Cybersecurity Tips for SMB-Owners: As the number of SMB-owners using online services is rising, the cumulative number of cyber-risks is growing, as well. This is how the law of supply and demand works.
How Can SMB-Owners Improve Their Online Security
Businesspeople planning to launch new ventures need to include these variables in their formulas. In the next few paragraphs, we’ll discuss some common cybersecurity threats for SMBs and some prevention tips.
1) Bring a proper password and login policy
Every business owner is responsible for their business security. That’s why it’s important to do everything possible to maintain business stability via some effective decisions that will keep your enterprise protected.
For starters, you need to educate your employees and outsourcers. You may begin with a presentation or a seminar in which you’ll show what dangers lie behind cyberattacks. Provide them with some statistical data, graphs, and explainer videos in which they’ll see the actual proportions of damage that such threats can cause.
Such training sessions need to be mandatory. While you can send them educational materials to their email addresses, they should be present in person during the sessions.
For instance, you might tell them that when they’re using company computers or software tools, they always need to login their accounts. Those login sessions should expire if they don’t touch the mouse or do anything on the computer for five or ten minutes.
Likewise, when they’re leaving their work computer to do something else, they should log out. It may be enough just to put their computers to sleep if that automatically ends the current login session.
Finally, you should teach your employees how to create strong passwords and prevent potential intruders from getting into your system.
2) Ensure cloud security
It doesn’t pay off for the largest number of small businesses to pay a dedicated server. As a result, most such ventures opt for shared servers. This means that they keep their business or website data together with other businesses. Even though such servers are usually protected in some ways, there are more efficient ways of keeping business data online.
One of them is cloud solutions. From G Suite and Microsoft Azure to less known but reliable cloud management companies, there are many solutions on the market.
It’s important that the company you select to handle your cloud data has a good reputation. If other business entities are satisfied with them, it’s a sort of guarantee that they do a good job.
Another important criterion is their backup capability. This means that even in the worst-case scenario, they would be able to back up all your business data and ensure business continuation.
3) Work with ethical hackers
More and more businesses work with ethical hackers in order to increase the security level for their companies.
These are security experts who don’t try to steal business data or break into a computer system, what black-hat hackers usually do.
Ethical hackers are here to help SMBs and large companies identify the weaknesses of their computer systems.
They will do everything that a malicious hacker would do but with the intent to help you improve your security features and stay safe on the Web.
Most companies providing cybersecurity have such professionals on their payroll and that’s the best way to hire them.
4) Turn to managed IT-services
We’ve already pointed out the advantage of cloud services from the aspect of business security. But this shouldn’t be the only outsourced IT-service for your business. When business owners pretend that they know everything, their companies eventually suffer.
Turning to professionals in other related niches will increase the level of professionalism in your entire company, including cybersecurity.
For starters, don’t meddle with the creation of your business website. You’ll lose a lot of time and you’ll probably cover neither the design nor the security features. As web developers working for TuiSpace web design company clarify it, business websites built by reliable professionals will always be safer than those created by free tools. For some SMBs, this could be just enough, but serious SMBs need to take serious care of their website securities.
What’s more, think about managed accounting services. Keeping all your financial statements, balance sheets, and tax reports on your office computers is neither safe nor convenient. Professional accounting services know how to deal with those elements at affordable rates and in a secure way.
Staying safe on the Internet is equally important as finishing your projects on time and paying taxes. If you take all the precautionary measures to keep your business data intact, you’ll ensure long-term efficiency and eliminate the risk of downtime.
Business owners who need to interrupt their business operations due to security issues usually experience losses on two fronts. They can’t perform their business operations, and their clients may start thinking that they’re not careful enough.
Ensuring online security is therefore of essential importance for every SMB-venture. If you apply the tips from this guide, you’ll significantly reduce the risk of hacker’s attack and other potential issues.