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Essential Eight
The Essential Eight: Proven Cybersecurity Strategies to Stay Secure
Adopt essential eight mitigation strategies with Exigo Tech to protect your organisation from cyber threats
Safeguard your Systems from Cyberattacks
Essential Eight offers a comprehensive, layered approach to reduce cybersecurity risks and prevent breaches
As cybercriminals are constantly coming up with the new ways to carry out a cyberattack, organisations that don’t implement advanced cybersecurity measures, leave themselves vulnerable to a variety of threats including ransomware to phishing attacks. Without strong cybersecurity defences, your systems can be compromised, leading to data breaches, operational disruptions, financial loss, and reputational damage.
The Essential Eight provides a proactive approach to tackle these challenges. The Essential Eight are a set of mitigation strategies developed by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to help organisations protect themselves against various cyber threats. It also helps in mitigating the impact of any potential breach. These mitigation strategies are designed to prevent cyberattacks, limit potential damage, and enable fast recovery. These strategies address key attack points and provide a framework for securing your IT infrastructure. From controlling application execution to patching critical vulnerabilities and backing up essential data, the Essential Eight offers a comprehensive approach that addresses key vulnerabilities.
At Exigo Tech, we specialise in helping organisations implement the Essential Eight by offering tailored cybersecurity solutions that align with your business needs. Adopting these strategies ensures that your organisation is protected from common security threats, while also helping to meet compliance requirements and mitigate risks efficiently. Additionally, implementing these strategies helps protect critical digital assets and ensure business continuity.
Eight Practical Strategies to Minimise Cybersecurity Risks
Essential Eight Maturity Model
The Essential Eight Maturity Model defines a clear, progressive implementation of key cybersecurity strategies. It strengthens your organisation’s defences, reduces vulnerabilities, and gives system resilience over time, ensuring both immediate protection and long-term security improvements.
- Patch Applications
- Patch Operating Systems
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Restrict Administrative Privileges
- Application Control
- Restrict Microsoft Office Macros
- User Application Hardening
- Regular Backups
Patch Applications
Many cyberattacks take advantage of vulnerabilities in outdated software applications. Regularly patching and updating your software closes these security gaps, ensuring attackers cannot exploit known vulnerabilities. The key to this strategy is maintaining a timely patch management process, prioritising critical patches that address high-risk vulnerabilities. By automating patch management where possible, organisations can ensure they are always protected against newly discovered exploits.
Patch Operating Systems
Operating system vulnerabilities are common entry points for attackers. Regular patching of operating systems is important in maintaining a secure environment. Patches typically address security flaws, bugs, and performance issues that could be exploited by attackers. Operating system updates should be tested and applied as soon as possible, especially those that fix critical security vulnerabilities. Automating the patching process can help ensure that no device is left exposed to known exploits, providing continuous protection across your entire network.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires users to provide two or more forms of verification to access systems, such as a password and a one-time code. This additional layer of security prevents unauthorised access, even if login credentials are stolen or compromised. Implementing MFA for all users, especially those with access to sensitive data, significantly reduces the risk of a cyberattack. MFA protects against common threats such as phishing and credential stuffing attacks, making it one of the most effective ways to secure user accounts.
Restrict Administrative Privileges
Administrative privileges allow deep access to critical systems, making them a key target for attackers. By limiting admin rights to only those who need them, you reduce the risk of unauthorised users gaining access to sensitive systems. Attackers often seek to escalate privileges after gaining initial access, so restricting administrative rights helps contain the damage in case of a breach. This strategy also includes regularly reviewing who has admin access and ensuring that admin accounts are rigorously controlled, monitored, and only used when absolutely necessary.
Application Control
Application control ensures that only authorised software can run on your systems, blocking malicious software or unauthorised applications. This includes blocking potentially harmful applications like malware and ransomware. By implementing application whitelisting, only trusted applications that have been approved can execute on your systems. This strategy significantly reduces the risk of introducing malicious software and enhances overall system control. Application control is especially effective against zero-day exploits, where unknown vulnerabilities are targeted, as it blocks any non-whitelisted programs from executing.
Restrict Microsoft Office Macros
Macros in Microsoft Office programs can be manipulated to deliver malware through Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents. Often embedded in phishing emails, malicious macros are one of the most common ways attackers use them. By configuring macro settings to disable or restrict their use, especially in files from the internet, you significantly reduce the risk of malware execution. Organisations should adopt a policy of blocking macros by default, only allowing trusted macros from secure locations to run. This limits an attacker’s ability to use macros as a gateway for executing malicious code.
User Application Hardening
User application hardening involves disabling features that are not required. Many attacks leverage these features or applications because they often contain unpatched vulnerabilities or are used in older, unsupported versions. Hardening these applications removes these potential weaknesses, closing off common attack vectors. This strategy also includes configuring settings to block access to malicious websites, disabling vulnerable system features, and ensuring that software is only running with the minimum required permissions.
Regular Backups
Daily backups of essential data ensure that your organisation can recover quickly in the event of a ransomware attack, data corruption, or hardware failure. Backups should be stored in a secure location to prevent them from being corrupted or encrypted by malware. A solid backup strategy involves making daily backups of all essential data, testing the integrity of those backups regularly, and maintaining multiple copies to ensure business continuity. In the event of a cyber incident, having reliable backups reduces downtime, limits data loss, and allows for swift recovery with minimal disruption to operations.
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