Cybersecurity is something that’s essential for all businesses, regardless of what industry you operate in. As long as you hold sensitive information, your company is a target for cybercrime. To keep not only your company safe from data breaches, but also your customers’ information, it’s necessary to take steps to guard against cyberattacks. As a car dealership owner, here are some ways you can protect your business.
Car Dealership Cybersecurity Best Practices
Every industry faces its own challenges when it comes to cybersecurity. For example, healthcare organizations deal with everything from insider threats to denial of service attacks. Additionally, this sector has to comply with certain regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
For car dealership cybersecurity, the dangers can range anywhere from ransomware attacks to social engineering scams. And recently, your industry has been included in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). This is a regulatory measure that requires businesses like yours to provide financial data protection of your customers’ information.
Establishing the car dealership cybersecurity measures necessary to fend off cyberattacks can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as it seems. To increase your auto dealership security, just follow these car dealership cybersecurity best practices:
Perform Cybersecurity Awareness Training
The average employee doesn’t have the cybersecurity knowledge they need to help you protect your network. In fact, 95% of data breaches are caused by human error, according to a study from IBM. You can minimize human error by having your organization go through cybersecurity awareness training.
Awareness training can include helpful courses, cybersecurity newsletters, and even phishing simulations to put what your team has learned to the test. Through awareness training, you can teach your staff how to recognize a cyberthreat and what to do if they encounter one. Building awareness can help you greatly boost your overall car dealership cybersecurity.
Create an Incident Response Plan
An incident response plan is a predetermined strategy to detect, respond to, and limit the effects of a cyberattack against your organization. Having such a plan ensures you have steps your workforce can follow in the event of a cyberattack. Typical incident response plans include:
- Policies on how to recover after an attack
- Ways to maintain business continuity
- An establishment of roles and responsibilities
- Procedures for identifying and escalating incidents
- Ways to test and improve your plan
Encourage Better Collaboration Between Third Parties
If you work with third parties, cybercriminals can target those vendors to get to your network. Whether it’s industry partners, the government, the media, and so on, the more third parties you work with, the more vulnerabilities you have. To shore up these vulnerabilities, try to encourage closer collaboration between you and them. Doing so can enhance threat awareness and response.
Carry Out a Risk Assessment
A risk assessment is where you evaluate your IT infrastructure to understand its capabilities and shortcomings in regards to car dealership cybersecurity. With an assessment, you can identify, categorize, and prioritize the gaps in your security. This allows you to make adjustments to your network so it’s better protected.
While you can perform a risk assessment internally, it’s recommended that you get an expert’s help. For example, a company that specializes in IT, like CTMS, can assess your infrastructure with an unbiased eye. We know exactly what and where to evaluate your systems so you get a complete assessment you can trust.
Continuously Monitor Your Network
It’s important to remember cyberthreats are always evolving and firewalls won’t be able to stop all of them from invading your network. Continuous monitoring allows you to keep an eye on your network activity. If suspicious traffic is spotted, your monitoring solution sends an alert to investigate. From there, your threat remediation solutions can take over to quarantine and remove that threat from your network.
Make Auto Dealership Compliance Easy
If you need to improve your car dealership cybersecurity, reach out to CTMS. Our technicians are well-trained in IT compliance for a variety of industries. As your partner, we leverage our knowledge and experience to help your dealership meet industry compliance requirements. With our help, you can rest easy knowing your network is in good hands.
Contact us today to learn more.
