As more business is conducted online, it’s important to be proactive about your business’s cybersecurity strategy. A preventative cybersecurity plan designed to safeguard your customers or clients’ sensitive data is key to protecting your business’s reputation—and its very existence. Cyber attacks are expected to cost businesses approximately $5 trillion over the next five years.
Small businesses are a frequent target for hackers and other malicious actors. In fact, the fallout from a cyber attack can be devastating for small businesses slammed with legal fees, compliance penalties, and in many cases, loss of customers.
Consider this: an estimated 50% of small businesses close within six months after a cyber attack.
However, by taking certain precautions, you can protect your business’s sensitive information and enjoy much needed peace of mind. Here are five recommended implementations to secure your company’s data:
- Employ multiple layers of security
A wide variety of tools exist to provide an extra layer of security between your networks and bad actors. It’s a good idea to employ several different tools at once, including, but not limited to firewalls, anti-virus, and anti-spyware software. This is especially important for people working from home if they are using their personal desktops.
In addition to employing these tools, a cybersecurity best practice entails you apply software, application, and operating system updates as soon as they become available, or even better, by enabling automatic updates where possible. Out of date software exposes vulnerabilities that are easy for hackers to exploit. One option is a patch management system, which applies software code fixes, or “patches,” to security vulnerabilities the software developer might not have discovered yet. This helps protect your system between updates.
- Implement a strong password policy
Your employees’ passwords are an important component of cybersecurity, so it’s crucial to make sure they’re using as strong a password as possible. To create a secure password, follow this rule of thumb: they should be at least 12 characters in length and include a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and characters. By implementing minimum complexity requirements, prohibiting the reuse of old passwords, and enacting multi-factor authentication requiring users to provide two or more distinct verification factors, your employees’ passwords become increasingly difficult for malicious actors to guess using sophisticated algorithms and other methods.
Of course, a strong password is just the first line of defense. It’s also recommended that your employees use different passwords for each account, limiting the damage should one of the accounts be breached. If remembering several different complex passwords sounds daunting, a secure password manager like Dashlane or LastPass can help you stay organized. - Conduct cyber awareness training for employees
Maintaining best cybersecurity practices is a team effort, so everyone in the organization needs to be on board. A staggering 88% of cybersecurity breaches are enabled by human error, commonly through social engineering tactics, like phishing emails. Conducting regular company-wide cyber awareness training sessions is a great way to educate employees on how to spot untrustworthy emails, texts, and other attempts to trick them into unwittingly handing over sensitive information to a bad actor. - Secure remote access to prevent unauthorized use
Given recent circumstances, remote work arrangements have become more common—and some experts say they’re here to stay. However, home networks lack the same level of security as the networks implemented on site. That means remote work can present more vulnerabilities for a hacker to exploit. That’s why enforcing multi-factor authentication and using access control lists to restrict functionality is key. If an employee logs on to your company’s network from a public WiFi hotspot or other unsecured internet connection, anyone can view or intercept the data you send. By requiring your employees to log on to the network with a virtual private network (VPN), you can ensure the safe transfer of data thanks to the VPN’s encryption capabilities. - Run regular testing
Breaches are more likely to fly under the radar if you don’t have network monitoring and threat detection in place. Your company can identify, and remedy, security breaches much sooner by investing in reputable anti-virus programs, conducting regular scans, and making sure you’ve enabled the most recent updates on all network devices. By employing these tactics, your company will be better positioned to identify and deal with data breaches before an external source takes advantage of them.