For those that don’t know, a zero trust policy involves a lot of protection to your accounts. Any person trying to access an account will have to go through a strict verification process to get into the account. Some of the verifications will include two factor authentication and possible approval from an administrator on the account. If you are within the network parameter or not, the strict guidelines will apply. Today, we will go into detail about why a zero trust security policy may be a good idea.

Assume everyone has bad intentions 

This is the basic principle in the zero tolerance policy. Assume everyone is out to get you. Do not blindly trust anyone. This eliminates trust within an organization, but not in a detrimental way. Trust is nonexistent rather than lost in a zero trust architecture. With everyone having to be given access when trying to view, edit, and search through your company’s information, there’s no need to worry about who may have access to your accounts. This way, anyone with access to your network will be approved and people with lackluster passwords or don’t worry about security within your organization won’t be a liability. 

Multi-Factor Authentication

Two factor authentication is a great way to securely log into accounts and grant access to those who need access to your accounts. If permission is always needed to access an account, you will know exactly who is in the account. You can deny access and take action accordingly if your password has been compromised. 

Instead of just two factor authentication, multi-factor authentication offers more steps in verifying a user. This will also provide more security to the accounts that you are trying to protect. 

Privileged User Access

This type of access will make it so that not every user has equal access to all information even after they have been authenticated to log in. If a salesperson shouldn’t have access to your company’s finance documents, then they won’t be able to get access. This will make it easier for your I.T. team to know where a breach started. Your sensitive information is always at risk, so protecting it should be top priority. 

Monitoring

This should be standard, but monitor your accounts! Always check to ensure that your security measures are working and all of your team is on board for whatever plan you have. This will make it easier to point out suspicious activity and spot a potential breach of your information. 

With a zero trust security policy, your information should be locked down at all times. While verifying each and every user and limiting everyone’s access, it will be much more difficult for your information to leak. 

To find out how we can help, contact us today!

Everyone is Vulnerable

Knowing that all businesses are susceptible to ransomware attacks is a start. Big agencies like Pipeline as well as locally owned small businesses are targets for ransomware attacks. Your team needs to understand that they are all targets and could be targeted at any time. Let them know what to look for and to not download anything onto their devices if it isn’t a 100% trusted source. 

Secure Accounts 

Securing all of your company accounts is something you must do in order to keep your information safe. This can be guiding your employees on how to make a good password, enabling two-factor authentication, and using a password manager for all of your business accounts. All three of these solutions make it harder to access information and accounts that hold important data. Using these strategies will ensure that your data is protected. 

Be Cautious of what you Download

We have already mentioned that you and your team must only download something if it is from a trusted source. If you voluntarily download something that has malicious intent, even without knowing it, you have the potential to kill your organization. Malware is malicious software that users have to download themselves. Being mindful of what you are downloading at all times is one simple thing that will increase the security of your business. 

Beware of Suspicious Emails

Knowing who an email is coming from is always a good idea. Cyber criminals will attempt to disguise themselves as one of your coworkers or superiors in an attempt to get access to important information. They may also disguise themselves as someone who has or needs information such as a bank or creditor. Looking at the email address that sent the email can tell you if it is a legit email or not. Checking external links or downloadable files in an email to assure that they are what they say they are is also important. This is an expansion on being mindful from our previous tip, but it can very well save your company. 

Ransomware attacks are on the rise. If you can prepare your team so that if you’re targeted your information will be safe. Response time is extremely important to cyber attacks and preparing for them is even more important. If you prepare properly, then there should be no need to worry! 

Educate but Don’t preach

The first thing you need to do is to understand the difference between teaching and preaching. Set up individual or group meetings and give your team the knowledge they need to set up cybersecurity measures. Once they have the tools and knowledge, just give a hard deadline on when people should have these systems implemented. Check up and let them know that you’re there to answer any questions they have. One thing to remember, don’t preach or get on anyone too soon because the hard deadline is already set. 

