How Do I Know If My Company’s Cybersecurity Measures Are Enough?

By: Mira Aslanova on February 28, 2025

How Do I Know If My Company’s Cybersecurity Measures Are Enough?

Cybersecurity | Business Continuity | Disaster Recovery | Compliance

Small and medium-sized business owners today have a lot on their plates, not the least of which is ensuring the ongoing health and safety of their IT environment.

As a business owner, you’re probably well aware of some of the recent headline-grabbing cyber incidents that have rattled businesses across industries.

But the truth is, there are millions of cyber incidents every year that not only don’t grab media attention, but also don’t get reported.

In fact, according to reports, an estimated 40 to 50 percent of cyberattacks against SMBs go unreported. This is largely because they don’t know what to do following an incident, or they have fears of reputational damage and financial loss.

With that said, how do you know if the cybersecurity controls you’ve implemented for your business are sufficient to prevent or mitigate damage from a cyber attack such as a data breach or malware attack?

In this article, we’ll explore 10 strategies for evaluating your existing security posture and cyber hygiene to figure out if you’re doing enough to safeguard your critical data and IT infrastructure.

With this information, you’ll be able to implement the right security solutions your business needs to mitigate risk.

10 Steps To Follow To Check Your Business’ Cyber Health

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of your business' security measures, you need to first identify the primary internal and external stakeholders who will be responsible for overseeing the health check and addressing any security risks that are found.

Organizing your organization’s security team is also important for meeting cybersecurity compliance requirements. Having a designated point person is often a regulatory requirement for incident reporting.

Ways to determine your security strength:

1. Perform regular risk assessments

Cybersecurity risk assessments are a comprehensive look into your infrastructure, including your devices, systems, applications, personnel, policies, and protocol.
Are you in a high-risk industry such as government defense, financial services, or healthcare? Knowing the inherent risks within your business and industry can help you develop an effective cybersecurity plan.

2. Conduct a gap analysis

Your gap analysis will examine your existing security measures and weigh them against a set of metrics that serve as the standard.
For instance, if there are specific cybersecurity regulations you need to satisfy, then your metrics can be based on those security frameworks.

3. Identify vulnerabilities

Performing vulnerability scans each year will allow you to identify security weaknesses that malicious actors might exploit.

Once your internal IT professionals or managed service provider (MSP) reviews your vulscan results, you can correct any identified deficiencies.

4. Review your access controls

Establish access controls to restrict access to only authorized users. You might consider adopting a zero trust architecture, which are stringent security controls that follows the mantra, “never trust, always verify.”
The principle of zero trust requires users to verify their identities before gaining access, and then continually reverify to maintain access.
Examples of access control include strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, microsegmentation, and even physical security measures such as restricting your data center behind a locked door accessible only by authorized staff.

5. Provide employee security awareness training

Employee cybersecurity education is a cornerstone of cybersecurity best practices.
Human error is responsible for nearly 90 percent of cyberattacks, according to KnowBe4. So, regular employee training can serve as your organization’s front line of defense against internal or external cyber threats.

6. Develop and implement an incident response plan (IRP)

An incident response plan allows your business to react in an organized, coordinated way in the event of a cyber incident.
An IRP also helps you monitor and track security incidents.
Follow-up discussions with internal and external stakeholders allows you to evaluate your response after an incident. This will allow you to assess how well you did detecting the threat, as well as how long it took to you to respond to and remediate it.
If you’re using a managed IT service provider (MSP), your service level agreements (SLAs) will help your provider assess your incident response.

7. Ensure proper data backups

Effective data management includes creating proper data backups of critical data.
You can use automated tools to encrypt and automatically make copies of important data.
Your backups should be stored securely—such as using an external, network-attached storage device, cloud platform, or external hard drive—to ensure that you can access them after data loss resulting from natural disaster, system or device failure, or human error.

8. Update your technology

Assess your technology and software to ensure that they are up-to-date.
You can automate scheduled software and device updates and critical security patches.
A device management plan will allow you to identify which devices and software are nearly their end-of-life (EOL) dates, after which vendor support will no longer be available.

This way, you have a pre-established plan to replace outdated equipment so that you don’t create a backdoor way for hackers to infiltrate your systems.

9. Conduct penetration testing

Penetration testing involves members of your in-house IT professionals or MSP intentionally trying to penetrate your IT systems through controlled testing that replicates a cyberattack.
These simulated cyberattacks help identify hidden vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors.

10. Develop a business continuity and disaster recovery plan

This plan can help you recover quickly from any kind of emergency, be it a natural disaster, accidental data loss, equipment failure, or cyberattack.
On its face, a BCDR plan may not seem like it’s directly tied to network security since it occurs after an incident has already happened.
While this may be true, it’s also widely recognized that a BCDR plan gives businesses a ready blueprint to follow after a disaster to mitigate potential damage.
A business continuity and disaster recovery plan allows you to continue your core business functions during a disruption, minimize downtime, and recover quickly.

The Bottom Line With Determining If Your Cybersecurity Measures Are Sufficient

As we’ve shown in this article, there are a number of effective ways you can check the strength of your cybersecurity defenses.

Of course, if you’re experiencing repeated cyber incidents or data breaches, that’s a big clue that hidden vulnerabilities and security gaps exist within your IT environment.

Taking a close look at your infrastructure will shed a critical light on potential hidden or overlooked security weaknesses.

Click the button below to get your free cybersecurity checklist to see how prepared your business is to deal with ever-evolving cyber threats.

In today’s volatile cybersecurity landscape, it’s important to try to stay ahead of lurking threats by adopting strong security measures.

Do you have the internal IT personnel with the knowledge and skill to accurately assess your IT environment and implement the right security controls to keep your infrastructure safe?

If not, you may be considering turning to external managed IT support.

As a respected MSP, Kelser Corporation has helped hundreds of customers examine their IT infrastructures for vulnerabilities and implement advanced, proactive security measures.

We know that managed IT isn’t the right solution for everyone. If, however, you’re in need of a trusted partner who can help protect your business and provide strategic IT planning, we’re here to help.

Let us know what cybersecurity concerns or other IT issues you have by clicking the button to start a conversation so that we can see how we can help you solve these challenges.