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5 ways to improve your company’s cybersecurity
If your company doesn’t have proper cybersecurity measures in place, it might be time to worry - attacks on businesses are increasing, and so are their costs.
According to research by the Ponemon Institute, an average data breach can cost a company more than $7 million due to the loss of customers, disrupted operations, regulatory fines, remediation and a number of other expenses.
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Therefore, protecting your company’s data is essential. Here are 5 tried and tested tips on how you can do it with little investment.
1. Train your staff.
People are often seen as the weakest link when it comes to cybersecurity, so employee training on this particular topic is essential for any business.
The first step you should take is to introduce your staff to the key principles of cybersecurity and explain to them the importance of safe online behaviour. Phishing emails are the easiest way for a hacker to trick an employee into compromising your sensitive business data, so it is especially important to train staff to identify suspicious messages and report them to the IT department.
Note that employee training shouldn’t be a one-time event. You should provide your team members with constant updates on the current security risks and train your employees to recognize and avoid them.
2. Keep your software up to date
Updating your computers, laptops, and mobile devices is crucial to the security of your company. Even though it sounds simple and easy to do, most people tend to ignore and postpone the prompts to update software. These updates often contain bug fixes and software security patches, which are necessary to protect your devices from malicious threats. By ignoring software updates, you simply put your private data at risk.
Remember the WannaCry ransomware that hit the world in 2017? The attack that spread the malicious software through over 200,000 computers could have been easily avoided if only the latest security patches had been installed. Lesson learned. The hard way.
3. Create strong passwords
Your passwords are among the main points of vulnerability in your business security. And yet, when it comes to creating a new password, “123456” and “password” remain the most popular choices.
Passwords keep your business accounts securely locked, so creating strong ones is a must. Or, if you don’t feel like playing memory games, get a reliable password manager that will generate a safe passwords and keep them locked with one master password - the only one you will have to remember.
4. Secure your Wi-Fi network
Unprotected Wi-Fi networks are especially appealing for hackers, so it is extremely important to secure your wireless connection. If you haven’t done it yet - change your SSID name immediately and set up a strong password for your WiFi connection so that only your employees can access it.
If you want to offer wireless Internet access for your customers, don’t make the mistake of allowing them to use your office network. Allowing random people to join your private network is an open invitation for snoopers and hackers. So instead of putting your business at risk, set up a separate guest network for your visitors to use.
5. Get a reliable VPN
VPN (Virtual Private Network) is by far the most reliable online security tool you can get. What VPN does, it routes your Internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, making nearly impossible for hackers to intercept it and steal your private information.
With a trusted VPN, you can send any information to your employees and clients privately and securely. Nord VPN, for example, secures their clients’ communications with military-grade encryption and keeps no logs of their activities.
VPN also come in especially handy when you are working remotely or need to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot provided at an airport, cafe and another public place. With VPN protection, your employees can securely access their work accounts or share confidential information without putting it at risk of being exposed.
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Les Roberts - Energy Expert at UKPower
If you’ve got an issue with your energy supplier, our consumer champion Les is on hand to help. A decade in consumer affairs means Les understands how confusing energy tariffs can be, so he'll cut through the jargon to help make sure you get the best deal.