{"id":9949,"date":"2022-05-16T11:22:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T15:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/?p=9949"},"modified":"2022-05-16T11:22:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T15:22:45","slug":"10-effective-cybersecurity-tips-for-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/10-effective-cybersecurity-tips-for-small-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Effective Cybersecurity Tips for Small Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cyber attacks are increasing at rates we’ve never seen before. Between 2020 and 2021 alone, cybercrime increased by 31%<\/a>. As more companies continue to come online, expect that number to increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s why it’s critical to take internet security seriously. Unfortunately, it’s easy to rest easy and expose your whole company to significant risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you aren’t doing everything you can to protect your business from online threats, you’re setting your business up for failure. Use the 10 cybersecurity tips below to make running a business online safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

1. Enforce Complex Passwords<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

People aren’t great at coming up with passwords. You have a lot of accounts to keep track of in today’s world. It’s hard to remember complex passwords when you have many to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means people use simple passwords based on information relevant to them. Hackers use that fact to learn more about their victims and guess passwords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having complex passwords solves that problem. With no personal information in passwords, it’s harder for hackers to access your accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s even better when you use a password manager. You can create passwords automatically and make it so that nobody needs to remember their account credentials. It helps you create unique passwords for every website and share accounts in your organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Set up Two-Factor Authentication<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Complex passwords are only the first step in securing your online accounts. You don’t have to guess a password to gain access to the information. There are countless ways hackers can steal login credentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two-factor authentication protects you when this happens. When you enable two-factor authentication, you don’t automatically log in when entering your username and password. You get a secondary code sent to another device and need to enter the code before logging in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This device is usually on another personal account. Email, text messages, and authentication applications are the most common accounts used for two-factor authentication codes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means hackers can’t access your accounts, even if they have your usernames and passwords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Update Your Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Your software being secure today doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. Many security vulnerabilities go unnoticed for years. Hackers spend a lot of time discovering these security holes and exploiting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s one of the reasons why software providers deploy patches to their software. They include security fixes that prevent hackers from taking advantage of software bugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don’t update your software regularly, you’ll be at risk of falling victim to software bugs. Regularly update your software to stop this from happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have a complex setup that you can’t regularly change, test these updates as soon as possible. Many IT departments set up test environments for these tests to try software patches before deploying them to an organization. It helps you find conflicts and resolve them before deploying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Run a Firewall<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to take cybersecurity for businesses seriously when you can’t see what’s happening on your computer network. You play a responsive game trying to take care of issues as they come up. If you want to take cybersecurity seriously, you need to monitor the traffic on your network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A firewall will help you keep track of things. A business firewall works differently than a computer one. It sits in front of all your network traffic and monitors all traffic on a network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial firewalls also contain threat databases that can help spot and prevent attacks on your network. It makes keeping a business safe much easier for business owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of that, firewalls can also block websites in bad neighborhoods. This feature will stop your employees from going to shady websites and infecting your company computers with viruses and malware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Use a VPN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many businesses have remote employees today. It’s a paradigm shift that probably isn’t going away. Now that people have gotten a taste of flexible work environments, they don’t want to go back to an office full-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this is a great perk to offer your team, it does have an added security risk. Your team is working in an uncontrolled environment, which means they may not have secure internet connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to stop hackers spying on your employees’ work, use a VPN. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel to your office. Anybody snooping on your remote employees will see gibberish instead of sensitive company data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is even more important if you work in a regulated industry like healthcare in finance. Encryption isn’t just a best practice. It’s also the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Create File Backups<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hackers aren’t the only threat to your digital environment. Hardware only lasts so long, and employees will make mistakes. There will be times when you suffer from internal failures and lose valuable data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have no way to recover lost data, you’ll find yourself in a bad situation. You have to rebuild everything from scratch and cannot handle important work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating regular backups<\/a> will stop this from happening. Today’s cloud infrastructure makes this more accessible than ever. Sign up for a cloud backup service and install the software on your devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can create a backup schedule and store your important data online. Once there, you can restore your data with a few clicks of your mouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Create Separate WiFi Networks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Both employees and guests expect WiFi in public locations these days. That means you’ll need to create a WiFi network in the office for people to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this seems harmless at first glance, think about this: you’re allowing unsecured and unprotected devices on your company network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to know if a smartphone is secure when connecting to your WiFi. If that WiFi connection connects to sensitive equipment, that makes things worse. It’s easy for a virus to spread and infect everything in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s why creating separate WiFi networks is so important. Create a network for your guests, employees, and internal equipment. Doing this will help slow the spread of viruses, which means you can clean things up before a virus infestation gets too bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Offer Employee Training<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You’re only as strong as your weakest link regarding internet security. Unfortunately, that weakest link is usually your employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how good your security is, a rogue employee making a mistake can introduce threats to your business network. They can accidentally download malware or introduce compromised devices to your computer systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want your employees to stay safe online, you need to tell them how to do so. Many people don’t know how to take security seriously, so they make common mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can offer training by offering in-person education or working with online security courses. Whatever method you choose, make sure you require every team member to go through training. That includes both experienced employees and brand new team members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. Get a Security Audit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned before, it only takes a single mistake to compromise a business network. Even if you put a lot of effort into cybersecurity, there’s always a chance that you miss a minor detail. That’s all it takes to get hacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It pays to get cybersecurity help before you rest easy. Many IT companies like Be Structured IT Support<\/a> have security services. They can audit your network to see if there are any obvious holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once your security partner figures out what security holes you have, they’ll come up with a plan to fix things. You can either do things yourself or work with your security experts to have them help with the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end result is you have a more secure business fortified against attack. This is a must for anyone that’s protecting a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. Secure Your Servers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Your servers contain your most sensitive information. You probably already have access controls in place that control access to those servers digitally. However, it’s hard to secure a computer when anybody can access it and try to break inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t enough to house your network services in a dedicated room. You also need to ensure that the room stays locked and that only authorized personnel can access those servers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before someone with physical access to the servers gains access. Even a secure computer can get compromised when someone with enough knowledge has physical access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use These Cybersecurity Tips As Soon As Possible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When it only takes a single mistake to compromise a computer network, you can’t afford to wait around to secure your business. You need to start implementing the cybersecurity tips above as soon as possible to ensure your company stays safe. The longer you wait, the bigger chance of a hacker compromising your sensitive company information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out the blog to learn more tech tips that will help make running your company easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyber attacks are increasing at rates we’ve never seen before. Between 2020 and 2021 alone, cybercrime increased by 31%. As more companies continue to come online, expect that number to increase. That’s why it’s critical to take internet security seriously. Unfortunately, it’s easy to rest easy and expose your whole company to significant risk. If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9951,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9949\/revisions\/9951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}