Cybersecurity Tips for Business Owners: The Essentials You Need to Know

Cybercrime is something you can’t ignore anymore. With how much you rely on technology and data to run your company, you can’t take any chances that a hacker will infiltrate your network and cause damage. And when the damages caused by cybercrime are expected to reach $8 trillion in 2023, it’s too big of a risk for you to ignore.

Improving cybersecurity should be your goal if you want to protect your business from cyber threats. Follow the cybersecurity tips below to fortify your business against online threats.

Force Complex Passwords

Passwords are usually one of the most overlooked security measures for people. Many individuals need to remember countless account credentials, so they do what they can to make remembering them easier. This usually means repeating easy-to-remember passwords that use relevant information in their lives.

You can’t afford for this to happen. Using easy passwords makes it easy for attackers to guess account credentials. Set a password policy and require everyone to create a complex password for each account. On top of that, require that each account use a separate password that’s different enough from the other passwords.

Use Two-Factor Authentication

Once you have a good password system, the next step is to add an additional layer of security. This means setting up two-factor authentication for every account that can use it.

Two-factor authentication will require an additional login code before logging into an account. This is a unique code that’s generated on the fly.

It gets sent by email or text message if you have those set up. You can also use an authentication app or hardware authenticator.

Using these codes means that even if a hacker has a password, they can’t access your accounts.

Protect Your Files

It’s easy to set up a basic file server or cloud hosting to serve your files for your employees. However, this also opens you up to more risk. What happens if an employee gets compromised?

If they have access to all of your company’s data, everything is at risk.

It makes more sense to secure your data. Put access control systems in place to limit file access — employees should only have access to the files they need for their jobs. Check out more on NAS security here to learn more about data security.

Use a Firewall

A firewall helps protect your business by monitoring the traffic in and out of your network. Yes, you can use Windows Firewall for individual computers. But if you want total network control, you need a hardware firewall for your office.

These firewalls have threat databases that block traffic from entering your network before it reaches individual computers. This lets you monitor and prevent threats before they have an opportunity to impact employees.

If you want to control internet access, you can also do this with a hardware firewall. You can set block lists to prevent employees from viewing specific websites.

Use Separate WiFi Networks

Offering free WiFi is a must in most business locations today. Almost everyone carries around a smartphone. If you want to offer excellent service to customers and perks to employees, you’ll offer a WiFi connection to those people.

But you also introduce risk when doing this. You can’t control the devices introduced to your WiFi networks. If someone brings in infected devices, it risks compromising your systems.

But you can minimize damage by creating different WiFi networks. Put all your guest accounts on one network and critical systems on another.

Use File Backups

Even if you secure your data for your business, that doesn’t mean your files are never at risk. Once you protect your business against hackers, you must protect it against device failure.

You never know when you’ll experience file loss. It can happen because of hardware failure, employee mistakes, and physical disasters. If you have no backups, your business is out of luck.

Sign up for a backup service to back up your most critical files. Doing this will give you a copy of the data you need to run your business and give you the ability to restore what you need quickly.

Train Your Team

You aren’t finished with your job once you put your online security systems in place. Getting the tech ready to protect your business is only the first step. The next one is training your team to make sure they understand how to stay safe online.

Put together a security training program for your employees. You can invest in online courses or hire a professional organization to come in and give training courses in person.

Whichever option you choose, ensure everyone goes through your security training to understand the best way to behave online.

Get a Third-Party Audit

Even if you have an experienced IT team helping you build a security system, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look outside to get help. The best employees can make mistakes at times. That’s why it makes sense to get a third-party opinion.

You can get help from a security firm that offers professional cybersecurity advice. An audit firm will look at your current network setup to see if they can find any security holes.

If they do, you’ll get a report detailing everything wrong. If you want, your audit firm can also help you improve your system to make it more secure.

Use These Cybersecurity Tips Today

The amount of cybercrime that happens each year keeps going up. It becomes easier for hackers to compromise individuals and businesses, and as more people and companies come online, there are more targets than ever.

That’s why you can’t afford to take business cybersecurity lightly. Make sure to learn all you can about internet security and put the cybersecurity tips above into place as soon as possible. When you do, you put your business in the best position to stay secure against internet crime.

Are you interested in learning more about making the most of technology to help your company grow? Check out more business tech tips on the blog.