Have Clear Rules

Along with a hard deadline, make sure you have a standard set of rules that your company must follow. This can be about sharing passwords, mandating two factor authentication, using a password manager, or any other rules that you want to have set. Making this clear and sticking with them is key to a successful implementation. As the leader, you need to follow these rules to set an example so that the implementation process goes smoothly.

Have Someone to Turn to 

This one is the most important for sustained success. In our first step, we said that you should make your team aware that you are available for any needs that they may have through the implementation process and beyond. Having a point of contact to communicate and help with any problems that arise is essential to success. The point of contact will also ensure that all your employees are staying up to date with keeping all of your information secure. 

Plan for an Attack

No matter how many measures and how secure you think you are, a breach can still happen. While this can be devastating, there should always be a plan in place in case an information breach happens. First, letting your employees know what a cyber attack can look like in the implementation process is a good way to limit risk. The plan is typically handled by your I.T. professionals and has to do with malware detection, address issues, and data theft. 

Having an information breach can be devastating to a small business. Taking the right steps to prevent them before they happen can save your business. For more tips on this or for help getting started, give us a call today or set up contact us here. 

Better for your clients/customers

If you go digital, communication and collaboration will be much easier in the workspace. It doesn’t stop with internal work, collaboration and communication with your customers will also be much easier. Going paperless can be beneficial to businesses in many different industries. Instead of going through years worth of physical files, a simple search in a database can find exactly what you need and it will be ready to send off, print, or edit as you see fit for the job.

Another example would be shared documents. This will allow you to delegate access to whoever may need it outside of your company’s network so that you are able to keep information as safe as possible when collaborating with clients. The possibilities are endless when you go digital, even outside of your work’s physical location. 

Easier for employees

On the flip side of everything we just mentioned, it is all more convenient for your employees to operate in a space like this. They save time, money, and energy when they don’t have to sift through hard copies of things they don’t need. They might not even be looking in the right place when they are searching for something. If everything is in one database, it will only take seconds to find.

Collaboration within the organization will be much easier as well. Topics of conversation can be more fluent when everyone is looking at the same thing on their respective screens, instead of looking for the right piece of information on the physical copies. Life is simply easier when your company goes digital for so many reasons. 

Environmental Impact

The impact on the environment is also reduced when your company goes digital. Not using as much paper, reducing the energy that your office uses with physical copies, and reducing waste with printouts that are able to be viewed on a monitor are able to significantly reduce your carbon footprint. Your company may also see savings on their energy bills and costs related to your printing solutions. If you aren’t printing as much you will save on ink and paper. Saving the environment and saving your company money at the same time is something that every business is interested in, and going digital does just that. 

If making the lives of your employees easier, making communication easier for clients/customers to you, reducing costs while also saving the environment interests you, then going digital with your company’s solutions is the right decision for you. Call us today to see how we can help!

Cloud Breaches

If your company operates in a cloud environment this will be targeted the most. This is an extremely secure structure with two-factor authentication, secure passwords, and the correct access being given. Two-factor authentication will allow you to be notified whenever anyone (including yourself) is trying to log into your account. You will even be given the option to deny the log in.

Making a secure password will help secure your account from making it easy to get into and correct access will limit the amount of people who have access to certain documents and files within your cloud structure. This will limit the number of attempts that will be made on crucial information within your database. If all of this is done, your company should be secure, but that won’t stop the attempts at your account. Taking these steps will help to prevent breaches amongst all of the threats within your company. 

Remote Workers can be a threat

Having remote workers is great. They are just as productive, spreading infection during a pandemic is decreased, and costs can potentially be reduced long term. All of this sounds like remote work is a no brainer, but there are certain security threats that can make a company think twice about how many remote workers they have. Remote workers are a part of the reason that cyber threats increased during the pandemic. Home wifi networks aren’t as secure and hackers took advantage of this. Breaches were more and more frequent as the remote workers continued to work from home. Making sure your remote workers have taken the necessary steps to protect your company’s network is essential to its survival. 

