Cyber Security Tips To Help Protect Your Business

Think your company is too small to be noticed by hackers? Think again! Cybercriminals are finding small to medium-sized companies to be the perfect bait. These new enterprises are often vulnerable and lack the basic IT infrastructure. Small businesses and startups are becoming the first choice of hacking for criminals.

According to the 2017 Cyber Security Breaches Survey, more than 61 percent of small and medium-sized businesses were affected by cyberattacks in the same year. However, implementing robust security does not necessarily have to be expensive and companies of all sizes and budgets can easily achieve it. Here is how:

Secure Your Network
As security attacks are becoming more and more advanced, exploits are shared instantaneously through the Internet. Securing your network should be one of the first things you ensure after starting a business. Set up the best firewall to protect your business and keep your connection safe. Firewalls filter everything going in and out of your business network. In doing so, you automatically encrypt all information and prevent any malwares. Furthermore, you can implement user access review best practices. A user access review is a periodic inventory of access rights to certain networks and systems and the users who have access permissions into those networks and systems. Some of these best practices include developing a policy that involves a periodic audit of access rights to networks and systems and the users who have access permissions. Moreover, companies should create a formalized procedure for regular employee permission checks to ensure they're appropriate. Also, they can implement role-based access control and least privileged access. You can even consider using a VPN to add another layer of security altogether.

Secure Your Devices
Using a virus protection goes without saying. Invest in a really strong anti-virus program and enable it on any device that has access to your business data or network, may it be company owned computers or any other accessory owned by the staff. An antivirus software protects your devices from all malicious attacks, from viruses to Trojans, as it is easier to avoid these bugs than it is to fix them.

Use Two-factor Authentication
Implementing two-factor authentication is not just about protecting your system and devices only, but rather protecting your customers’ accounts as well. As you might share sensitive information with customer and/or clients, you need to verify that they are who they say they are. So you should think twice before working with someone who does not support the use of 2FA. That way you are protecting your email services, clouds, document storages, banking services, social media accounts, and Dropbox accounts.

Backup Your Data
It is important to keep all your data safe. Recovering your data after an attack may become really hard if you do not already have a backup. You need to be able to retrieve your data and restore it whenever you need, just in case. All your data, everything any of your customers or employees have ever worked on or any information provided within your network should be available all the time. You need to have a backup and store your data in a safe location, which of course is not on the same server. Ideally, you need to store them somewhere offline that is easy to get to.

Always Assume Vulnerability
It is always better to assume the worst. Do not be over confident nor undermining to what cyberattacks can do to a company. Cyberattacks can simply erase years and years of hard work and it becomes too difficult to get up on your feet again. Just be cautious. As hackers are always developing new methods of infiltrating security systems, you never know what their next moves are and what they are up to. It’s better to be safe than sorry.