Over 54% of companies admit that they’ve experienced a cyberattack within the previous year of their operation. The importance of cybersecurity is not even in question anymore. As criminals keep coming up with new ways to attack sensitive company data, businesses need to stay one step ahead.
In an era of heightened data security concerns, leveraging process mining and anti-bot tools can fortify employee data protection. Both offer dynamic ways to protect sensitive data and strengthen your overall security efforts in the long run.
Let’s take a deep dive into the two processes and additional tips to create a formidable defense network for your business' data. Keep reading to know more.
1. Anti-bot tools — a robust shield against various threats
Anti-bot tools are software, solutions, or systems designed to detect suspicious bot activity and end it via restriction or elimination. These solutions prevent malicious bots from reaching your websites, data stores, and IT ecosystems.
Harmful bots can damage your business systems in a variety of ways:
They can scrape your website content to gather valuable information about your operations.
They can attack you with Malware, a serious threat that affects over 32% of computers around the world.
They can spam your website with comments that hamper the user experience and affect your credibility.
They can unleash DDoS attacks on your system to bring it down.
They can overtake your user, customer, and corporate account to steal valuable information.
Anti-bot tools offer defense against cyber threats, creating a robust shield for safeguarding sensitive employee information. Datadome’s article about the various types of bot detection tools highlights the insidious nature of malicious bots that makes them challenging to detect.
To combat this, anti-bot tools deploy a variety of techniques for comprehensive bot detection:
2. CAPTCHA tests
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CAPTCHA challenges are simple tasks that are easy for humans to do but difficult for bots because they require basic reasoning aptitude to complete. The tests can be recognizing distorted text or mixing jumbled-up images.
They may pose a bit of inconvenience for human users but will not be easily bypassed by bots. However, criminals have come up with many ways to bypass these challenges, rendering their use alone for what the taxon insignificant. They are best used with other forms of bot detection.
3. Behavior analysis
This is a diligent technique that analyzes user activity patterns to differentiate between human users and bot users.
Human users are likely to move their cursors in undefined, haphazard patterns and scroll the page slowly or quickly based on what catches their fancy on the page.
Bot users, on the other hand, will move their cursor in set patterns and will scroll the page in a way that suggests that nothing catches their fancy on the page.
Now, similar to CAPTCHA challenges, criminals work hard to mimic human patterns in their bot users i.e., being unpredictable in their activity. This is why you need a vast data pool to conduct behavior analysis for oat detection.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
AI and ML have emerged as revolutionary technologies to detect malicious bots. They do this by identifying abnormal behavior patterns, learning about them, and informing of the threat to other security protocols in no time.
They've proven to be excellent tools in staying ahead of fraudsters as they don't just work on historical data but also learn about new types of malicious bots that come up.
4. IP address monitoring
Another way to detect suspicious bot activity is to scan the IP address from which the traffic is coming to your website. Bot detection tools keep a database of IP addresses that are often linked with malicious internet activity.
They check the incoming traffic with their data basis to identify if the users are legitimate or not.
As you can see, none of the techniques are enough on their own when it comes to bot detection. They need to be deployed together in coordination with one another for the best results in safeguarding your employee data.
5. Process mining — a deep dive into data handling
Process mining refers to the analysis of operational processes to provide insights into data-handling workflows. The main objective of this process is to optimize work processes for maximum efficiency.
The insight provided by process mining can be effectively used for cyber threat prevention. Celonis’ software lays down the groundwork leveraging the power of process mining to uncover hidden patterns in your processes and use them to create more optimized versions of them.
When you bring transparency to your work processes, you'll be able to create a more formidable structure around them with no lapses that serve as a breeding ground for fraudulent activities. This becomes the basis for creating impenetrable security protocols.
What is more, you can use process mining to analyze potential cyber threats and prepare against them in advance, helping you stay one step ahead. Here are some of the most common ways companies use process mining for data protection:
- They evaluate data breaches to prevent fraudsters from reaching the data stores. It does so by mapping out both high and low-level operations and capturing the interaction between the two to protect commonly attacked spaces first.
- Process mining helps create smart grids. They are energy measures that help maintain a sustainable energy infrastructure across your organization. This in turn helps in avoiding user errors and equipment failures that are often the point used by fraudsters to get into your organization structure.
- Companies conduct network traffic monitoring to spot anomalies that could be security or operational failures. They work on both real-time and historical data to match patterns and identify lapses.
- Process mining can help conduct in-depth investigations of complex processes to find suspect behavior. Bigger companies have various complex processes happening at the same time, making it difficult for security protocols to find suspicious behavior. Process mining every process to not let any suspicious entity escape security protocol.
- Process mining plays a crucial role in conducting Quality Assurance (QA) tests that help identify errors or bugs in various processes carried out by a company. This helps both in improving the efficiency of your processes and eliminating points of error.
6. Ensure that your security protocols are up to the mark
As discussed in the above point, no security protocol can work on its own to prevent data breaches. You need to create a well-rounded mix of advanced protocols to create a formidable shield around your employee data.
Review the following elements to make sure your security protocols are up to the mark:
- Review existing protocols to evaluate their efficiency in the face of emerging attacks. Upgrade them as needed to ensure that you have the best available protection.
- Add newer protocols such as the ones discussed above to strengthen your security forces against the ever-evolving slew of cyber attacks.
- Keep testing your protection protocols from time to time to ensure that they're impenetrable against any kind of fraudulent activity.
7. Train your employees in data protection
Global expenditure on cybersecurity training is expected to reach upwards of $10 billion by 2027. Employee training is crucial in preventing cyber attacks on them and ensuring their data and privacy protection.
Train your employees from time to time to educate them about the kinds of attacks that can happen to them or by their hands if they're not careful with their data. Teach them ways you safeguard themselves and perform their jobs in ways that don't risk data breaches of any kind.
Doing so empowers your employees to understand the attacks that can happen to them and how to identify such attempts right away. It also takes the load off your security measures as you can rely on your employees to contribute to the cause as well.
8. Follow the suggested guidelines
As the concern for cybersecurity rises, authorities and communities are coming together to formulate various guidelines that help prevent such attacks. Incorporating them into your security measures will boost your efforts.
Look up the guidelines issued by your local, state, and national authorities along with international and industry guidelines. GDPR is one the most commonly known guidelines against cyber threats. More guidelines similar to it are coming up now.
Make sure that your business processes keep in line with the suggested guidelines. They also help you protect your data while helping you get legal help in case you suffer a breach.
Widen your safety net and bring transparency to your processes to strengthen employee data protection
Data protection has emerged as a priority for modern businesses. As you look for new ways to strengthen your security protocols, look to include ones that bring transparency to your processes.
Process mining helps you understand your processes better and deploy elements that strengthen them at the grassroots level. Widen your safety net by including anti-bot tools to detect different kinds of bots that may hamper your data stores.
Lastly, impart training for your employees to empower them to fight security breaches with knowledge and awareness.
Let us know in the comments what you think are the best ways to protect employee data with ease.
