After an economy crippling pandemic, many cash starved businesses haven’t had a chance to implement proper security and continuity plans for their company data. Cyberattacks continue to fill the headlines. People have been willing to pay to recover their data and criminals know that. The rise and popularity of nearly untraceable cryptocurrency is also a factor. With no way to follow the money trail, hackers go uncaught.
What increases your cybersecurity risk?
The biggest risk to your business is denial that you could be affected; that your business is too small for hackers to care about. This mindset keeps you from adequately protecting your business with the security it needs.
Your weakest link is uneducated users that click on the wrong link in an email or visit non-work-related websites. Just one small mistake can infect your entire business system with malware or ransomware.
Installing consumer-level antivirus programs on computers, instead of using enterprise-level security tools and firewalls is also insufficient to protect your network from user-based threats.
What can be done to mitigate cybersecurity risk?
Keep all software and devices updated on a regular basis. Vulnerabilities in outdated and un-patched programs are an easy entry point for automated bots to infiltrate your systems.
Protect your critical company data with verified, off-site backups. Should a workstation become compromised, the data can be safely restored to a different computer.
Administrator level access to your computers gives users (and hackers) unlimited power to make any changes. Should a computer become compromised with a virus, it is able to replicate itself and spread to all the devices on the network. Keep things locked up tight by minimizing privileges and only permit access rights to “need to have” data. If a user doesn’t need it to do their job, they shouldn’t have access to it.
Train all team members regularly so they know how to spot phishing attempts and understand safety protocols for the organization. If something suspect comes through, they should know who to alert and what to do with the suspicious email.
Just one security system isn’t enough. The best way to reduce your cybersecurity risk is to provide multiple layers of security.
How to get help protecting your business from cyberattacks:
Trying to do all this on your own, on top of running your business, can be daunting. Outsourcing security protection levels to a managed IT company will save you money and frustration. You’ll have a team on your side that will handle proactive security updates for software and systems.
Implementing an audit of access control to remove inactive users and limit access to systems on an as needed basis, will minimize sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.
The IT team will work with you to form a cyber incident response plan. Knowing who to contact and how to handle a breach is critical from the start.
Setting up scheduled, repetitive security awareness training for all company personnel arms your first line of defense. When your team knows what to look out for, they are more conscious of links they click on and documents they open from within emails and websites they visit.
Reach out to our sales team or your account manager to learn how we can implement any of these layers of security into your business – 508-205-1114
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