Cybersecurity is the most important factor to safeguard the data of an organization today.

Even if it is a small scale or large scale organization, everyone has to ensure that the organization’s data is safe and secure. Cybersecurity is a practice of safeguarding the computers, servers, networks, electronic systems, mobile phones, and especially the data from malicious attacks.

It’s easy to think that cybercriminals will pass over attacking your company, the “not much to steal” mindset is common with business owners in regards to cyber security, but it is also completely incorrect and out of sync with today’s cyber security best practices.

Lack of time, budget and expertise are some of the top reasons for cyber attacks. This combined with not having an IT security specialist, not being aware of the risk, lack of employee training, not updating security programs, outsourcing security and failure to secure endpoints only makes the organization more vulnerable to attacks.

43% of all breach victims are SMB’s. 63% of attack attempts are successful.

– Verizon DBIR 2019

To keep an eye on confidential data, organizations are investing more in cybersecurity to eliminate the risk of the data breach. A cyber attack can come from either inside your company or from an external source. But, the question is how far is your data secure? How can you identify the threats before your data gets corrupted?

Here are some of the best cybersecurity practices for your business that you can begin to implement today.

Common Passwords are Bad Passwords
cybersecurity best practices for your business - passwords

Passwords are your first line of security defense. Cybercriminals attempting to infiltrate your network will start by trying the most common passwords.

We all know, a strong password contains 10 characters including numbers, symbols, lowercase, and uppercase but the thing is to change the password regularly. This helps to avoid hackers to access the data.

Secure Every Entrance

cybersecurity best practices for your business

All it takes is one open door to allow a cybercriminal to enter your network. Just like you secure your home by locking the front door, the back door and all the windows, think about protecting your network in the same way.

Consider all the ways someone could enter your network, then ensure that only authorized users can do so.

  • Ensure strong passwords on laptops, smartphones, tablets, and WIFI access points
  • Use a Firewall with Threat Protection to protect access to your network
  • Secure your endpoints (laptops, desktops) with security software such as Anti-virus, Anti-SPAM and Anti-Phishing
  • Protect from a common attack method by instructing employees not to plug in unknown USB devices

Segment Your Network

cybersecurity best practices for your business

A way to protect your network is to separate your network into zones and protect the zones appropriately. One zone may be for critical work only, where another may be a guest zone where customers can surf the internet, but not access your work network.

Segment your network and place more rigid security requirements where needed –

  • Public facing web servers should not be allowed to access your internal network
  • You may allow guest access, but do not allow guests on your internal network
  • Consider separating your network according to various business functions (customer records, Finance, general employees)

Define, Educate and Enforce Policy

cybersecurity best practices for your business

While small businesses often operate by word of mouth and intuitional knowledge, cyber security is one area where it is essential to document your protocols. Spend some time thinking about what applications you want to allow in your network and what apps you do not want to run in your network.

Educate your employees on acceptable use of the company network. Make it official and then enforce it where you can. Monitor for policy violations and excessive bandwidth use.

  • Set up an Appropriate Use Policy for allowed/disallowed apps and websites
  • Do not allow risky applications such as Bit Torrent or other Peer-to-Peer file sharing applications, which are a very common methods of distributing malicious software
  • Think about Social Media while developing policy

Be Socially Aware

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Social media sites are a gold mine for cybercriminals looking to gain information on people, improving their success rate for attacks. Attacks such as phishing, spearphish or social engineering all start with collecting personal data on individuals.

  • Educate employees to be cautious with sharing on social media sites, even in their personal accounts
  • Let users know that cybercriminals build profiles of company employees to make phishing and social engineering attacks more successful
  • Train employees on privacy settings on social media sites to protect their personal information
  • Users should be careful of what they share, since cybercriminals could guess security answers (such as your dog’s name) to reset passwords and gain access to accounts

Encrypt Everything

vpn cybersecurity best practices

One data breach could be devastating to your company or your reputation. Protect your data by encrypting sensitive data and make it easy for your employees to do so. Ensure encryption is part of your corporate policy.

  • Sleep easy if laptops are lost or stolen by ensuring company owned laptops have pre-boot encryption installed
  • Buy hard drives and USB drives with encryption built in
  • Use strong encryption on your wireless network (consider WPA2 with AES encryption)
  • Protect your data from eavesdroppers by encrypting wireless communication using VPN (Virtual Private Network)

Maintain your Network

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Your network, and all its connected components, should run like a well-oiled machine. Regular maintenance will ensure it continues to roll along at peak performance and hit few speed bumps.

  • Ensure operating systems of laptops and servers are updated (Windows Update is turned on for all Systems)
  • Uninstall software that isn’t needed so you don’t have to check for regular updates (e.g., Java)
  • Update browser, Flash, Adobe and applications on your servers and laptops
  • Turn on automatic updates where available: Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Adobe

Cloud Caution

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Cloud storage and applications are all the rage, but be cautious. Cybercriminals do take advantage of weaker security of some Cloud providers.

  • Encrypt content before sending (including system backups)
  • Check the security of your Cloud provider
  • Don’t use the same password everywhere, especially Cloud passwords

Don’t Let Everyone Administrate

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Laptops can be accessed via user accounts or administrative accounts. Administrative access allows users much more freedom and power on their laptops, but that power moves to the cybercriminal if the administrator account is hacked.

