Essential Cybersecurity Measures for 2025

Deal with the Most Common Cybersecurity Threats: Strengthen Your Email Service

The most popular tactic cybercriminals employ is social engineering –   especially phishing. Over 90% of breaches originate when an unsuspecting employee clicks on a malicious link in an email. This can lead to more damaging attacks such as BEC (Business Email Compromise), employee impersonation, hacking of social media accounts, fraudulent transfer of money, data exfiltration, etc.

Email is still the primary method of communication for most businesses, making it the primary target of cybercriminals. While the attackers exploit other channels such as social media, messaging, fraudulent mobile apps, etc., email is their favorite choice.

The foremost protective measure that any IT security professional should take is to secure the email service as much as they can afford:

• Deploy the strictest spam filters.
• Implement the most restrictive permission profiles.
• Scan emails and attachments in the cloud before they reach the inbox.
• Take additional measures, such as removing all hyperlinks from incoming emails and replacing them with text.
• Encourage users to report potentially fraudulent emails.

By implementing these measures, we reduce the likelihood of users making mistakes.

Training & Awareness

In organizations struggling against cyber threats, the one battle that the IT teams lose most often is getting the end users to follow the cybersecurity guidelines and warnings.

If your employees or users lack a solid understanding of cybersecurity, your company’s security will never improve – no matter what technology and tools are in place. Even the fanciest “AI-powered” tools cannot compensate for careless user behavior.

Fighting against such highly motivated criminals without user support is like fighting with both hands tied behind the back. The first step is making it clear to the users that they are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

Organizations must implement an effective cybersecurity training & awareness program. Simply “educating” the users isn’t enough. In addition to periodic training sessions and evaluations, employees should receive brief targeted weekly updates on potential cybersecurity threats they may face in their routine work.

The cybersecurity team should also set up a direct communication channel where individual users can quickly and easily share their concerns and receive real-time responses from the IT team.

Further reading: How to Build Effective Cybersecurity Training Program

Protecting IT Resources

A typical mid-size organization has the following IT resources:

• Email service (e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace)
• LOB (Line-Of-Business) applications (e.g., accounting software, ERP, payroll processing software)
• Databases
• Files and folders (on-prem or cloud)
• Endpoints (mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops)
• Servers
• Networking equipment (switches, access points, etc.)

The IT team must ensure that:

• Access to all resources (application or device) is secured using strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
• The principle of least privilege is enforced for granting access to resources.
• Critical data always stays encrypted.
• The network perimeter stays protected with a properly configured next-gen firewall.
• Servers and computers are configured to detect and prevent unauthorized access and data exfiltration.

Protecting Against MFA Fatigue Attacks

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has become the cornerstone of cybersecurity. Consequently, attackers have started targeting MFA systems themselves.

What is an MFA Fatigue Attack?

An MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) fatigue attack is a cyberattack in which threat actors exploit the push-notification-based authentication systems by bombarding the targeted user with repeated MFA requests. The attacker continuously sends authentication prompts, hoping the user will approve one of these prompts, either out of frustration or by mistake, thereby granting unauthorized access.

How to Protect Against MFA Fatigue Attacks:

• Use MFA solutions that require number matching instead of simple approval prompts.
• Implement rate limits on MFA requests to prevent spam attacks.
  Protect high-risk accounts with stronger authentication mechanisms, such as hardware security keys.
• Educate employees to never approve unexpected MFA prompts and report excessive authentication requests as a potential attack.

Backup: The Last Line of Defense

The ransomware has made one thing clear – backups are no longer just a recovery tool; they are a crucial line of defense.

Ensuring the security of backups is just as important as securing primary data. Cybercriminals often target backups to prevent recovery, making it essential to implement air-gap backups and immutable backups:

Air-Gap Backups: Physically disconnected from the network, making them unreachable by cyber threats.

Immutable Backups: Once data is written, it cannot be altered, overwritten, or deleted during a designated retention period. This is achieved through storage-level technologies, such as object locking, which are available on many S3-compatible cloud storage platforms.

Final Thoughts

If you are a cybersecurity professional or IT administrator, you may find that much of what’s discussed in this blog post is not new. You’re right.

There is no groundbreaking revelation here – just fundamental security practices that are still crucial. The key is to ensure an effective combination of reliable tools and technologies, informed and vigilant users, and prompt adaptation to emerging threats.

The two of the most important security measures for 2025 are mitigating MFA fatigue attacks and keeping your backup safe.

Related

How to Build an Effective Cybersecurity Training Program

Zero Trust Architecture