One of the most lucrative crimes today is cybercrimes. Businesses, in general, are prone to these cyberattacks because they’re highly dependent on computers and digital systems.
It leads to businesses questioning how they can better protect themselves from these cyber threats. Whatever the current security state of your organization, you need to create a solid defense to mitigate damage from cyberattacks and prevent threats.
This post will walk you through the eight tips for protecting your business from cyberattacks.
17 Tips To Protect Your Business From Cyber Security Threats
1. Train Your Staff
Despite popular belief, do you know that your employees are the weakest link in every organization regarding security? Employees with the least information can unknowingly expose your company to cybercriminals.
You must run your employees’ bi-annual or yearly cybersecurity training. This will teach them and tell them how to adopt these safe practices. This includes creating stronger passwords, avoiding social engineering attempts, keeping your systems malware-free, and so on.
2. Secure Network and Data
Similarly, your operating systems and security software should be updated automatically to fix flaws in your security. Thus, it’s vital never to disregard prompts on updates.
You can also set up firewalls to act as a gatekeeper to all your incoming and outgoing traffic. It also makes sense that you turn on your spam filters to reduce the number of phishing emails and span, and one of the most common tactics that cybercriminals can use to infect devices and get confidential information.
3. Digital Age Verification
As more age-restricted products and services migrated online, verifying a person’s true age could be challenging if you couldn’t see them in person.
That’s where online
age verification comes in. Because most of your customers now have a digital identity, it’s now possible that you can verify their age online.
A digital identity verification system includes asking users to take a photo of their ID documents and give information so that they can check the records. Some online businesses also use biometric facial recognition scans to run an age estimate.
This is part of the age verification system. You can also incorporate an age checker app or a third-party age verification service into your online technology.
4. Enable and Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication
Another essential step to enhance the cyber security of your business is enabling multi-factor authentication for all your accounts.
This feature will provide every account with that added layer of security required for employees to confirm their identity before they can access their account. Usually, this verification method involves sending a one-time code via email or the user’s mobile.
Using multi-factor authentication aside from having strong passwords significantly enhances your business’ security. This makes it much harder for cybercriminals to hack into your accounts and access your data.
Aside from that, enforcing this measure also removes the risk of human error. It only takes one account to be compromised to expose your business to these types of data breaches.
5. Use a Password Management Tool
Strong passwords are crucial to your online security. Passwords are vital in keeping hackers away from your data.
Here are some tips:
Use a complex mixture of upper-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Similarly, you can opt for something more user-friendly, making it at least eight characters.
Avoid using the same password twice.
Your password should have at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, one number, and four symbols.
Ideally, choose a password that’s easy to remember, and don’t leave any password hints in the open that are available for hackers to see and figure out.
Ensure you reset passwords when you forget them, and change them at least once yearly.
A password manager or a password management tool will help you create strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. This program will help you create strong passwords. You need to enter your credentials automatically, and it will be the one to remind you to update your passwords periodically.
6. Beware of Suspicious Emails and Phone Calls
Phishing scams are a constant threat. Cybercriminals will try to trick you into giving your personal information, such as your login ID and password, as well as banking and credit card details.
There are usually carried out:
Via phone, text, and even through social networking sites. However, most of these are carried out via email.
Be suspicious of any official-looking phone calls or emails asking for your personal and financial information.
7. Install an Anti-Spyware Package
Spyware is software that secretly monitors and gathers your personal or organizational data. This can be difficult to detect and even difficult to remove.
Moreover, it delivers unwanted ads and search results that can take you to certain malicious websites.
Spyware records every keystroke to get passwords and other financial data. Installing anti-spyware will concentrate on this threat, but it can also be included on other antivirus packages from Norton, McAfee, and Webroot.
Getting anti-spyware packages will provide real-time protection, scanning all incoming information and possibly blocking these threats.
8. Keep Your OS, Apps, and Browser Up-to-Date
Make sure that you also install new updates in your operating systems. These updates include security fixes that could prevent cybercriminals from accessing and possibly exploiting your data.
The same thing goes out for apps. Today’s web browsers are becoming more and more advanced, especially regarding security and privacy.
Make sure that you review your browser security settings apart from installing new updates. For instance, you can use your browser to prevent websites from tracking your movements. This, in turn, enhances our online privacy.
9. Create Security Policies and Practices
Ensure that you create practices and policies that will prevent your company from cyber attacks and provide guidelines for resolving these problems if they arise.
Ensure that you effectively outline how these situations should be handled and the possible consequences in case your employee violates these policies. You also need to control the physical access to your company devices and properly dispose of them if needed.
