Security Tips for 2021
Despite all the attention directed towards cybercrime, hacks and scams are still impacting businesses today. With so many professional duties and activities carried out online, your business’ cybersecurity needs to be considered paramount. Below are six ways that you can help to better secure your network.
1. Staff Training
Your team can easily be your greatest weakness unless you teach them how to be a security asset by putting the right policies and expectations in place. Making sure that everyone knows how to keep their user accounts and your business’ infrastructure as secure as possible—teaching them about phishing, data security standards, and good password hygiene, for instance—will help reinforce the habit of keeping an eye out for threats.
2. Infrastructure Management
Your business’ IT infrastructure is an essential component of your operations, so you need to make sure that every aspect of it remains up to date and monitored. All hardware, software, and networking solutions you have need to be considered, as any level of breach would assuredly have severe consequences.
3. Security Solutions
Security issues are no joke, as it only takes one issue to substantially damage your operations. This means that your business’ protections also need to be closely monitored and up to date. A next generation firewall in combination with high quality endpoint protection, or the use of virtual private networking to reinforce the privacy of your remote workers.
4. Data Backups
Data backups are one of the most effective means of protecting your data, so long as the backup process is approached correctly. Maintaining multiple copies, stored both on- and offsite, is generally recommended. Doing so will help to ensure that you always have access to your data should something happen to it, whether that something be equipment failure, data theft, or user error. More important than properly backed up data, however, is a backup solution that provides for easy recoverability. If it takes weeks to get your data back, then you’re not doing yourself any favors.
5. Wireless Security
As useful as Wi-Fi is, it can pose some substantial risks if it is not configured for optimal security. First, it should not be publicly discoverable, and second, it should be encrypted. Additionally, guests should never be allowed to access your business network, through wifi. A separate guest network that requires one-time authentication will make it much more difficult for a bad actor to infiltrate your network.
6. Password Hygiene
Finally, the importance of secure passwords and the best practices that help develop them cannot be understated… although it will likely need to be repeated from time to time. Educating your team about these best practices on a regular basis and making sure that they use tools like multi-factor authentication may not guarantee your security, but it does decrease your risk substantially.
Of course, these six steps are just the start. With help from Ashton Technology Solutions, there’s much more that can be done to better secure your business. Find out more about what we offer by giving us a call at 216-397-4080.
