Essential Cybersecurity Best Practices For Small Businesses
Keeping technology up to date helps protect your business from cyberattacks. It also makes it more difficult for hackers to exploit known vulnerabilities.
Cyber incidents cost small businesses billions annually, including financial loss and a tarnished reputation for data protection. To prevent such damage, follow these essential cybersecurity best practices.
Secure Your Network
One of the first things a small business should do is install a firewall. This prevents unauthorized access to the company network and protects data from cyberattacks.
Another critical step is ensuring all devices have security measures in place. One of the security best practices includes having employees use only approved personal devices in the office and ensuring that passwords are strong and not easy to guess, such as using an extended length of characters with letters, numbers, and symbols. It also means installing encryption software on all devices and implementing a password security protocol.
It’s important to back up your data regularly and not save passwords or other sensitive information in the cloud. A backup should be stored at a remote location not connected to the internet, such as an external hard drive or a USB.
Install a Firewall
Firewalls are a key part of your small business’s network security. They monitor incoming and outgoing data traffic and either allow or reject it based on predetermined security rules.
Firewalls can be physical hardware devices or software tools that protect your network by separating internal trusted networks from untrusted external ones. The firewall also checks all incoming and outgoing data packets to ensure they are valid and don’t contain any malware or viruses.
If a piece of data looks suspicious, the firewall will alert you and ask for your instructions. This allows you to decide whether the request should be allowed or rejected. Moreover, you can use a firewall to block certain types of applications for your employees, like instant messaging (IM), and prevent them from working off-the-clock or communicating with family members.
Well, this is not the end! Avoiding unwanted calls from suspicious numbers can be a great process to keep things in the right place with security for your small business. Small business outbound calling and messaging can give you the right choice to maintain all security aspects.
Install Antivirus Software
Ensure that antivirus software is installed on all systems, and keep this software updated regularly. This is an easy step that many small businesses overlook until it’s too late. Ideally, you can set this software to update automatically so your IT team does it with minimal time and effort.
Invest in an antivirus solution to scan for ransomware and other cyber threats and integrate it with your firewall. This way, you can prevent data breaches and protect your business from costly downtime.
Remember to back up your files as well. Ensure that your employees know they should never give out their personal information or passwords over the phone to someone claiming to work for a company they do business with.
Install Multi-Factor Authentication
Cyberattacks are a constant risk for small businesses. But even with limited budgets and staff, they can take steps to improve cybersecurity. Educating employees about threats, encouraging strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, keeping software updated, implementing firewalls, and creating disaster recovery plans can all help.
Training is a top deterrent against cyberattacks, as human error is often to blame for data breaches. It should be part of any new employee’s onboarding process, and ongoing workshops or seminars should be arranged throughout the year to keep everyone up-to-date.
Many small businesses assume cybercriminals will pass over them because there’s “not much to steal.” This mindset is dangerous and out of sync with today’s cyberattacks. Small business owners can bolster their defenses with easy-to-setup and deploy technology that offers continuous monitoring, simple deployment, and real-time visibility.
Set Up Two-Factor Authentication
Cybercrime has become a serious threat to small businesses. Luckily, there are simple steps that you can take to protect your company and your customers’ data.
Implementing multi-factor authentication is a great way to help prevent hackers from infiltrating your business and accessing sensitive information. This security measure requires more than just a password to verify a user’s identity, such as a one-time passcode sent to an employee’s phone or a hardware token like a USB drive or keychain.
For small businesses, it is important to prioritize which employees will need two-factor authentication and ensure they only use this feature for applications that require internet connectivity. This will reduce the disruption to your business without compromising your cybersecurity. This is especially important for e-commerce sites and other web-based platforms that store payment or financial data.
