The aftermath and consequences of a security breach can be distressing for a small business. While disruptions in operations are likely, financial losses can be hard to manage. To add to all of that, gaining back the trust of clients, suppliers, and investors would be hard. In short, as a small business owner, you would want to prevent a security breach in the first place. Cybercriminals will try numerous ways to hack into IT environments, via devices, networks, and networked resources, and your company needs to be a step ahead. In this post, we are sharing simple measures to prevent hacking attempts.
- Focus on penetration testing and network scans
Your business must focus on testing networks, devices, to find malware, security issues, vulnerabilities, and bugs. Penetration testing and scheduled network scans can avoid a breach, by allowing time to fix issues.
2. Hire ethical hackers
Small businesses can run bug bounties. Yes, that’s correct. The ethical hacking community can be incredibly useful in finding issues that may not be otherwise visible through network scans and testing. Consider taking help for your bounty program, and ensure that the rewards are lucrative. At the end of the day, ethical hackers should be tempted to report vulnerabilities.
3. Password protection is a must
Strong passwords that contain complex passphrases, special characters, and numbers must be encouraged, and your employees should use a password manager. Ensure that default passwords are changed immediately, and all passwords must be secured further by using options like multifactor authentication.
4. Consider using access right tools
There are access right management suites that can be handy in adding transparency to the overall process of managing access to company IT resources. Access rights should be updated, edited, evaluated, and removed in real time, so that people who need access to resources have access to them.
5. Update cybersecurity policies regularly
Make sure that your cybersecurity policies are updated on a regular basis, because threats and risks are constantly evolving. Beyond compliance, small businesses need to think of cybersecurity as a regular activity, and for that, they have to create dos and don’ts that will be followed by employees within the organization, across all departments and levels.
Don’t fear cybersecurity, and remember that security breaches are preventable with a few small but essential steps. If needed, take help of cybersecurity experts and get your entire plan in place for a more proactive approach.
About Author
