Cyberattacks put your money, data, and IT equipment in danger. You and your team need to be as prepared as possible for these attacks. Let's look at some simple cybersecurity tips for businesses.
Employee Training
Potential threats are avoidable by simply training your team. Employees not paying attention to detail are easy targets for hackers. They might lose some equipment, or share a password.
Establish clear policies on dealing with handling equipment, or how passwords are shared. Password managers have options that allow you to share certain credentials only with those who need them.
Or, they could open a fraudulent email. Phishing is the go-to entry point for hackers; your team should know how to recognize these attacks.
A good method to keep around for teaching phishing attempts is the SLAM method. Check the Sender, Link, Attachment, and Message.
Use Strong Passwords
If hackers can't get access with phishing or social engineering tricks, the next best option is a weak password.
Brute force attacks make it easy to crack weak passwords. Make sure your team is using a strong password on all logins and devices. And make sure they're different passwords.
A strong password contains a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Work with your IT team to implement a password-changing policy. A good standard is every 60-90 days.
For good measure, add multi-factor authentication to logins that allow it.
Protect Your Files
Data can be compromised or deleted. If that happened to you, could your business still run? It's important to back up your files regularly.
If there's an attack, you can restore all files from the latest backup. Work with your IT team to choose software that automatically backups the files.
If possible, store a copy of the backups offline. Backups compromised by a ransomware attack are basically useless.
Restrict the number of people with access to critical data to a minimum. Set guidelines on what each department should be able to see.
Use Antivirus Software
Solid antivirus software should protect your business from all forms of malware. Whichever you choose, the antivirus should be scanning computers frequently.
It should scan every portion of your computer looking for compromised data, and remove them! Some antivirus clients only scan.
Since it will most likely run in the background, the antivirus needs to be light on resources.
Keep in mind there are a lot of processes, apps, and files on your devices to scan, but these scans need to be effective and efficient.
Updates, updates, updates!
All the software you use to keep your business running should be kept up-to-date. Software companies regularly update their software with bug fixes and security patches.
Operating system updates should be monitored, just make sure the software you use is compatible first.
A Wi-Fi router's firmware or a printer's firmware may need to be manually updated. Work with your IT team to schedule these updates after hours. A major firmware update during the day could slow down production.
And if an update causes a problem, overnight updating allows time to roll back any changes.
Wrapping Up
Proper employee training needs to be a top priority.
Make sure your team is using strong passwords for all logins. And add multi-factor authentication as an extra layer of security.
Regularly back up your files, online and offline. Backup software should have tools to do this automatically.
A solid antivirus program for your business should recognize and remove most threats. It also needs to be easy to use and light on resources.
And make sure your team keeps their devices updated. Your IT team can also automate this process with proper software.
