When running a business, there are a lot of things you need to do and are responsible for. You need to create the product or service, identify the target audience, market it correctly, sell it, and maintain solid relationships with customers. In addition to that, you are often responsible for technical aspects of running a business such as using correct software, tracking metrics and monitoring logs.
However, perhaps most importantly, you need to protect the sensitive information of both your customers and the company itself. And with cyber crime on the rise, the security of your company and information should be held in the highest regard. With that in mind, this blog post is going to go over some underrated techniques to ensure your business is safe and secure.
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Control Access Rights
While hacks and attacks do occur, it is actually human error and employee negligence that is the biggest cybersecurity risk for most companies. Because of this, necessary steps need to be taken to ensure employees aren’t accidentally leaking information or leaving computers unattended.
One of the best ways to prevent data breaches caused by employee negligence is to control who has access to private or sensitive information. For example, you could use file monitoring to ensure only those with authorization are able to view certain files. There are tools out there that make it easy to give and take away access for people based on things like seniority, their roles or the project they are working on.
Use Strong Passwords
Now, this might seem pretty obvious to some of you, but the truth is, many employees, and even companies themselves, don’t use strong passwords. Simple, short and predictable passwords are incredibly easy to break into. Strong passwords should be used and changed every few months, as well. So what exactly is a strong password?
Well generally, a strong password is one that features numbers, letters and other symbols in a pattern that won’t be easy to guess and doesn’t have a connection to you or the company. In addition to using strong passwords that are hard to guess or crack, you should also look into using other measures such as 2-factor authentication.
2FA will require someone logging into a certain account to prove their identity in more ways than simply entering a password. This could be by entering a unique number, answering a text or clicking an email link or a variety of other things.
Educate Your Employees
No matter how good your security practices are and how many precautions you take, if your employees aren’t educated on cybersecurity risks and how to protect themselves, you are still at risk. As a result, training and educating employees on best practices is something you should be doing frequently.
Hackers and scammers are getting much more advanced with their techniques. If you don’t keep up, there is a good chance an employee might accidentally respond to a message or click a link that they shouldn’t have. This could put your entire company at risk. New employees should be briefed on cyber security before starting. Even seasoned employees should be retrained frequently.
Some companies will choose to train in-house, while others will use a third party service or company. Whichever you choose, make sure the training is robust. Think of the costs more like an investment instead of lost money.
We hope that this article has been useful in helping you discover some new and underrated techniques to keep your business and the information it houses secure in 2019 and beyond.