5 Smart Ways to Prioritize Cybersecurity at a Freight Company

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Managers of freight and shipping companies might be among those for whom cybersecurity is the most important. Imagine if a firm suffered a major exploit that caused its entire customer list to get published online or sent shipments to seemingly random destinations. Rather than risk this sort of thing happening, an increasingly large number of firms that work in this space are trying these five tricks to ensure that their businesses stay safe.

1. Automate Responses to Potential Intrusions

While it’s always good to have a trained security team who can handle threats as they happen, it’s possible that a large distributed denial-of-service attack can eventually take down even the most secure freight company. Those that have an automated workflow in place to tackle these problems will free up their crews to handle more pressing matters.

2. Write Out a Clear Assessment of Any Risks to the Firm

Relatively few companies are fully aware of all of the risks they face. Start by taking the time to list every single one that staffers in your organization can think of. This is an excellent opportunity to hold a cybersecurity-related meeting and get everyone on the same page. Personnel who might not have anything to do with the information technology department may very well have come into contact with potentially dangerous cyber threats that would otherwise go unnoticed even by trained professionals. A handful of progressive firms have come up with message boards and reporting systems for these sorts of threats.

3. Relying on a Single Source of Truth

Rather than spreading information all throughout an organization’s various databases and other collections, it makes more sense to have one source of truth everyone can rely on. By configuring one source of logistics information, freight managers can trust that their staffers aren’t going to get faulty data from bad actors. It’s likely that a majority of outside attacks against freight companies happen because people are able to insert false contact details into a workflow and redirect requests to their own organizations.

4. Move Away from Legacy Spreadsheet Systems

Too many shipping companies still rely on old-school worksheets to keep track of crates and containers. The first modern spreadsheet software got released back in 1979, which should illustrate just how long in the tooth this kind of solution is. Newer database solutions can go a long way toward securing a company’s operations.

5. Lock Down Any Cloud Computing Workflows

All information stored in the cloud needs to be protected by using access control lists that don’t let unauthorized people make changes to any important data. Bad actors love to slice into large cloud computing platforms that are too large to appropriately maintain. Individually setting permissions for each file stored in these platforms goes a long way toward preventing these sorts of attacks.

Firms that take these tips to heart will be in a much more secure position because their information won’t be as easy of a target for the kinds of crackers who focus their efforts on the logistics industry.

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