Every business is at risk of a cyber-attack, but small and medium businesses are targeted most often. It’s the same as a real world burglary, you never expect it to happen to you until it does. So it’s high time you protect your business from an online breach.
If you own a businesses an you don’t protect yourself from cyber attack, you are taking a big risk.
As many as 95% of online breaches could have been prevented with simple business protection methods.
Here are 15 methods you should be using to protect your business online:
Assess Your Security
You can’t know where to begin until you assess your security. Where are your vulnerabilities?
Are your current security methods working for you? When did you last assess your security?
Many small businesses make the mistake of setting up basic security as a start-up and forgetting to adapt security as the business grows.
Security assessments should ideally take place as often as every quarter. That’s because technology advances so quickly, and if security changes you can bet that cyber-attacks have become more advanced too.
Reduce Spam
Did you know that large amount of cyber-attacks occur just because someone opens an e-mail?
Not opening an e-mail that looks untrustworthy is protection 101.
However, cyber attackers have become more refined when it comes to designing e-mails that attract their audience.
All of sudden e-mail addresses look legit, language in the e-mails has been perfected and there’s usually some form of link rather than an attachment to open.
The first step to tackling this type of attack is to reduce spam e-mails and learn tell tale signs of e-mails that are untrustworthy.
Establish Passwords
Creating difficult passwords has never been more important.
We all get exasperated when a website asks us to create and password and then tells us it isn’t complicated enough. But, when it comes to protecting your business, the more complicated your passwords are, the better.
When you want to upgrade your password security, you should limit user access on business platforms, making sure that your employees have to sign in regularly.
You can also deny USB file storage access in order to protect important information.
Security Training
Sometimes, we need to train ourselves into using common sense when it comes to online security.
Training your employees is a great way to protect your business.
Just as you’d use a DD guarantee to protect your money, you often need to put online guarantees in place to protect your business. Training colleagues to create secure ways of working online is detrimental to your online protection.
Learning to identify suspicious e-mails, knowing data security policies and utilising password training could make all the difference.
Virus Detection
Every business is aware that computers and other devices need to have some form of virus detection to ensure the device remains protected.
However, just like all other technologies, virus detection is continually changing.
Businesses need to invest in malware and virus detection that continues to do the job well.
During your security assessment, your anti-virus software needs to be thoroughly checked and updated if necessary.
Anti-virus systems should now be able to detect and avoid ransomware attacks in addition to milder forms of attack.
Multi-Factor Authentication
Even with the complicated passwords created these days, hackers are still able to gain access to businesses.
When it comes to important information, like banking and client documents, there should be a multi-factor authentication function.
This means employees will be asked for several kinds of authentication, including password, security question, date of birth and many more.
This ensures that hackers have a reduced chance at getting secure information that could help them to steal from the business.
Monitor Your Software
Your software is what you can rely upon to keep you aware of any threats on your business computers.
However, how many of your employees are ignoring software warnings?
It’s easy to dismiss warnings as you’re working because the work takes priority. But, the more often you press the ignore button, the more susceptible you are to being attacked.
Using a company that monitors and regularly updates your software is the best way to make sure your business is always protected.
The “Dark Web”
The Dark Web is known as the web inside the web.
This can be explained as a place deep within the internet that most people don’t even know exists.
It’s often where cyber attackers get their information before targeting a business.
If your business is hacked and passwords are recovered, those passwords may exist in the Dark Web before your business is attacked.
The best way to prevent this type of attack is to scan the Dark Web for business credentials that may be freely available.
If a breach is spotted, you can change passwords and authentications before hackers reach your business.
Review Security and Events Logs
It’s important to try and protect your business from advanced threats.
That often means covering all devices used by the business, not just computers.
This can be a mammoth task if employees are using tablets and personal phones to connect to business platforms or answer business emails.
Using larger data engines is the best way to protect your business on all fronts. This isn’t usually easy to do, so you may need the help of a cyber security expert to set up security and events logs.
Web Gateway
The worst thing about protecting your business from cyber attack is that it can happen so quickly.
All a hacker needs is a split second entry to find out significant information about a business; potentially enough to bring the business down altogether.
The internet moves so quickly so your security needs to move even quicker.
Cloud based security can detect threats as soon as they arise which makes it easier to tackle quickly.
Your security should be able to handle these problems within seconds, blocking hackers from gaining access to important sites.
Mobile Security
As mentioned above, it’s not just computers that are at risk.
More than ever, employees are using their phones to work.
Answering e-mails, connecting to websites and conversing via platforms is common in this day and age.
However, businesses often fail to see the risk of this and implement security as a result. Cyber attackers count on businesses failing to protect their business and employees this way.
When you want to cover all angles, mobile security for your employees is a must. Don’t leave this common gap in your security.
Firewall
Most businesses are familiar with how firewalls work.
They prevent any employee from connecting to suspicious websites and stop potential hackers from gaining access to business information by using the same wireless connection.
Or at least that’s how it used to work.
Hackers and firewalls have become a lot more sophisticated in the last few years.
Detection and prevention features are much better than they used to be, but that’s only if you’re making full use of the firewall options.
Reassess how your firewall can protect your business and what you need to do to take full advantage of it.
Encrypt Everything
Encryption is the easiest way to stop hackers in their tracks.
If they somehow get access to your information, at least encrypted information has a chance of staying safe.
You can encrypt stationary files easily but it’s also important to encrypt files in motion- files sent by email.
However, arguably the most important files you can encrypt when it comes to tackling hackers today is files on mobile devices.
If your IT department doesn’t know how to encrypt these files successfully, it may be time to get some advice from a security expert.
Back-up
There are times when hackers don’t want to steal, they just want to destroy.
If a hacker is successful, a business could potentially lose everything it built.
It’s important to back-up every file your business needs and put a recovery plan in place. The safest option is to back-up locally and off site by using the Cloud.
Archiving your valuable data will mean you’ll always be able to gain easy access to it in the event of a cyber attack.
However, don’t just rely on back ups without testing them first.
You may take back-up plans for granted and find they aren’t what you thought when you need them the most. Back-up a few important files to start with and test out your recovery plan.
This should be assessed every quarter so you know all of your data can be recovered quickly should you need it to be.
Cyber Insurance
No matter how much protection you put in place, there are always ways that advanced hackers can attack a business.
It may just be that your security wasn’t updated quickly enough or that there was a minor gap in security that a hacker took advantage of.
If that becomes the case, you need your business to be insured against a cyber attack. In the event an attack does happen, you’ll be able to recover your business quickly and efficiently.
Protecting your business from a cyber attack should be a priority for any business owner.
Conclusion
So there you have it, 15 highly-actionable tips to protect your business from an online breach. Make sure to implement a whole host of these practices (if not all of them) before it’s too late and an opportunistic hacker has ruined your business.
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