Staying Proactive in Cybersecurity should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and not just for your business. People with malicious intent are always after your information, whether that is private or professional. Once information is leaked, there is no getting it back. Trust can be lost within your organization, which can be crippling. Small businesses are 60% more likely to fail within just 6 months of a serious breach in their security system, so why take the chance? Continue to read on for information on why you should be staying proactive in the cybersecurity world. 

Threat Hunt

Threat hunting is basically exactly what it sounds like. This is running a fine-toothed comb through all of your information systems and actively trying to catch something before an issue happens. Threat hunting can be looking for suspicious emails, access requests, or any suspicious activity with your accounts or employee requests. Sometimes the threat is already present and finding it before an emergency arises is more important than anything. 

Clean Email

We mentioned email above, and for good reason. Cleaning your email and looking through each one as it comes in can be a huge benefit for security purposes. Old emails can pile up and threats can be hard to spot in thousands of unopened emails. Looking at each email as they come in can also be beneficial to your entire organization. You can alert your I.T. team of the suspicious email and the rest of the company will know to look out for it. People looking to gain access to your company typically target more than one employee at a time. 

Offline Data Backup

On the chance that information is destroyed, stolen, or inaccessible for any reason, an off-site/offline data backup can save your company. Lost data can mean lost revenue and trust in your organization. Once this is gone, it most likely won’t come back or it will take an unthinkable amount of time for your company to regain its trust. When small businesses do fail, it is also because a loss of trust, not simply revenue/cost of recovering from a cyber attack. 

We offer the FileMax Data backup and this can help your company on a daily basis or in a time of need. These files are easily accessible so that your employees are never without access to important information. Read more here.

Update and Scan

Updating applications and scanning data are key to having a secure system. Updates aren’t typically different for end users, but they fix bugs and security holes that have been recognized or compromised in the past. Scanning is a type of threat hunting and we discussed why that’s so important. To reiterate: you’ll catch a problem before it actually becomes a widespread emergency for your entire company. 

Check back soon for another blog on how to continue to keep your information safe.

Cybersecurity has proven to be one of the most important things in a business, especially recently. Many businesses have transitioned to virtual work and spend more time online, which leaves more risk for hackers. This is why going all-in on cybersecurity has been more important recently and will become even more important moving forward. It is crucial to understand what part of your cybersecurity is weak, how hackers have unlimited attempts to access your information, and why having a false sense of security can greatly affect your business.

Weakest Link

Assessing cybersecurity is an important way to understand what steps need to be taken to have the best cybersecurity possible. While assessing, it is important to identify the weak link and find ways to strengthen it. It has been discovered that 95% of security breaches are due to human error, which shows that the weakest link of cybersecurity can be people.

This can be solved by preparing your employees and training them on cybersecurity. If an employee is not prepared to look out for signs of security breaches, they cannot be expected to be able to prevent those situations from happening. Something as simple as someone having a weak password can possibly lead to a whole business getting hacked. Focusing on secure passwords and only giving necessary people access to crucial information can help to decrease the risk when a hacker accesses accounts. 

Unlimited Attempts

When trying to gain access to a business’s information, hackers have unlimited chances to get in. Computer programs can be set up to be constantly trying to guess the passwords that protect important information. It only takes one correct attempt for your information to be breached. This puts an even higher emphasis on making sure everything is locked down. Being aware that your information is constantly being targeted is important when setting up a security system. 

False Sense of Security

Being overconfident with cybersecurity can greatly negatively affect a business. If you are overconfident, there are things that can go wrong because you may not be prepared. 90% of businesses are confident that their cybersecurity works efficiently, but the percentage of businesses that actually are prepared is much lower. If the risk cannot be assessed, then the correct measures cannot be taken to protect information. One thing that can help to cure this false sense of security is being proactive with cybersecurity and admitting that there is work that needs to be done to protect your business’s information. 

All of this information is great when it comes to knowing why cybersecurity is so important. It only takes a single misstep for your security to be lackluster. Crossing everything off of the list of a good cybersecurity system is important to always keep your information protected. To find out how we can help, click here.