How to Improve Your Company’s Cybersecurity: What I Learned

Last updated on November 13th, 2025 at 01:45 pm

I am being honest, I had not really thought much about cybersecurity until the time when I had to. My group was small, there was limited budget and I figured that we were too small to be a target. Then one of our accountants received a phishing mail which was in a copy of mine. That was the moment when I realized that I needed to determine how I can enhance the cybersecurity of your company before it became even worse.

This is what I learnt after taking three months upgrading our security setup.

Begin With What is already out There (And is genuinely working)

I was wasting a lot of time reading about new amazing tools when I found out I was not even nailing the basics. Multi-factors authentication was now a must-have feature – I turned it on in each and every single account. Yes, my group moaned throughout a week. Then they forgot about it.

I also would establish an automatic software update since we could not remember to patch manually. It turns out that attackers prefer to exploit well-known vulnerabilities to which a company has not even bothered to address.

The password case was humiliating. I instituted 15 character minimum and mixed character requirement, now I heard people groan, however this was combined with a password management system so that no one was required to memorize anything. Suddenly, compliance shot up.

Zero Trust Made All the Difference (Not in a Day).

I continued hearing about Zero Trust Architecture that is this never trust, always verify concept, where you do not trust anyone on your network. At first it sounded paranoid, but once I had read of companies being intruded upon internally it became clear.

We initiated on micro- segmentation whereby our network had been broken down into smaller segments in order to ensure that a breach in one section does not affect all parts. Then we applied least privilege access, whereby individuals are only allowed access to what they actually require in carrying out their job. The developer we have did not have to have HR files. Engineering databases were not required in our marketing team.

It was time consuming to set up, yet when a laptop belonging to someone was compromised last month he was able to contain the damage. Worth it.

AI is no longer Only in the Possession of Attackers.

This is what shocked me: AI-based threat detention systems may examine network data in real-time and record variations much more quickly than a human being. The reason we have chosen a managed detection service is that it was not realistic to hire a full security team.

The system detected suspicious file transfer, odd login patterns and reduced false alarms. Prior to it, our IT professional was losing in notifications. He is now concentrating on real threats.

My Blind Spot Has Been Cloud Security.

The migration to the cloud was relatively contemporary and productive until I noticed that our cloud applications were effectively all at random and were unsupervised in any way. I spent money on a Cloud Access Security Broker that identified all our cloud applications discovered their risks, and allowed me to establish policies to regulate all of it.

Found out three of the employees were on illegal file sharing platforms. There is no ill intent about it, only convenience, yet it was a massive data leak that was just about to occur.

Affordable Victories that At least Pay off.

Nothing is that expensive. My team members learned the basics of security on such platforms as Cybrary and Khan Academy. Our phishing tests were monthly and not elaborate, i.e. not an expensive tool, but checking whether individuals would follow suspicious links.

Sensitive files were encrypted and automatic back-up saved us when the ransomware attacked a client within our network. We were not affected, yet they were behaving in such a way that it was a wake-up call to us.

What the Future Holds (And Why I Care).

I am also monitoring post-quantum cryptography since researchers believe that within one decade there may be quantum computers capable of hobbling the existing encryption systems. Futuristic thinking, but NIST has new requirements in place in 2025, so I am looking forward.

Watching behavioral biometrics are also on the list, i.e. systems that identify who you are by typing and moving the mouse rather than typing in a password. Not as irritating as continuous authentication.

The Actual ROI NoOne Speaks about.

The thing is as follows: one ransomware attack can be prevented and save millions of dollars in terms of paying the ransom, lost time, and recovery expenses. However, above dollar, good security will create trust among customers. Now, when clients tell me about their data protection, when making sales calls on our behalf, I do have good answers to it.

We presented our certifications and compliance activities of ISO 27001 – and all at once we are taking off at competing on contracts that we could not have touched a straight line before.

My Biggest Takeaway

One doesn’t require large budgets and a special security team to enhance the cybersecurity of his/her company. You should no longer spend time sweating over the fundamentals, use available tools (some are free and cheap) and establish security as a standard in your company culture rather than an IT issue.

Start small. Enable MFA today. Install an automatic update tomorrow. Build from there. I regret I did not get on sooner, however, it is better late than never.