Unauthorized users should also be prevented from accessing company computers and handheld devices. Cell phones and laptops are also easy targets for cyber theft since they’re easily misplaced and stolen.
Ensure the devices you dispose of are returned to the factory setting.
Don’t get rid of your phone or laptop if you don’t complete this step. Failing to do so would cause your essential information in the hands of cybercriminals.
10. Comprehensive Monitoring System
You need to keep track of all the equipment and software your business uses. Make sure you get rid of all the sensitive information that your device or software no longer uses, then disconnect these devices from the network.
Any old or unused software is unlikely to be updated and can act as a ‘backdoor,’ which
criminals can use it to attack businesses. Similarly, you also need to remove access from past employees and people who have switched roles and no longer need access.
11. Activate Your Data Encryption
Make sure that all of your sensitive data is encrypted. Usually, encryption will convert data into a secret code before it can be sent over the internet. When storing and sharing your data, you must turn on the network and data encryption.
This will limit your data access to parties with the encryption key. Moreover, this will ensure that even if unauthorized parties accessed this data, they couldn’t read it. Some data encryption software lets you know whenever other individuals are trying to alter or tamper with this information.
12. Protect Your Customers
It’s also crucial that you keep your customers’ information safe. If you lose or even compromise their information, this can severely damage the reputation of your business. Worse, you can even face legal consequences because of this.
As a result, you need to ensure that:
Your business invests and gives a secure online environment for such transactions.
Secure any personal customer information it stores.
If you take online payments, know what your payment getaway provider can do to prevent online payment fraud.
There are specific laws about what you can do with the personal data that you gather from your customers. Make sure that you’re aware of them, and make sure that you have an up-to-date privacy policy. If you have an online business, make sure that you show your privacy policy on your site as well.
13. Know How you can Detect Fake Antivirus Offers and Real Notifications
Ensure your employees are trained to recognize and detect fake antivirus warning messages and alert your IT when you find something questionable happening. Ensure that your company has a policy in place for the steps you need to take in case your employee’s computer becomes infected with the virus.
Malware can be a sneaky program to get information on devices through social media, the internet, email, attachments, and downloads.
For instance, keylogging malware will track everything a user types on their keyboard. Cybercriminals can easily access your bank accounts, customer data, passwords, and other sensitive information.
Ensure you also keep your security software updated along with other company-sensitive data. Your security software should also be kept up to date. This will prevent malware from sneaking into your system and networks.
14. Manage Passphrases
You can use passphrases rather than keywords to protect any access from your devices and networks that hold essential information about your business.
In a nutshell, passphrases are passwords that are a phrase or a collection of various words. They’re easy for humans to remember but a little challenge for machines to crack.
Here are some characteristics of a secure passphrase:
Long- Ideally, aim for passphrases that are at least 14 characters long. They could also be four or more random words placed together.
Complex- These should include capital, lowercase, or special characters.
Unpredictable- Although sentences make a great passphrase, putting together a group of unrelated words makes them much stronger.
Unique: Ensure you don’t use the same passphrase for all your accounts.
The thing with using the passphrase for everything is that when someone gets ahold of it, your accounts could be at risk. So make sure you use a password manager to store and create these passphrases for you.
15. Use a Firewall
A firewall will protect your hardware and software, benefiting companies with their own physical servers. Firewalls work by blocking and possibly deterring viruses from entering your network. This is in contrast to an antivirus that targets the software affected by a virus that’s already gotten through.
Having a firewall in place will protect the network traffic of your business, both inbound and outbound. Similarly, blocking specific sites can prevent hackers from getting into your network.
It can also be programmed in a way so that sending sensitive data and confidential emails is restricted. As soon as you install your firewall, make sure that you keep it up to date. Regularly check if it has the latest updates for firmware and software.
16. Ensure that the Third Parties You’re Dealing with are Also Secure
Be alert for other business-like partners or suppliers who could be granted access to your systems. Make sure that they follow the same practices as you. Make sure that you do a background check before granting access to anybody.
17. Have a Risk Management Plan
Following the above tips we've mentioned can significantly reduce your business's data breach. But if a breach should happen, then you need to minimize your business impact.
Ensure you have a risk management plan in place in case of a data breach in your business. Your IT provider should help you develop a plan and implement it if things go wrong.
Over to You
So, there you have it. Protecting your business from different cyber attacks is a serious business. Thus, if you’re a victim of cybercrime, it could cost your business thousands to get it up and to run.
In worst-case scenarios, it can even put you out of business for good, and you might be unable to recuperate from the loss.
