Businesses in the Netherlands heavily rely on digital tools, like cloud storage, emails, computers, and customer’s databases etc. This convenience of IT tools comes with risks and security threats. The cyber security threats are getting complex and also increasing in numbers, small to medium sized businesses are becoming easy targets for hackers.
Safety of the businesses can’t be maintained with the latest security firewalls or antivirus. Your business can be more secure with the latest cyber security assessment, because cyber security assessment is helping to understand gaps, vulnerabilities, available security controls, defenses, and strength. Cyber security assessments make it sure that everyone in the company knows how they respond to cyber security threats.
This blog is going to explore a simple and practical cyber security assessment checklist and this checklist is specifically designed for cyber security improvement in Dutch businesses. This cyber security checklist is equally effective for startups, family businesses, and for established small businesses. This cyber security guideline will help you to take proactive steps for strong cyber security posture.
Why a Cyber Security Assessment Is Critical in the Netherlands
The companies in the Netherlands are working with advanced tech infrastructures and there is a strong global business presence of Dutch companies. They are early adopters of information technology tools, that’s why Dutch companies are attractive targets for hackers. Cyber security assessment is an attractive solution to protect Dutch companies from cyber-attacks. With cyber security assessment, the Dutch companies can:
● Identify vulnerabilities proactively to keep security one step ahead of hackers.
● Compliance with local and EU industry regulations.
● Reduce downtime costs and data breaches
● Protect partners and clients data to build trust.
Who Needs This Checklist?
This checklist is equally useful for all the businesses where cyber security is a priority. For example:
● This checklist is quite useful for business owners looking to strengthen cyber security
● The IT teams working and building cybersecurity roadmap in the company
● For preparing compliance audits this checklist is important for Managers
● Anyone in the company who is responsible for data protection and to improve the cyber security posture.
Security Tower Company is providing security assessment services in the Netherlands and this guide will give you a head start before experts start scanning, assessment, and training services.
Cyber Security Assessment Checklist for Dutch Businesses
1. Know what you’re protecting
Having an inventory of your necessary/used assets (both hardware and software) is very useful, but to be able to prioritize you need to know what business processes are important to the survival/continuity of your company, and what hardware/software and data assets are used for them. These assets should be secured per priority!
● List down all devices (laptops, phones, routers, servers, tabs etc.) working.
● Note down all the software and apps used for official tasks
● Identify cloud storage facilities and file-sharing tools being used in the company.
● List down customer data, partner’s data, and official records.
This step is very important for the cyber security aspect, if you don’t know what you have, then it is quite difficult to protect it. A basic asset scan can maintain the complete inventory in this first step. At Security Tower, we can perform basic asset scans to identify and maintain inventory.
2. Identify Your Most Valuable Data
It is very important to classify your data according to the sensitivity. For example:
● Identify what kind of customer data is being stored in your premises
● Pinpoint financial data and payment details and mark them sensitive
● Identify important internal documents
This step is important to identify the sensitive data and to improve protection. If you are not sure where to start, then consult with us. Security Tower is providing the services to isolate and identify the valuable data during the assessment and scanning process.
3. Assess Network and System Vulnerabilities
Identification of security gaps and vulnerabilities in digital assets is allowing to improve the security of the businesses. Work with cybersecurity assessment provider (like Security Tower ) to:
● Identify outdated software and unpatched software working in the company
● Detects insecure and open ports.
● Locate unused services working the systems
● Check your access controls and security policies
● Explore firewall and antivirus configurations to identify gaps
A regular vulnerability scanning is an effective way to identify potential threats before attackers can exploit them.
4. Evaluate User Access Controls
Access controls are very important to authorize employees to access certain assets of the company. Which employee can access which data? Many businesses make the mistake of giving admin-level access to too many employees, which can lead to serious security problems.
Checklist for access controls evaluation:
● Evaluate the permissions based on job roles allocated to the employees?
● Identify the unused accounts and are they removed promptly?
● What about multi-factor authentication (MFA), is it enabled or not?
● Financial accounting software should have strong role-based access controls on them, and not be available on every device.
Strict access control policies are a powerful solution to reduce your exposure to external access and this will ultimately reduce the cyber-attacks.
5. Check Backup and Recovery Plans
Do you have a plan to recover from a cyber attack? If a cyber-attack hits your business, then what is your plan to mitigate or recover from that attack? Ask yourself:
● Is there any backup configuration activated and backups are being performed automatically?
● Backup stored at a secure location?
● Backup stored at offsite location or cloud storage?
● Have you tested the data restoring process recently?
Without a secure and reliable backup policy, cyber security can’t be improved. That’s why it is strongly recommended to maintain regular data backup.
6. Review Your Cyber Security Policies
Cyber security policies must be written in easy-to-follow format. Write policies for:
● Strong Password and setup timeline to change or update the password
● Clear and strict policy for device usage and particularly for personal devices
● Remote work access to protect data from unauthorized access
● Reporting suspicious activity in business environment for proactive defense
These cyber security policies aren’t just for big corporations, because security policies are equally important. Even a small business with 5 employees can benefit from basic cyber security policy documentation.
7. Provide Security Awareness Training
Cyber security awareness training is very important to prepare employees as a frontline protection. But many businesses are not considering security awareness training as an important parameter against cyber threats. Secure awareness training can help to:
● Spot phishing emails and fake login access
● Use strong, unique time constraint passwords
● Understand safe browsing habits to avoid malicious attack
● Guide employees what to do if someone feels suspicious activities
Security Tower is offering security assessment scanning and employee training services. We help companies in the Netherlands to improve their security posture through training.
Final Thoughts
Without cybersecurity we can’t imagine the security of our digital assets. This checklist is a complete guide to deploy proactive cybersecurity measures.
If you are unable to implement this checklist in the company and need help getting started? Security Tower Company provides complete support with cyber security assessment, scanning, and security awareness training according to the requirements, size, industry, and goals of the business.
