Cyberattacks have impacted 22% of small businesses, according to a poll done by the Better Business Bureau. Fraudsters and hackers utilize phishing campaigns, malware, ransomware, and other strategies to obtain access to your sensitive business data.
Because small businesses often have fewer resources to design and maintain secure networks, they are more vulnerable to data breaches.
Small Business IT Security
Small business cybersecurity is more important than ever, and businesses need the right strategies to secure their IT infrastructure. Small companies have less robust budgets and resources to design secure networks, making it easier to infiltrate the network and lose data. While larger organizations hold considerably more information to steal, small businesses still often hold valuable information on their networks.
This includes credit card information, employee personal data, customer information such as phone numbers, email addresses, or even social security numbers and other personal data.
Because a single security breach may cost a corporation tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and reputation, cyberattack prevention is critical. Here are some easy and practical suggestions for reducing the risk of a cyberattack, data leak, data security breach, DDOS assaults, and other security system attacks. Follow the tips below to help protect your IT infrastructure.
1. Update and Patch your Firewall
The majority of IT security attacks take advantage of known security flaws. Patching your firewall is the best way to protect your business from newly found exploits. However, patches are only effective if they are applied to all systems consistently.
Threat actors from all over the world spend their days exploring methods to exploit firewalls of all kinds to obtain access to your company’s confidential information.
Threat actors typically target businesses that haven’t patched these holes so that they may breach into their networks and encrypt their data, to hold the data ransom for profit, known as ransomware. This means that by simply ensuring your systems are set to update automatically, you can avoid becoming victims to the most common cyber attacks.
2. Keep your software up to date
Every year, a substantial number of cyberattacks occur as a result of companies’ refusal to replace important software. Microsoft holds a monthly “patch Tuesday” event in which they provide a comprehensive list of updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities and exploits. In actuality,
Microsoft had already released a patch to fix the flaw a few weeks before the WannaCry ransomware assault in 2017. Thousands of businesses were left vulnerable since their devices had not been serviced in a long time. It is critical to patch and upgrade information technology systems on a regular basis to ensure security and functioning.
Most ransomware attacks exploit known security vulnerabilities. These patches must be routinely and uniformly applied to be effective.
3. Implement 2FA on All Accounts
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a sort of multi-factor authentication (MFA) that increases access security by requiring two means to validate your identity (also known as authentication factors).
A password is the first factor, and the second is usually a text message with a code delivered to your smartphone, or biometrics utilizing your fingerprint, face, or retina.
Most SaaS applications can give you a text or a warning using Google Authenticator before your login is authorized. We recommend your employees use two-factor authentication on all online services wherever possible. 2FA can encrypt email, banking, payroll, and other sensitive information.
4. Install Anti-Virus Software
Installing and updating your antivirus software is one of the most simple and significant things your business can do to maintain IT infrastructure security.
Any company that wants to keep their data and computer systems from getting corrupted needs antivirus protection. Antivirus software acts like a security guard at the entrance to a bank, stopping suspicious intruders from entering without the proper credentials.
There is no reason not to install antivirus software on all your business computers and other devices. It is much easier and faster to install and automatically update your antivirus than to deal with the aftermath of a cyber breach.
Because prevention is far more effective than cure, having a system to identify and prevent viral assaults is preferable to spending time and money patching affected equipment.
5. Perform Security Awareness Training
Security Awareness Training is the best ROI for cybersecurity that your business can make with a 501% return. Security Awareness is about protecting vital information for you and your company.
This training helps you find and act on common security risks and learn how to prevent them. Training should be engaging, ongoing, and comprehensive. Security
Awareness Training reduces the risk of ransomware attacks by 72% because 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error. With the right training, your employees can help detect, prevent and learn how to respond to common cyber threats.
