With more and more businesses adopting online/cloud technologies over traditional tools, because of the flexibilities and accessibility functionalities, they offer in the running of their day-to-day operations. By so doing, there is a need for you to secure your business online.
The threat to businesses online is an ever-changing and developing one. An attack on your business can do a lot of damage, you stand the risk of losing data/information, loss brand credibility, and even money.
So it is non-negotiable for you to take measures to secure your business online. To help you stay ahead of the threats, we have some tips for your business.
Secure Your Business Online With These Tips
1. Put in Place a Multi-Layered Defense Measures
Having multi-layered defense processes means, you have solutions for every level of threat, be it from viruses, hackers, or theft. For instance, for devices that can be removed such as servers, you’ll need to secure them physically.
For data breaches, it is advised you have a classified place where data is periodically backed up. For passwords, choose the combination of the right password by having a mix of letters, numbers, characters and make it long as possible.
To prevent attacks from the internet, install firewalls. You can even have software to wipe sensitive information from your phone if stolen or hacked.
With these, you can see defense measures go beyond installing anti-virus software.
2. Getting Your Employees Buy-in
You can have the best firewalls, anti-virus software, and processes. If your employees are not in tune with you, all that security measures don’t count. For example, if they use a simple password that can be easily guessed, or they disclose their security details, your business can be targeted through them.
Hackers and scammers know many businesses have security in measures in place. So, they target specific people in an organization, your employees should be wary of what they post on their social media, scammers can get enough information from there.
Employees need to realize their roles to secure your business online. They need to know the financial implications of any breach and need to be alert even outside work hours. Make sure the policies are simple to understand and updated constantly.
3. Usage of Passwords
One of the cheapest and easiest ways to secure your business is through the use of an effective password combination. It is advised you add numbers, special characters, lower and upper case letters as this makes your password harder to crack.
It is believed that if you use a four-digit password, the hacker has 4-10,000 possibilities. But if you combine alphabets, the hacker has 4 to 1.6 million possibilities.
Also, about 47% of people carrying out business functions on their phones, e.g. sending emails, keeping confidential documents, and so on. It has been discovered about 34% of them do not secure their phones. With this, there is a huge risk of accessing sensitive business information, should the phone be lost, stolen, or hacked into.
You should install software that can allow you to wipe off your phone should in case it gets into the wrong hands.
4. Constantly Updating of Your Software and Applications
Hackers attack systems by looking for loopholes in the form of bugs in applications, and operating systems that are in our mobile devices and computers. To make sure you’re not susceptible to these attacks, you must fix the bugs and update your systems.
For example, business management software developers like Sage, provide constant updates on all their software offerings. This enables them to fix identified issues from previous versions, which in turn help to secure your business online.
5. Know Who Uses What
The flexibilities and ease of accessibility, which is the strength of cloud technologies, can also be a risk to secure your business online. Let me explain what I mean using the scenario below.
Let’s say a business doesn’t have a unified ERP (business management software) for all its operations, the employees are forced to source for cloud applications on their own to ease their activities, which are mostly not verifiable security-wise. This puts your business at risk when they process sensitive business data through it.
When every unit uses its software, you can’t really pinpoint the source of the security breach.
To avoid this kind of scenario, you should use ERP software that gives you cloud functionalities that unify all units of your business which grants, and tracks the activities of authorized users.
6. Plan For Any Eventuality
It simply means, plan for the worst-case scenario. You might have been proactive to secure your business online by installing firewalls, anti-viruses, insider attacks, and so on. But the attack still ends up happening. There is this saying, “if you can’t stop the breach, at least you can spot it”.
Have recovery plans in place that will help get your servers back up and running in the short term. In addition, you can insure against potential IT losses.
Leave a Comment