Three Critical Steps to Protect Your Business
Recent trends, side effects of a global pandemic and cybersecurity statistics reveal a huge increase in hacked and breached data from sources that are increasingly common in the workplace. More online ordering, website traffic and especially work-from-home have increased the risks for companies.
The analogy I use with my clients is to think of protecting your business the same way you protect your home. At home, you lock the doors, put up a fence, and even sometimes add a security system including cameras and alarms. Heck, you may even live in a gated community. These measures will most likely keep you safe but none of them guarantee that someone still won’t break into your home. A savvy criminal could still find ways to get into your home if they want to, but if your home is difficult to break into, they will more on to a different, less secure victim. The same goes for cybersecurity.
We recommend 3 critical steps:
1. Back up multiple ways. Regularly backing up your workstations, servers and hard drives is a proven strategy to protect your data from data loss events, including ransomware attacks.
2. An up-to-date firewall. A firewall is your first line of defence. Make sure your firewall can monitor SPAM emails, is capable of monitoring SSL encrypted data and has antivirus protection built in. Most importantly, your firewall must be up to date with the current threat landscape with a current annual service and support licence.
3. Anti-Virus. Antivirus is a no brainer on all PC’s however, choosing one with a more robust offering with remediation is highly recommended.
Whether you are a one-man show or have many employees, your company’s network and data is at risk, and that risk is rising every day. One of my favorite expressions is ‘don’t wait for a rainy day to fix the roof’. I say the same thing to businesspeople – make sure your network and data is secure because it’s always much more costly, and devastating, to clean up after a data breach or virus attack than to prevent it from happening.