Nowadays cyberattacks are more common, affecting businesses of all sizes. Many businesses and corporations have been falling into this trap of data stealing via various online cyber-attacks. As for a smaller company, the risk of getting data stolen is less but not inevitable. Therefore, all businesses and corporations, either small or big, should take effective security measures to protect the data from any kind of cyber attack.
Here are some steps you should take to protect your business from cybercriminals.
Encrypt your Data
Encrypting your data is the first step that you take towards protecting your business. It makes the data less vulnerable to the hackers and data thieves out there. Data encryption keeps your data safe and secure and makes sure that data does not go into the wrong hands. You can go for encryption services that will handle all the digital information from your business mails to your internet connection.
Use a VPN
VPN stands for a virtual private network. It makes your network more secure by encrypting your data. You should protect your business with BlufVPN, it secures your online session by preventing unauthorized people from eavesdropping on your network traffic.
Whether you are a big enterprise or you manage a team of freelancers, VPN ensures that your data does not go into the wrong hands. By creating a virtual private network you can prevent online cyber-attacks.
Educate your Employees
While heading a big business, much of your data will be accessible to a large number of people from employees to various management people. So it is the most important step to educate your employees regarding data security and safe surfing on the web to avoid any threats to the data.
Making the employees an integral part of the data security solution will avoid online threats. To step up this thing, you can invest in a security awareness training course for the employees to make them understand more practically about data security and its importance in keeping the business safe.
Stay Updated
For the safety of your IT resources, it is crucial to keep all of the operating systems and other essential software systems up to date. It might seem an intimidating task but is an essential step towards data security. To should keep a check on all system software that they are configured with all security updates.
Lock your Wireless Network
Using wifi to connect all your systems is an easy task these days, but it is not secure unless you make its access restricted to your employees only. Data is sent through radio waves, which means anyone connected to wifi and on your network anyone will be able to intercept the data with the right tools.
Nowadays you should secure your wifi with WPA2 protection. To hide the network from the general public, you should use a router with enterprise-level WPA2 security. To make the wifi available to guest users, you should always go for providing it through a separate connection.
Limit User Account
You should not provide complete administrative access to your IT resources as there is no need for doing that. You can easily provide your employees their user account with standard access rights. This prevents them from modifying any system settings.
There are many professional and enterprise editions of windows that come with group policy editors that provide additional controls to the business users. This allows administrators to have full control of user and security across all network computers using a centralized console.
Use Anti-Malware Protection
Antivirus protection is a crucial security measure that you should take to prevent your systems from getting any malware files. You should always go for enterprise-level antivirus protection software to handle business computers that are used by a large number of people.
Major anti-malware developers provide solutions that are designed to fulfill the needs of the corporate world having a larger number of computer systems. These antimalware software suites detect and remove malicious software at the instant they appear before they can potentially damage your system.
Monitor Online Activity
To make sure that your employees are using the IT resources of the company responsible, you should monitor their online activities. You can do so by tracking the websites they visit. But don’t go off-limits as no one likes to be spied on, especially when they don’t know that their employers are having a look upon their online activity.
You can always tell your team regarding the monitoring activity so that they are aware of the fact and don’t surf anything that is not expected from them. Another alternative to this can be blocking inappropriate websites. You can block inappropriate websites and other online resources that you don’t want your employer to go through.
Enforce Security Policy
To limit the employee’s access to the resources of the company, you should enforce a strict security policy. In this case, you can educate your employees on how to deal with any potential security threats. By doing so, you can make your employees also aware of the fact that the business data that they are dealing with is of high importance and any negligence towards it is not tolerable.
You can take various steps like banning inappropriate websites on your internet network or imposing a ban on sharing and downloading non-work-related files.
Use a Firewall
Having a firewall on your network is a crucial security measure that you should take. Firewalls come in the form of hardware as well as in the form of software. They provide an additional layer of security for traffic control and also prevent any unauthorized access to the network. It is a very important step to have a firewall installed on your network from a business aspect.
Secure your Mobile Devices
Mobile phones, being portable, are much at risk of getting lost or stolen. Mobile phones and other such devices are highly important to many businesses nowadays but for added security, it will keep the data on these devices secure.
While using these devices, you should impose a strict password policy to prevent anyone from login into the device if any such device goes missing. If you are providing the resources like mobile phones and laptops to your employees then it should follow the security protocol needed as per the business security policy.
Conclusion
All these security steps are essential for you and your business to keep the data safe and secure. These may seem a little effortful in the beginning but are successful in keeping your data away from online threats. By having a suitable security policy and up-to-date hardware and software systems, you can make your data protected from cyber attacks.