Set a good example

Starting from the top down is a great way to implement a security strategy within your company. If you are in a position of leadership, just telling someone to strengthen their cybersecurity tactics isn’t good enough. You need to do it yourself and lead the company into a more secure state. This means training, implementing, and using the security measures yourself first and then getting your team to get on board. This will prove that your company is serious about these security measures and that it is a permanent fixture in your company. 

Security measures are essential to the survival of your company. If they are measured carefully and you make sure that everyone buys in, especially remote workers, your company will be better for it. Knowing that you are secure will make it easier to focus on work, rather than who is targeting your information. 

Increasing Privacy 

This first trend carries over from 2020. People are still working from home and if people are back in the office there is still a chance that a breach can happen. Countries themselves are starting to implement more security measures because they understand how information is being collected. Businesses and individuals need to prepare for these changes and even take an initiative on data protection.

More and more cyberattacks 

With people increasing to come back to work or staying at home a lot of movement is happening. This can cause people to be lax with security measures just to make the transition faster. This is not the way to go because hackers are at it more than ever. To understand these security threats click here, and just be aware that hackers are a threat now more than ever. 

5g implementation

Global implementation of 5g across all facets of life is something to be excited about. This is great for convenience, speed, and the growth of technology in the future, but it poses threats as well. Cyber attacks will be more sophisticated with the growth of technology and 5g is a part of that. Security will have to be quicker in development than that of the hackers who will have access to the same technology. 

Keeping everyone up to date

Having your employees, no matter the department, informed on what is expected from a security standpoint is beneficial to the health of the entire company. We always recommend that everyone has a strong password and for more on that click here. This is a trend that should be popular every year! Keeping up to date with security trends is important to the health of every company. 

Staying safe and secure is something that we always put at the forefront of our company. It allows us to work freely to be the best we can for our customers. If you take this initiative with your company it will allow your business to be better. All of these trends point to increasing security measures in 2021 and beyond.

2020 wasn’t just a bad year for public health and safety. It was on record through 3 quarters the worst year ever as far as data breaches go. In the first half alone 36 billion records were exposed due to cyber attacks. This isn’t only alarming but should raise questions as to how business owners are being targeted for information breaches that are targeting your information. These attacks are typically motivated for financial gain as well as for information that could be of value.

According to Verizon 45% of breaches used hacking, while 22% and 17% involved malware and phishing respectively. There are multiple ways that your company and network can be targeted. You and your employees must be aware of how an attack happens and what you can do to prevent one. For more on one way click here. 

On average a serious cybersecurity breach costs a company $200,000. This can be deadly to a small business. Many cannot take a hit this big and it will put them out of business for good. If it doesn’t do that trust can be lost in your company. You could be forced to reduce your operation to a small fraction of how large it was before. None of these are what you want for your small business.

This is frightening to imagine so not letting it happen to your business is essential to its survival. Taking preventative measures before something happens is always a good way to prevent this from happening to your small business. Click here for more on this. Losing your company may not happen every time, but having a security breach can have long lasting effects on your business.

Long lasting effects on your company is what can kill it if the initial breach does not. One major way this can happen is losing the trust of your clients/customers. Losing this is just as bad as closing your business. If clients don’t trust your company, then what can you do? Your reputation is always at stake and losing a good one is something that not all small businesses can come back from.

Losing trust is something no business can afford. Leaving a bad reputation behind can lead to a slower downfall to your business, instead of being crushed by the initial cyber attack. This is something that can wear on your business for years and it can take years to come back from, if your business is capable. 

Data Security is important to your business. Having your employees trained on how to prevent information breaches is one major way to help prevent one from happening. Another way is to trust in a third party I.T. company so that someone is constantly monitoring your security situation and can immediately take action if something goes wrong. A serious breach can be detrimental to a small business through financial loss, information leaks, and lost trust from your clients/customers. Nobody wants this to happen to them so taking necessary steps to secure your network is always the first step to making sure your business is safe. 

