How to Solidify Your Business’ Cybersecurity
by Mashum Mollah Business Security Systems 24 June 2020
If you’re in any doubt whether your business is a hacking target, you’re not alone – the vast majority of business owners do not believe that they are at risk of a hack, despite half of the small businesses experiencing one. Any business is appealing to hackers, but small businesses especially so, as they have a good amount of data with typically very little security. You may never notice a breach, but you might find that your money, employee details, and customer data have been stolen. Here’s how you can solidify your business cybersecurity:
1. Train All Your Employees
Your employees are not just potential victims of a bad hack, they are also potential entry points. Social engineering is an important part of the hacker’s toolkit and involves simply lying and manipulating real people in order to get the necessary information for hacking. That’s why you should create an effective cybersecurity policy for your business, including best practices and procedures for keeping data safe, as well as a clear protocol to follow if a security breach occurs. Make sure that your employees create strong and unique passwords (or issue these yourself) for every desktop, mobile, and SaaS account they use. If you can, set up two-factor authentication.
2. Stay UpToDate
One of the most important elements in maintaining computer security is simply staying up to date with updates, and therefore making sure that all OS and software are always up to date.
3. Threat Prevention Box
A threat prevention box is a piece of hardware, such as the Check Point appliances, which offer a firewall, VPN, IPS, application control, URL filtering, anti-bot tech, anti-virus tech, and anti-spam protection. Check Point boxes range from £400 for small businesses to £74,000 for high-performance companies with huge numbers of gateways, though checkpoint resellers can often offer significant discounts.
4. Backups
Ransomware is horrible; it hijacks key information on your computer and sells it back to you, with the threat that the information will be destroyed if you don’t participate. However, ransomware can’t hurt you if you have a complete backup of everything. You can just turn your computer off, purge it, and switch hard drives. It also means that you have a backup of any important customer data that you simply cannot lose, though you will have to report that it has been stolen and very likely will lose the trust of your customers. Prevention is always better than treatment!
5. Secure Wi-Fi Practices
Wi-Fi is an important part of cybersecurity because if somebody with malicious intent gets access to it, they can monitor all important information transmitted over Wi-Fi. This is essentially why you should never submit a password if you’re using an open Wi-Fi in a café, restaurant, or airport. With just an android or a jailbroken iPhone, a criminal can download an app that simply ‘watches’ the Wi-Fi for people transmitting passwords. You should have a secure Wi-Fi for secure data – don’t use the same Wi-Fi that you offer to customers and, if at all possible, set up your employee Wi-Fi without your employees actually knowing the password. If this is impossible, consider changing your password on a regular basis.
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