IT Security

In the most basic terms, cybersecurity refers to the protection and recovery of data, devices, networks, and programs from cyber-attacks, unauthorized access, or criminal use. It helps to ensure integrity, confidentiality as well as the availability of business and client data tied to the internet. Today, cyber-attacks are on the rise. This is becoming a threat to many small businesses, their employees, and clients. If you are not well prepared, the criminals can target you, hold you hostage and even destroy sensitive data, and in the worst-case scenario, might extort money and destroy your business completely. But by laying out a robust cybersecurity plan, you will be able to nip the potential threats in the bud.

The thing is, IT security is all about lowering the risk of attack on your business’s systems. Realistically, you can’t guarantee absolute security for your system, and also you can’t shield your business completely from cyber-attacks. But what you can do is to take precautionary measures to significantly reduce the likelihood of a successful attack on your system. A successful cyber-attack on your IT system will lead to massive damage to your business. It affects your bottom line, and you might lose customers’ trust as well as business standing. You might also find yourself facing fines and regulatory sanctions if data is deliberately or accidentally compromised due to the failure of deploying proper security measures. So, in this case, the expertise and experience of a team of IT security professionals come in handy.

Without a clear cybersecurity policy in place, you will certainly be exposing your business and employees to a number of risks. This is particularly so during this time where the employees are working remotely and are also accessing company accounts through their personal devices. This is to say that you direly need a clear policy in place to protect your business against attackers. Keep in mind though, after establishing the policy, you will have to make sure that you keep reviewing it to ensure that it is up to date. Given that the technology keeps changing, you have to ensure that the policies reflect these changes.

Basically, a firewall is a device that’s used to protect networks by controlling the traffic and blocking outsiders from accessing your private data on your computer. It allows you to set individual application rules, where you allow access to some and deny others. Firewalls range from simple to more complex in terms of their functionality, where the newest models are much more sophisticated and do much more than just filter the traffic. On whether you need one, our answer would be, yes, you do! Your business will be a lot safer if you have a firewall in place. Given the various types of firewalls out there, you will have to choose wisely,

Are you still using the same password across all your accounts? If you are, you need to stop, immediately! It is dangerous and reckless to do so. You need to create a super-strong password for each account – one that would be difficult to guess. Here are some tips on how to create such a password:

Avoid reusing passwords – if you usually forget passwords and have trouble remembering all the passwords, consider using a password manager.

Use a passphrase – given that many hacking software only works for 12 or fewer characters, how about you shake things a bit, by using a passphrase? Consider something like “I Love My Business 100%”. It would be difficult to guess such a password, and it meets the complexity requirements of symbols and lower case as well as upper case letters.

Never use the same email address for personal and work accounts – when you do this and a hacker figures out the password, you will be in trouble as far more sensitive data will become vulnerable.

Always back up the important data at least once a week, and if possible, do it after every 24 hours. As a matter of fact, it’s recommended that you come up with regulations guiding you on how often and where you can back up sensitive data. The good thing about all this is that you don’t have to be manually doing this at all times, as there are software programs that can be set to automatically back up data at a chosen time. But if you don’t want to do it automatically and most probably aren’t regulated, you will want to prioritise the most important data to back up first. For example, business information, customer data, billing info, branding materials, bookkeeping, and/or orders. Our IT security team can help you figure everything out, and we can even be backing up data for you instead.

The truth is, you can’t prevent malware attacks fully from happening to you, but there are effective and reliable ways to detect and block the attacks, thereby protecting your system from malicious software. They include:

• Installing anti-spyware and anti-virus software
• Using secure authentication methods
• Using administrator accounts when it’s absolutely
• Update the software
  Control access to systems
• Implement spam protection and email security
• Monitor for suspicious activity

Internet safety can be tricky. Those sites that look reputable but they may contain, spyware traps, or you may find that they are counterfeit –they are just phishing sites posing as a real website only to lure you into their debacles and scams. So, given all this, how can you browse safely? Well, it’s quite simple actually – just follow the following steps:

Stay away from questionable sites
Stay away from free file-sharing and software application
Use a firewall and also have antivirus protection
Ensure that you regularly update your operating system
Boost the security settings for your browser
Only browse the trusted companies’ websites
If you have to download software, only do it from the sites you can trust
Get anti-spyware software to enhance protection for your system.