Remote Work Works 

On average if optimal conditions are given remote workers are 15-40% more productive. This is huge. People are more productive from home and it saves your company money. There is a potential for large amounts of saving and resource costs associated with having a physical office location. There was a problem with security, however, when people switched to remote work. Security became an issue due to unsecure networks and people using personal devices at home. This can be addressed as the cybersecurity world is ever growing. There will be much more news on this as 5g rolls out globally and becomes more available to people. 

Safety First 

Cybersecurity wasn’t just an issue with remote workers. We learned that cybersecurity is more important than we thought. Cybercriminals evolved with remote workers and the pandemic to target people at home and are now targeting people at work. For more on how to stay safe while working from home or just how to stay safe in general click here.

With cybersecurity education and implementation are the best ways to prevent anything catastrophic from happening with your information. You should educate yourself and your team on the necessary precautions to take to prevent a breach from happening. Implementing a plan on what to do when something happens will also benefit your company. Trusting a third part I.T. and cybersecurity company is always recommended if you don’t know much about the world of cybersecurity. 

Be Aware of what you do 

On the side of security being aware of what we do while working from home or at a company location is always very important. This can minimize simple mistakes that can lead to emergencies across the company. You should always be on the lookout for suspicious emails and texts, fake emails pretending to be a coworker or boss, or website’s that aren’t secure. If you are on alert the chances of one of these threats compromising your company are almost zero. 

2020 taught us a lot and we need to take the lessons seriously and improve based upon them. If we do the transition into 2021 and beyond will be smoother than the on-the-fly adjustments that we had to make. Remote working is something that will most likely continue for a long time now that we see that it works, but we need to make sure that the transfer to this is safe and secure for years to come. 

Cost Saving 

When planning in any business and for anything involving cost is always a factor. Backup plans can be expensive. They take valuable time for employees to learn, money into hardware and software put into place. Recovering from the disaster may cost you a few dollars. Having the right plan will cost you less valuable time in the moment and it will be less taxing on your employees. 

With our disaster recovery plan we already have a plan in place and your employees will already know what is going to happen. Emails and phone calls will simply be redirected to employee phones to keep communication lines as open as possible. 

Productivity and Retention

With a good disaster recovery plan in place your employees won’t miss a beat. They will know the simple plan and execute it so that they are just as productive while your systems may be down. This will reflect your business as responsible and your clients/customers won’t notice a difference. Clients looking will be happier with your service if there are no interruptions when they need to contact you. 

Features

As previously mentioned there will be redirects when emails, phones, and voicemails are concerned. The biggest feature within this service is keeping communication open so that your business does not falter at all. Keeping communication lines open are key to keeping your employees productive and your customers happy. For more information on our disaster recovery program, call us today!

Online shopping is so popular today, especially with the rise of the covid-19 pandemic and people trying to limit contact as much as possible. With more online transactions being made, there are going to be more attempts made to breach your accounts for information. Today, we are going to give you some tips on how to stay safe while shopping online. 

Strong Passwords 

This is something that we will always advise no matter what the account. A strong password is the most surefire way to avoid a cyber attack because it is so much more difficult to get into an account with a secure password. Password managers and two factor authentication are other ways to lock down accounts to go along with your strong password. One thing that we recommend is a “passphrase”. This is abbreviating a phrase that you typically use or will remember. This phrase will be accompanied by a combination of unique characters to disguise it.

Check for the Lock

Buying from trusted retailers such as amazon or ebay is smart. If you are on a website that isn’t as common check for the lock icon next to the URL on the webpage to know if it is secure. If this icon is not there then that website shouldn’t be trusted. Doing some research about how trustworthy the site is will also tell you if it is worth shopping on.

