locations.  While the adoption of SASE by enterprises is well-documented, mid-sized businesses—often grappling with limited IT budgets and a lack of internal expertise—are increasingly finding value in this model. This guide aims to help mid-sized organizations across industries select the right SASE vendor for their specific needs, balancing security, cost-efficiency, and network performance.  As you navigate the SASE vendor landscape, it’s important to understand that each category of vendor offers unique benefits and trade-offs. This guide categorizes vendors into four distinct groups—traditional appliance-based vendors, cloud-native security vendors, ground-up SASE vendors, and hybrid SASE vendors—and explores which might be the best fit for mid-sized businesses.  Traditional Appliance-Based Vendors   Overview  Traditional appliance-based vendors, such as Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks, have long dominated the networking space. As SASE continues to evolve, these vendors are transforming their hardware-driven solutions into more integrated, cloud-compatible services. They achieve this by incorporating features like SD-WAN, cloud security, and advanced threat detection.  Technology & Architecture  Appliance-based vendors typically operate by adapting their existing infrastructure to meet the demands of the SASE framework. For example, Cisco’s SD-WAN platform integrates Umbrella security services, offering an efficient hybrid model for businesses already heavily invested in Cisco’s network infrastructure.  From a technical standpoint, traditional appliance-based SASE solutions usually involve a combination of on-premise hardware, such as firewalls and routers, with cloud-managed services. This hybrid model appeals to businesses that still maintain on-premise data centers but want to extend security to their cloud infrastructure.  Case Study: Financial Services Firm  A mid-sized financial services firm, with a long history of using Cisco’s network infrastructure, began shifting to the cloud to accommodate remote workforces and SaaS applications. However, the company faced security risks, especially around the use of VPNs for remote access. By deploying Cisco’s Umbrella security suite integrated with SD-WAN, the firm not only extended secure access to all cloud apps but also achieved greater visibility over their network traffic.  Advantages  Seamless integration with existing networks: If your business already uses solutions from Cisco or Fortinet, adding SASE functionality can be more seamless and require fewer drastic changes.  Legacy networking expertise: Vendors like Palo Alto and Fortinet have decades of experience in network management, providing reliable and tested solutions for organizations with robust networking needs.  Comprehensive security suites: Traditional appliance vendors have extensive security capabilities, from Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) to Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), that have been expanded into SASE offerings.  Challenges  High cost: Implementing traditional appliance-based solutions can be expensive, particularly when considering hardware maintenance and licensing fees.  Complex management: For businesses looking for simplicity, managing a hybrid of on-premise and cloud services might require a dedicated IT team.  Delayed agility: Traditional vendors may struggle to provide the same level of agility in updates, compared to cloud-native competitors.    Cloud-Native Security Vendors  Overview  Cloud-native vendors like Zscaler and Netskope were born in the cloud and designed to provide security as a service (SaaS). Their solutions are entirely cloud-delivered, offering scalability, flexibility, and ease of deployment for businesses of all sizes. These vendors focus on the security aspects of SASE, offering a broad array of services like secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (CASB), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).  Technology & Architecture  Cloud-native vendors operate without any dependency on hardware. Their platforms deliver secure connections directly through the cloud, leveraging global points of presence (PoPs) for optimized traffic routing and security. Zscaler, for instance, operates a globally distributed platform that ensures low-latency access to SaaS applications, providing enhanced performance and security for remote workers.  ZTNA, which replaces the need for traditional VPNs, allows businesses to enforce identity-based access controls, ensuring users only access the applications they are authorized for. The cloud-native approach to SASE also means that businesses can scale up or down rapidly, which is especially useful for growing mid-sized businesses.    Case Study: E-Commerce Business  A growing e-commerce company with offices spread across multiple countries found its existing VPN solution was inefficient and slow, hampering remote employee productivity. By adopting Zscaler’s ZTNA solution, the company eliminated the need for legacy VPNs and established direct, secure access to cloud-hosted applications. This resulted in a 30% increase in productivity and significant cost savings on network infrastructure.  Advantages  Faster deployment: Cloud-native vendors can deploy solutions quickly without the need for hardware, making them ideal for fast-growing businesses.  Cost-effective: Businesses save on capital expenditure since there is no need for physical hardware; you pay only for the services you use.  Global scalability: Cloud-native platforms offer a global network of PoPs that ensure low-latency, high-performance connectivity for users regardless of location.  Challenges  Vendor lock-in: Once an organization adopts a cloud-native vendor’s ecosystem, it can be challenging to switch due to the integration of various services.  Limited networking expertise: Cloud-native vendors may lack the depth of networking expertise compared to appliance-based vendors, focusing more on security aspects.    Ground-Up SASE Vendors  Overview  Ground-up SASE vendors like Cato Networks have designed their entire platform from scratch with the SASE framework in mind. This category represents the most holistic approach to SASE, where both networking and security are integrated into a single, cloud-native platform. These vendors have no legacy networking or security infrastructure to integrate, allowing them to build a fully cohesive service.  Technology & Architecture  Ground-up vendors have a distinct advantage over traditional and cloud-native vendors because they offer a tightly integrated solution that combines SD-WAN, ZTNA, FWaaS (Firewall-as-a-Service), and cloud access security in a unified platform. Cato Networks, for example, delivers all network security and optimization services from its global private backbone, bypassing the public internet for more reliable, low-latency connections.  With this approach, businesses do not need to juggle

Ever taken a cheap auto insurance and got a really bad service when you got into an accident? The value of a good insurance company will only be reflected when you have to file a claim. Until then, it will look like money down the drain. Your back up is somewhat like that. As long as you are not required to do a recovery, your cheapest back up service will look as good as the most expensive one. The real deal is when you have to recover something important, especially situations like ransomware. Here is a real customer horror story. Customer was a prime target for ransomware because the employees are mostly non-technical who will easily click on any phishing e-mail. Customer already was target of spear phishing and had lost money in the past. Customer was proposed a backup solution that included on-premises as well as cloud backup.  But a cost driven decision drove the customer to opt for a cloud only backup solution. One bad morning customer got hit with ransomware. Bad players encrypted 4 TB of shared folder which was critical for customer operation. Not a single employee could function without the file share. We had multiple good backups to download from. However, the time it took to download 4 TB of data was outrageous. The download speed of the back provider was so slow that it took 32 hours to download 4TB. To make things worse,  download failed during first attempt after 26 hours and was required to download again taking another 32 hours. All this was done while negotiating with the bad folks, parallelly trying to decrypt the files and isolating all other devices in the network. Finally, all the systems were restored, and business was back to normal. But in the process, customer lost 2 full weeks of productivity, between isolating, triaging, recovering, validating and bring everything back online. With 110 employees, two weeks of lost productivity turned out to be more than $200,000 in cost to the customer in addition to $22,000 to recovery services. Backup is like your insurance policy. Make sure you get one that covers you when you are really in need of it.

Let’s dive into how penetration testing plays a vital role in beefing up security in hospitals.

These vital institutions now face an onslaught of digital dangers, from ransomware to data breaches

In an increasingly digitized world, healthcare institutions face a daunting challenge

Healthcare organizations are rapidly adopting cloud computing

In an era where digital threats loom at every corner,