Lesson 6: Diagnose a Small Business and Prove a Control

Before buying a security tool, diagnose what matters to the business and what could stop it. After a short small-business baseline, you enter a synthetic lab, observe a backup gap, predict the impact, isolate a copy, and prove through restore evidence that the control actually works.

First understand what matters to the business and what could stop it. Then choose one control and prove it works. In the lab, you isolate a backup and restore a file from it.

Diagnosis: The doctrine's first step: understand the organization's situation and its potential damage before choosing solutions and investing in controls.
Organization Classification (A/B): A split into two categories by the potential financial damage from a cyber event: Category A up to 5M ILS, Category B over 5M ILS.
The Ten Commandments: A checklist of ten basic defense domains every small business (Category A) must implement.
Management Responsibility: The principle that cyber defense starts with senior management; 'cyber is the IT person's problem' is a fatal mistake.
Hardening: Reducing a system's weak points — removing unnecessary services and permissions and setting a secure configuration.
Least Privilege: Granting only the minimum permissions required; e.g. removing unnecessary admin permissions from users.
Business Continuity: Ensuring the organization keeps operating even after an incident, via regular backups and a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
Tested Backup: A backup verified to be actually restorable. A backup never tested for restore is not a reliable backup.
Organizational Security Culture: The shared norms, habits, and awareness of employees at all levels regarding security; built top-down through management leadership, not resting on the IT person alone.