4 Cybersecurity Weaknesses Your Business May Have
The business world only realized that cybersecurity is a major issue in the last 8-10 years. Unfortunately, the companies with the least amount of resources are usually the main prey for hackers, so small businesses are often hit the hardest.
In the UK alone, about 65,000 cyber attacks occurred in 2018. That is one attempt to breach a business every 19 seconds.
But hackers aren’t the only ones working hard. We strive to prevent cyberattacks—particularly for small businesses—and we’re providing you with the top four security weaknesses in the business world so you can fight cybercriminals, too.
Employees: the weakest link of cybersecurity?
Many businesses don’t realize that their own employees are indeed their weakest link. It’s not that they’re out to get you; it’s just that, well . . . they’re only human! They make mistakes that could cost your business a great deal of time and money, and you can only mitigate that by training them in appropriate cybersecurity protocol. Here are the basics:
- Never leave your device unattended and unsecured. Log out if you leave your desk, no matter how long you plan on being gone.
- Never give anyone else your password. Change it once a month, even if you don’t think it’s been discovered.
- Never open an email that looks suspicious. Always reach out to the recipient in-person or over the phone before giving away personal information.
- If it looks too good to be true (i.e. “You’ve won $10,000!”), then do not open it. Email phishing is alive and well, and it takes no prisoners.
Poor data storage
Poor data storage usually means you don’t have multiple copies of your data, you seem to store your data onto your own servers, and you don’t have firewalls and data encryption to protect your data around the clock.
In this day and age, in-house data storage isn’t enough to protect your data. You should work with a managed service provider to properly store your company’s information. Working with a Ventura managed service provider is easy and customizable. Just look at their services page and see which features you would like to implement in your own business. Contact them and organize your virtual meeting with them, and get the ball rolling.
Firewalls and encryption
Firewalls are your first line of defense. They look out for any suspicious activity—such as a connection trying to make its way inside your system—no matter how subtle.
A firewall is pretty basic stuff, but data encryption is not. You need an encryption service that will scramble your data effectively whenever it is traveling or not being used. Understand the need for email encryption and check on Trustifi’s guide on the basics of opening an encrypted email. This way, when it launches in the servers and over the internet, it cannot be recognized and or snagged by awaiting malware or spies.
Cybersecurity alert fatigue
Too many warnings can overload an employee or manager. This is called alarm or alert fatigue. Whether legitimate or illegitimate, warnings keep cropping up over and over and make the normal working day a chore. This can result in the desensitization from genuine alarms that need to be dealt with.
But how do you come up with a strategy to avoid this? You must once again decide on a good policy. Which alerts are green, amber, or red? If an employee has forgotten their password and after three tries are locked out of their account, this might be a green warning. But a red warning would be a hacker trying to actively breach your database.
Train your employees to deal with these warnings and to spot one from another. It’s easy for them to get overloaded but if you can color-code them, they will know which to be worried about and which they can put off until they have time to deal with them.
