9 Cybersecurity Tips Every
Business Should Know
A massive global shift to remote working environments has created
an open-season for cybercriminals. No business—big or small—is
safe. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) seemingly have a target
on their backs, so strengthening your company’s security posture is
essential right now.
There are ways to protect business data against 6. Back up your data. Daily (or more frequent) backups
ransomware attacks. Here are nine tips to help your are a requirement to recover from data corruption or
business boost resilience to cyber attacks: loss resulting from security breaches. Consider using
1. Conduct a security risk assessment. Understand a data protection tool with your MSP’s help that takes
the most critical threats to your business, like system incremental backups of data periodically throughout the
failures, natural disasters as well as malicious human day to prevent data loss.
actions and determine the impact they may have on your 7. Enable uptime. Choose a powerful data protection
company. solution that enables “instant recovery” of data and
2. Train your employees. Conduct employee awareness applications. In fact, 92% of MSPs report that clients
training across your entire workforce to educate users on with business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR)
common scams and avoidance techniques. Also, because products in place are less likely to experience significant
cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving, make downtime from ransomware and are back up and running
sure your training curriculum is relevant and updated quickly. Application downtime can significantly impact a
frequently. business’ ability to generate revenue.
3. Use multiple layers of protection. Implement a 8. Know where your data resides. The more places data
password policy that requires strong passwords and exists, the more likely it is that unauthorized individuals
monitor your employee accounts for breach intel through will be able to access it. Use data discovery tools to find
dark web monitoring. Deploy firewall, VPN, and antivirus and appropriately secure data along with business-class
technologies to ensure your network and endpoints are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that allow for
not vulnerable to attacks. Extras: Consider mandatory corporate control of data.
multi-factor authentication, ongoing network monitoring, 9. Control access to computers. Each access point poses
and hard drive encryption. an individual risk, so limit employee access to specific
4. Keep software up to date. Unpatched or out-of-date data they need to perform their jobs. Plus, administrative
software will allow some kind of threat to breach your privileges should only be given to trusted staff.
security. Cybercriminals exploit software vulnerabilities
using a variety of tactics to gain access to computers and Small businesses have a trusted advisor in managed
data. Managed service providers (MSPs) can automate service providers, who can advise them on the
this for businesses just like yours, with a remote technology, tools, and practices needed to protect
monitoring and management tool. Don’t forget to keep themselves in the fight against cybercrime. Stay vigilant,
your mobile phones up to date as well. stay in the know, and always err on the side of caution.
5. Create straightforward cybersecurity policies. Write
and distribute a clear set of rules and instructions on
cybersecurity practices for employees. This will vary from
business to business but may include policies on social
media use, bring your own device (BYOD), authentication
requirements, and more.
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