  • Don’t allow employees to use a Windows account with Administrator privileges for day-to-day activities
  • Limiting employees to User Account access reduces the ability for malicious software (better known as malware) to do extensive damage at the “administrator” privileged level
  • Make it a habit to change default passwords on all devices, including laptops, servers, routers, gateways and network printers

Address the BYOD Trend

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Start with creating a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy. Many companies have avoided the topic, but it’s a trend that continues to push forward. It comes back to educating the user.

  • Consider allowing only guest access (internet only) for employee owned devices
  • Enforce password locks on user owned devices
  • Access sensitive information only through encrypted VPN
  • Don’t allow storage of sensitive information on personal devices (such as customer contacts or credit card information)
  • Have a plan if an employee loses their device

Patch your Software and Systems

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Many attackers exploit known vulnerabilities associated with old or out-of-date software. To thwart common attacks, ensure that all your systems have up-to-date patches. Regular patching is one of the most effective software security practices.

Of course, you can’t keep your software up to date if you don’t know what you’re using. Today, an average of 70% and often more than 90% of the software components in applications are open source.

You need to maintain an inventory, or a software bill of materials (BOM), of those components. A BOM helps you make sure you are meeting the licensing obligations of those components and staying on top of patches.

Embrace Education and Training

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Employee training should be a part of your organization’s security DNA. Having a well-organized and well-maintained security training curriculum for your employees will go a long way in protecting your data and assets.

Include awareness training for all employees and secure coding training for developers. Do it regularly, not just once a year. And conduct simulations like phishing tests to help employees spot and shut down social engineering attacks.

Remote Employees to always use a secured Wi-Fi

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Office Wi-Fi networks should be secure, encrypted, and hidden. If you have employees working remotely, ensure they use a virtual private network.

A VPN is essential when doing work outside of the office or on a business trip. Public Wi-Fi networks can be risky and make your data vulnerable to being intercepted.

Avoid pop-ups, unknown emails, and links

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Beware of phishing. Phishers try to trick you into clicking on a link that may result in a security breach.

Phishers prey on employees in hopes they will open pop-up windows or other malicious links that could have viruses and malware embedded in them. That’s why it’s important to be cautious of links and attachments in emails from senders you don’t recognize. With just one click, you could enable hackers to infiltrate your organization’s computer network.

Here’s a golden rule to follow: Never enter personal or company information in response to an email, pop-up webpage, or any other form of communication you didn’t initiate.

Phishing can lead to identity theft. It’s also the way most ransomware attacks occur.

Create a Robust Incident Response (IR) Plan

cybersecurity best practices for your business

No matter how much you adhere to software security best practices, you will always face the possibility of a breach. But if you prepare, you can stop attackers from achieving their mission even if they do breach your systems.

Have a solid incident response (IR) plan in place to detect an attack and then limit the damage from it.

Document Your Security Policies

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Maintain a knowledge repository that includes comprehensively documented software security policies. Security policies allow your employees, including network administrators, security staff, and so on, to understand what activities you are performing and why.

Also, it’s not enough just to have policies. Make sure everybody reads them. At a minimum, make that part of the onboarding process for new employees.

Use Multifactor Identification

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Regardless of your preparation, an employee will likely make a security mistake that can compromise your data.

According to Matt Littleton, East Regional Director of Cybersecurity and Azure Infrastructure Services at Microsoft, using the multi-factor identification settings on most major network and email products is simple to do and provides an extra layer of protection. He recommends using employees’ cell numbers as a second form, since it is unlikely a thief will have both the PIN and the password.

Security is a moving target. The cyber criminals get more advanced every day. In order to protect your data as much as possible, it’s essential that each and every employee make cyber security a top priority. And most importantly, that you stay on top of the latest trends for attacks and newest prevention technology. Your business depends on it.

Is Your Business Adequately Protected?

cybersecurity best practices for your business

Having the right knowledge – like the cybersecurity best practices mentioned above can help strengthen your company’s breach vulnerabilities. Remember, just one click on a corrupt link could let in a hacker. Just one failure to fix a flaw quickly could leave your organization vulnerable to a cyber-attack.

When you are managing your IT internally, the pressure is on to make sure you are adequately protected against hacking and viruses. While having all these measures in place and ensuring employees are following best practices, it’s still difficult to keep up with the latest cyber threats. It only takes one employee to forget to change his or her default settings or to click on what seemed an innocent link from someone they thought they knew.

How to ensure Cybersecurity for your Business?

Possibly the best way to overcome these challenges is to enlist the help of a Managed IT provider that stays up on the latest threats and whose job it is to make your systems as secure as possible.

When you work with a Managed IT provider, you get laser-focused monitoring and attention, 24/7/365. Their expertise is in ensuring maximum system and computer uptime, making sure all of your system’s latest updates are installed, and even providing resources to educate your employees.

They can help you with day-to-day issues and be there to tackle questions and ensure they are addressed quickly and resolved accurately. The burden of worrying about whether or not your network is secure can be a thing of the past when you leverage Managed IT Services.

Sound like something you need or would simply like to explore? Reach out to us today.

Author

Shiras KSenior Sales Manager
An accomplished professional with over 20 years of Sales & Marketing experience focused on ICT business.