Security Tips That Will Help You Hold Your Own

Despite all the attention we try to direct toward cybercrime and awareness of the risks out there today, hacks and scams are still impacting businesses. With so many professional duties and activities carried out online, your business’ cybersecurity needs to be considered paramount. Here, we’ve listed six things to prioritize in your business to help protect it from such activities.

1.  Staff Training

Your team can easily be your greatest weakness unless you teach them how to be a security asset by putting the right policies and expectations in place. Making sure that everyone knows how to keep their user accounts and your business’ infrastructure as secure as possible—teaching them about phishing, data security standards, and good password hygiene, for instance—will help reinforce the habit of keeping an eye out for threats.

2.  Infrastructure Management

Your business’ IT infrastructure is an essential component of your operations, so you need to make sure that every aspect of it remains up to date and monitored. All hardware, software, and networking solutions you have need to be considered, as any level of breach would assuredly have severe consequences.

3.  Security Solutions

Security issues are no joke, as it only takes one issue to substantially damage your operations. This means that your business’ protections also need to be closely monitored and updated with all available improvements implemented, like a firewall with the latest threat definitions or the use of virtual private networking to reinforce the privacy of your remote workers.

4.  Data Backups

Data backups are one of the most effective means of protecting your data, so long as the backup process is approached correctly. Maintaining multiple copies, stored both on- and offsite, is generally recommended. Doing so will help to ensure that you always have access to your data should something happen to it, whether that something be equipment failure, data theft, or user error.

5.  Wireless Security

As useful as Wi-Fi is, it can pose some substantial risks if it is not configured for optimal security. First, it should not be publicly discoverable, and second, it should be encrypted. These circumstances will provide your business with the greatest chance to avoid an attack waged through its wireless network.

6.  Password Hygiene

Finally, the importance of secure passwords and the best practices that help develop them cannot be understated… although it will likely need to be repeated from time to time. Educating your team about these best practices on a regular basis and making sure that they use tools like multi-factor authentication may not guarantee your security, but it does decrease your risk substantially.

Of course, these six steps are just the start. With help from Horne & Benik, there’s much more that can be done to better secure your business. Find out more about what we offer by giving us a call at (603) 499-4400 today!