Cybercrime is on the rise and it’s becoming one of the most serious threats facing businesses in Australia. If your company becomes a victim of cybercrime, it can cost you anywhere between AU$39 000 to AU$88 000 on average to solve it. Not only that, but it can also hurt your reputation and lose your client’s trust — which is priceless!
That is why you need an IT company like Setup4 to help guide you through the Essential Eight Maturity Model. We can make sure that you have essential 8 compliance and prevent cybercrime from harming your business.
What is the Essential Eight Maturity Model?
The Australian Cyber Security Centre developed The Essential Eight Maturity Model to help companies assess their current security maturity level and develop a plan to move towards a more mature state.
It gives best practices that cover everything from basic policies and procedures to technical controls and incident response plans. It shows you how to identify vulnerabilities and threats, mitigate risks, detect attacks, respond to incidents, recover from failures, and improve overall cybersecurity.
The maturity level of your organisation is somewhere between Maturity Level 0 (highly vulnerable) to Maturity Level 4 (advanced protection). These levels are based on eight requirements that every organisation must address to protect itself from cyber threats. These include things like having multi-factor authentication, daily backups, restricted admin privileges and more.
Why Your Business Needs Essential 8 Compliance
Breaches in cyber security can cost your business days of operational downtime and thousands of dollars in ransom fees. It can expose confidential information about your clients or business which is something you could be held liable for. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are aware of this and can be tough negotiators.
The importance of essential 8 cannot be overstated. Implementing these eight measures has the ability to stop up to 85% of cyber threats. Working with an IT services provider such as Setup4 is vitally important in ensuring that your business has essential 8 compliance, especially if your business is in Melbourne or Sydney. Businesses in these cities are targets of disproportionately higher cyber crimes than other Australian cities.
Our team of qualified professionals will give you peace of mind knowing that your IT infrastructure is being monitored 24/7. We will identify and solve any problems before they have the chance to cause you any damage.
How to Implement the Essential 8
Without getting too technical, essential 8 compliance boils down to three things:
- Determining and assessing risks
- Implementing technical controls
- Establishing clear policies and procedures
You should start by learning about the different maturity levels and deciding which level you need for your business environment. This can be decided by doing a risk assessment. However, we recommend that all businesses aim for level 3. Level 4 is recommended for organisations in high-risk environments.
You will incrementally increase your cyber security measures, going from one maturity level to the next, until you reach the level you need. And since all eight mitigation strategies are complementary, you can only do this by upgrading the maturity level across all strategies before you can be promoted to the next level.
Sounds easy, right?
Well, don’t panic if it doesn’t. That’s why we’re here to help.
Setup4 can implement the changes you need to protect your business from cybercrime. We also provide a whole host of other IT services that you can outsource to us. If you’re in need of essential 8 compliance in Melbourne, then get in touch with our friendly team today.
