How to Build a Cybersecurity Strategy to Protect Your Small Business
Small-business owners have one primary focus: growing their business. That often means that they wear several hats at once: They’re opening the doors in the morning, working with customers or employees all day, taking care of administrative tasks, and drumming up new business. They are focused primarily on customers and revenue, but often serve as a jack of all trades when it comes to just about everything else–from HR to legal to marketing.
Security at small businesses is an especially underserved function, and you can’t fault small-business owners for underestimating the risks. Many of the cybersecurity attacks and breaches we see splashed across headlines happen at huge enterprise organizations.
That doesn’t mean, however, that small businesses aren’t a target to hackers. On the contrary, most small businesses have been attacked. According to Accenture’s Cost of Cybercrime Study, 43% of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses, but only 14% are prepared to defend themselves.
There are real stakes, and the sophistication of modern security threats continues to advance. And while most small businesses won’t be able to pull together the resources of an enterprise security team, there are still key steps business owners can take to begin closing security loopholes and protecting themselves now. It all starts with an end-to-end strategy covering traditional IT security, mobile protection, policymaking, access control, WiFi security, and more. As you build out your cybersecurity strategy, here are seven key pillars you’ll want to focus on.
- Understand the risk and identify key digital assets
From phishing, ransomware, and malvertising to clickjacking, drive-by-downloads and software vulnerabilities, there’s an ever-growing list of threats posing a danger to small businesses. Understand the threat landscape and learn about what a successful attack could mean for your company. From there, identify your key digital assets: From the hubs of your network to the personal devices used by your employees and your customers, take stock of your digital landscape so you can learn how to protect it.
- Protect your network access.
When building out your cybersecurity strategy, take a comprehensive approach, ensuring firewall, endpoint, and WiFi network security. Firewalls are still one of the most effective security measures, monitoring and controlling network traffic and placing a barrier between trusted internal networks and the outside world. Your WiFi network, whether internal or customer-facing, is a ripe target, and vulnerabilities have been found in even the most secure networks. Use a secure router in a safe location and secure keys that require a password to join. Every device on your network–whether company-owned devices or employee or guest personal devices–is also a potential point of weakness.
Now, with more and more employees logging on remotely, maintaining end-to-end security can be even more difficult. Implement end-point protection on your company-owned devices to continually scan and update for the latest protections. For remote workers, consider adding a business-grade connection to their home offices.
- Safeguard your access credentials.
Implement an access control strategy, determining which people within your company need access to which types of data. On top of access control policies, ensure that the credentials of everyone in your organization remain protected. Implement password management and educate employees about the use of strong passwords. Click on Page 2 to continue reading…
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