A Deal Too Good to be True

This one should be common sense, but we get some caught up in thinking “this is too good to pass up on”. These “great deals” can pop up on fake websites disguised as something you would typically trust, in text messages from unfamiliar numbers, and in sketchy emails. Be aware of the “deal of a lifetime” and check for the lock icon again. 

Reputation 

Sticking to websites like we already mentioned (amazon, Walmart, eBay, and others) is always a good idea. They will typically carry most of what you are looking for and their reputation carries weight. 

Credit over Debit

Using a credit card when checking out online is always the best idea. Even trusted websites get breached from time to time and your security measures might not catch the intruder in time. Using a credit card gives you a few advantages. The first advantage is that if anything were to be breached the hacker wouldn’t have direct access to your bank accounts and the information tied to it. Most credit card companies also offer a 0% liability for fraud so you may be annoyed at having to order a new credit card, but it won’t come at any cost to you.

If you follow these 5 steps you should always stay safe and secure while shopping online!

Costs

Businesses are always finding a way to cut costs while making sure productivity is increasing. This will assure that you are ahead of your competition with making costs less of a worry. It will prioritize what you do best so that you are at the top of your game. This is exactly what outsourcing your I.T. solutions will do. You will not have to pay a salary, benefits, and training for a full I.T. staff. Hardware and software costs will also be eliminated in relation to information technology. Your third party company will alway be up to date on hardware and cloud softwares.

Professionals Always On-Hand 

Having an outsourced I.T. system will benefit your I.T. and cyber security solutions because the company you work with has multiple different clients. This will allow them to know the latest technologies that could improve your business and make you run more efficiently. Another thing having a third party company will allow your system to always be monitored. This means problems will be stopped before they happen and if they do happen they will be worked on immediately instead of having a problem arise and you being stuck trying to figure it out alone. This can save your company crucial time and make problem solving a second hand worry. 

Information Safety

This can mean two things: your information is safer from cyber attacks and your physical information is backed up. Third party companies are constantly working to catch your system trying to be breached and it will actively work on the hack as soon as it happens if it is not prevented. In the event of a storm, fire, or any other unseen disaster that ruins hard copies of information/hardware your third party I.T. company will make sure that your information is constantly being backed up (daily if not more often). This means the latest bit of information is always being stored so you don’t have to worry about a disaster damaging your network permanently. 

 While all of these benefits are great the greatest benefit lies within your own company. With a third party I.T. solutions company handling your cyber security, information, and network health you and your company can always focus on doing what it does best. This means that your production levels will rise and the costs will fall making you better than ever. Call us today to see what we can do for you!

Cost

A cloud based architecture will help greatly in reducing costs for your business. It doesn’t matter if you are using a third party I.T. service or if you own your company. There is no setup investment with cloud architecture other than the time it takes to do it and it saves energy. If you are doing all of your I.T. in house you will also be continually using more energy over time. With cloud computing you get a more efficient system to help run your network.

Flexibility

Was your business affected by all of the work from home orders that happened in early 2020? If you answered yes, then a cloud based architecture could have really helped in this situation and you should consider it in case anything ever happens like this.

The flexibility that the cloud has is that it will allow everyone to stay connected even if you aren’t together. This makes collaborating on projects, internal and external meetings, and any process that is done together easy. The best part is that you don’t have to be in the same physical location. This has practical use in an every day operation and not just a pandemic as well. If you are in an office where you are separated from people this can make collaboration and communication easier. You and your employees won’t have to leave your desk/office to have a meeting with your team.

Updates

The benefit of working with us is that you will get automatic updates! This helps make your network and information so much more secure and ensure safety throughout long periods of time. That isn’t the only thing to do to make your network secure, but updates are one way to make a safer business. 

A cloud architecture enables your business to be better by cutting costs, allowing for more flexibility, and security. We offer a secure network for your business along with a cloud strategy that sets your business up for success. For more information on how we can make your business better call us today or view our multiple services tab on our website.