Strengthening Cybersecurity: Key Actions to Mitigate Evolving Threats

Boost Your Cybersecurity with These Essential Tips

Several hospitals and healthcare networks like Change Healthcare, a prescription processor owned by UnitedHealth, were hit by ransomware attacks of an unprecedented magnitude that disrupted the U.S. healthcare system for weeks, jeopardizing continuity of care and patient privacy. In June 2024, a threat actor had stolen a significant volume of customer data from multi-cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake. This compromise potentially impacted customers of 165+ organizations, including Ticketmaster (Live Nation), Santander, and AT&T. Both above incidents were attributed to a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA). Organizations continue to report an increase in highly convincing phishing emails, often aimed at stealing login credentials or deploying malware.

The effects of such attacks are enormous. Downtime caused by attacks can halt production, delay services, and damage reputations. Compromised customer and proprietary data erodes trust and can lead to ransom payments and regulatory penalties. Businesses often also face costs related to incident response, system recovery, and legal consequences.

What we advise.

The urgency to be proactive and adaptive with your cybersecurity measures cannot be overstated. AAFCPAs’ IT Security team recommends the following simple steps to enhance your security baseline:

• Enable MFA. Require Multi-Factor Authentication as a simple way to protect your organization and prevent a significant number of account compromise attacks. Passwords alone are not always effective at protecting your organization’s data.
• Zero trust architecture and system monitoring. Implement a security model that assumes no entity, internal or external, can be trusted without verification. Use continuous monitoring to detect unauthorized access and activity, for example, creation of administrative accounts may indicate a possible breach.
• Understand mobile communication best practices. Enforce a comprehensive mobile device management (MDM) policy, including strong passwords, regular updates, and remote wipe capabilities. Additionally, using encrypted communication apps and limiting access to sensitive data through role-based permissions helps mitigate risks.
• Internet of Things (IoT). Implement robust network segmentation, regularly updating firmware and enforcing strong access controls, including MFA. Additionally, monitoring IoT traffic for anomalies and using encryption for data transmission are critical steps to safeguard against vulnerabilities.
• Educate your people. Provide regular, engaging training sessions tailored to emerging threats and best practices, such as recognizing phishing attempts and securing sensitive data. Reinforcing awareness through simulated attacks, ongoing updates, and clear policies fosters a culture of vigilance and accountability.
• Know and manage your cyber vulnerabilities. Monitor cyber vulnerabilities by conducting regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing paired with continuous monitoring using advanced threat detection tools. Maintaining an updated inventory of assets and promptly addressing identified risks through patch management and security audits are also critical. Ensure all systems and applications are updated to patch known vulnerabilities.
• Incident response plans. Develop and regularly test plans to quickly identify, contain, and recover from attacks. These plans should be well documented and stored electronically and physically in locations known by the people identified in those documents as process owners.

Organizations must view cybersecurity not as a one-time investment but as a continuous, evolving effort. By fostering a culture of security awareness and leveraging advanced technologies, businesses may mitigate risks and build resilience against the ever-present threat of cyberattacks.

How we help.

AAFCPAs helps identify and assess potential risks within your organization’s technology infrastructure, ensuring robust security measures are implemented to safeguard against data breaches, cyberattacks, and other vulnerabilities. Our team also offers actionable recommendations to enhance IT governance and ensure compliance with industry standards, providing you with a stronger, more secure technological foundation.

If you have specific challenges, we are here to provide tailored insights and solutions. Please contact Vassilis Kontoglis, Partner, Analytics, Automation & IT Security at 774.512.4069 or vkontoglis@aafcpa.com—or your AAFCPAs Partner.