Over a quarter of all data breaches happen to small businesses. The cost of a data breach, well, it sure isn’t worth it. To keep your business’ data and infrastructure free of threats and relatively secure, small businesses will need a combination of useful technology tools and well-designed strategies. Let’s take a look at several steps your small business can take to secure itself from digital theft.

Security Software

It’s pretty evident that the best thing you can do is invest in solutions designed specifically to help keep your business safe. It’s understood that having all the proper firewalls, antivirus, and encryption services in place, and ensuring that they are properly updated, can keep a majority of the threats off your network. By protecting your data at its source, you gain the peace of mind of knowing your data has some defenses around it.

Backup Your Data

Every business should have some type of data backup in place. There is information that your business has that, if it were lost, would either make running your business impossible or at least very least, knock your business out for a time. Downtime can be extraordinarily expensive, but that is really the best you could ask for without data backup.

Today, it’s not enough to simply back up your data to a hard drive or NAS device. You need to also keep copies of your data online. With a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) device, your business gets just that. Not only can you back up your data in increments up to every 15 minutes, it happens while you work. The data is stored on the BDR device and simultaneously sends a copy to the cloud, stored in an offsite data center. That way, you know your business’ most important data is secure and ready for retrieval.

Have a Plan

There are plenty of security options for the modern business, but in security, it’s easy to have redundant costs. Here are a few ways to invest in your business’ security, without wasting capital.

Physical Security

Unfortunately, threats come from every direction. You need to have a plan for your business’ security—and, not only do you need to prioritize cybersecurity, you need to consider physical security. Today, there are inexpensive cybersecurity options that could be highly effective for protecting the physical security of your investments and your staff. In fact, a compelling case could be made for the small business to combine their IT and physical security initiatives. Some options businesses could employ include:

• Security Cameras – Affordable security camera systems are all over the place, nowadays. They improve rapidly too, so you get what you pay for.
• Access Control Systems – To keep unauthorized people out of your workspace is to protect your physical assets, and your digital ones.
• IoT – Smart tools can be great for security both as a deterrent, but also as integration that can make it simpler to do the right things.

Whatever combination of tools you decide to deploy, you will want to ensure that they do the job they are being deployed for and aren’t going to be difficult to configure with other solutions. Solution overlap could open vulnerabilities, not close them.

Train Everybody

Small businesses need to prioritize comprehensive training for their entire staff. This includes a subsequent testing strategy to ensure that the people that tend to be problematic can be trained properly. Here are a few subjects that your employees need to know about, and how to resolve them without issue.

• Phishing – Many of today’s most successful threats are the result of successful phishing messages. Staff members will have to know how to identify a phishing message and understand what to do when one is detected.
• Password Hygiene – Improper password security causes millions of data loss issues every year. Employees will need to know how to most effectively secure company resources with their password choices.
• Physical Security Best Practices – Many times a negligent employee is the reason that people outside of an organization can steal from it. Making sure that your people know what to do and are willing to do what’s necessary to protect your business is an important step in maintaining a security-minded company.

If everyone is professionally trained, fewer instances of outside theft will happen, mistake-fueled downtime will be minimized, and your business’ data and resources will be more secure.

Keep Testing It

Whatever solutions you do end up integrating into your business’ security strategy, you will want to continually test their limits to see how they would serve your company in the event that they are asked to stand up to an attempted infiltration. All your software solutions will need to be tested regularly, especially after they receive updates.

At First Column IT, all of our technicians are extremely security minded. We know that in order to keep your business running smoothly, you need to secure your data, access points, and network. Call our knowledgeable technicians at (571) 470-5594 today to learn more about how we can help your small business secure itself from outside threats.

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