Cyberattacks on businesses continue to dominate the news headlines. Not only are large enterprises falling victim to hackers but recent studies show that over 50% of small- and medium-sized businesses were hacked last year. Hackers have become increasingly sophisticated in the methods they use to gain access to your data, making detection that much more difficult.
Businesses that have suffered through a cybersecurity attack will tell you what a nightmare the whole experience is as it results in lost revenue, downtime and, often, a damaged reputation. Some companies never recover and are put out of business because they are unable to manage the financial hardships associated with being hacked.
The ugly truth remains that approximately 80% of businesses are not doing enough to implement adequate security measures to protect themselves and their customer’s private data. IT security requires a proactive approach to prevent unauthorized access to your systems.
3 steps you can take to be proactive about your security
- Strong password policies – Requiring regular and frequent password changes is essential to maintaining an effective security plan. Ensuring that passwords are not reused on various sites, are difficult to guess, and have been changed from the default password can prevent a hacker from gaining access.
- User security education – The biggest threat to your security are the people in your business. It is important to provide security awareness training for your team that educates them on topics such as email security (so they are aware of what to click on and more importantly, what not to click on), password security, and wifi network security. It only takes one staff member to click on a suspicious link in their email to infect your entire network.
- Updated patches – Ensuring that your network and devices are current on the latest patches and updates helps prevent hackers from exploiting known issues that the updates seek to repair. Setting up automatic updates on your teams’ devices will safeguard their devices which is key if they have access to the larger company network.
A comprehensive security plan is essential to protecting your business and your clients’ data. These three steps should be built into a larger security strategy that takes into account how your business operates and what level of risk is acceptable. Many business owners want to tackle security head on but are hesitant because they’re uncertain if it’s a worthy investment of time and money. But it is clear that cybersecurity attacks are not on the decline and security needs to be a high priority.
Schedule a complimentary security assessment with On-Site Computers to let us help you identify what areas of your security plan need strengthening so that you can be sure your data is protected. Contact us at 800-669-8513 to learn more.
