Here’s an essentials list of basic cyber security practices that your firm should be following. The fact is, the second your company connects to the internet, your data becomes vulnerable. According to a recent Telstra survey, a staggering 81% of Australian small businesses had experienced some kind of ransomware attack. This is where company information is held and a ransom demanded for its release. The report claims 51% paid the ransom.
Just because you’re small it doesn’t mean you’re safe
Small business owners may be thinking they’ve got nothing worth stealing so they can afford to relax about their cyber security practices. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. In fact, cyber criminals are targeting small and medium-size businesses for exactly that reason. They’re relatively easy to break into. Vulnerabilities range from weak passwords to lack of firewalls, and little attention to outside connections.
So, let’s have a look at the top 5 cyber security practices you should be deploying.
Setup a Firewall
A firewall is the best first line of defense against outside cyber-attacks. You should consider a secondary internal firewall as well. In addition, make sure all employees working from home have a firewall installed.
Educate your workforce
SMB employees need to be up-to-speed on security practices. Therefore, they need to be aware of the threats and your policies to combat them.
Ensure a Strong Password Policy is Followed
Here at Advanced Technology we recently had a call from a distressed client. Apparently, all of their files had a new, strange extension on them and they couldn’t be opened. The extension was .encrypted. We quickly executed an emergency shut down procedure and began investigating the problem. Luckily, we where able to restore the files from an uninfected backup. The reason the cyber criminals where able to gain access turned out to be a weak password on the server. The password? Password123. Unfortunately, this kind of guessable password is more common than you think.
Regularly back up all data
Implementing good cyber security practices will certainly prevent most data breaches. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that you back up all of your data regularly. If you can, keep your backup in a different location.
Use Multi-factor Identification Techniques
This is simple to do and provides a much harder to crack secure log in. Therefore, think about adding a PIN and a Password to employee logins. For example, the PIN could be the employees mobile number.
Cyber security practices are ever evolving. They have to be because so are the cyber criminals. It really is time to get serious about security, your business could depend on it.
