Regardless of the nature of your business, any company in possession of customer, client, and/or business data, however seemingly innocuous, should be protected at all costs.
With cyber-attacks and security breaches becoming ever more commonplace, as the manager and/or the owner of a business, you need to know how to protect your company from an online breach; so, read on!
Upgrade to Anti-Spyware Technology
Both anti-spyware and antivirus technology are complex software programs that will constantly be on the lookout for any suspicious activity around everything from your company’s official website to the internal server itself.
Everything from common garden viruses to sophisticated cyber-attacks often leave a trail behind them, and such technologies have been specifically designed to ‘sniff out’ such threats and are an absolute necessity.
Just some of the main reasons why you should install anti-spyware and antivirus software include:
- Sensitive information and company data are both immune to security breaches
- You will find the identification of performance issues considerably more efficient
- Expensive downtime while viruses are eradicated will no longer hinder the company
Practice Strong IT Support
Often, especially when a company is relocating to a new office or supplying remote and hybrid workers with computers and computing equipment to use at home, old accounts and equipment are hijacked and put a business at extreme risk.
Older login details and now defunct accounts provide a wealth of information to the knowledgeable and skilled cyber-criminal, and unfortunately, such elements of online working life are regularly overlooked, even by multinational companies.
From a company’s social media accounts to recent redundancies, any change (however small) should be meticulously planned. If you plan to dispose of or sell older technologies, make sure they are professionally wiped and reset.
Furthermore, ensure that if your company outsources one or more core IT support and maintenance responsibilities, you do not become disconnected from the latest updates and strive to understand how your network is managed.
Ensure Your Network is Entirely Secure
Focusing your efforts on heightening your network security will serve to protect your business more effectively in general, not just in terms of fighting the ever-present potential of a data breach.
Both wired and wireless routers all come with a built-in administration set-up page, whereby you are able to make various changes to the base configuration.
Access the settings of your company’s router and change the settings for passwords, privacy, and security, namely the company address and other details that will have been preset to be displayed openly.
Sophisticated computer hackers whose sole source of income is to hack into business accounts to steal money and data in equal measure are more than a little familiar with factory default settings, so the more obscure the changes you make, the better.
Other more general methods of heightening the security of your company online include:
- Ensuring applications are kept up-to-date
- Creating regular and thorough database backups
- Utilizing firewalls within databases and web applications
- Using an HTTPS proxy server
HR Onboarding Procedures
Looking forward to the future of cyber protection, it becomes obvious that every single one of your employees and yourself needs to be familiar with the security protocols involved with protecting against hacking.
Have your HR department issue a company-wide policy regarding the safe handling of emails sent from unknown addresses, or requests from ‘bosses’ to send private or sensitive information over the internet.
Once everyone is on the same page, it becomes much easier to spot an irregularity in internet and intranet usage, and phishing attempts through spam emails and chats will be thwarted immediately.
