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As a small business owner, you know better than anyone just how hard it is to juggle everything. From ensuring operations run smoothly, to crafting a great customer experience, to coordinating a team of amazing people, you have your eye on a lot of moving pieces. You probably know that cybersecurity is critical, but you either don’t have time to manage it or don’t know where to start. Protecting your business from cyber attacks is no trivial matter, and if you aren’t properly prepared, these attacks can have devastating consequences.
But how do you prepare for cyber threats? Many small business owners have no background in IT and are worried about implementing effective cybersecurity strategies. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as you might think! Here are our top five tips for successfully implementing cybersecurity in your small business.
Have a Cyber Security Plan in Place
In order to effectively implement new cybersecurity procedures, you’ll first need to create a comprehensive cybersecurity plan. This plan doesn’t need to be a 50-page document detailing every last thing your team needs to know–it just needs to be enough to keep your business safe.
Once your plan is set up, it’s critical for you and your employees to apply it. Your plan will allow team members to react quickly to a cyber threat, but you’ll need to instill the importance of this plan in every staff member. Regularly go over the policies and procedures for cyber threats so that your employees know exactly how to respond when something goes wrong.
Educate Yourself and Your Team on Trending Cyber Risks
Human error is the top cause of cyber attacks across businesses of all sizes. This human error often occurs because a team member is uninformed about cyber risks. No matter the error a team member makes, whether it’s falling for a phishing scam or using an easy-to-guess password, the consequences could be catastrophic.
One of the most effective ways to prevent cyber attacks is to educate yourself and your team. We recommend scheduling regular meetings to discuss cybersecurity and risks. This will keep the entire team up to date and limit opportunities for a cyber threat to negatively affect your business.
Create a Policy for Secure Passwords Using MFA
Though it might seem trivial, secure passwords are extremely important. If your passwords are overly simplistic, hackers can easily gain access to your sensitive data. Simply strengthening your team’s passwords makes it much more difficult for a data breach to occur.
Creating a policy for secure passwords is a simple but effective way to increase cybersecurity in the workplace. This policy should detail everything involved in password creation, from all the necessary characters to the use of a password manager.
To make your passwords even more secure, you can add multi-factor authentication (MFA) to the policy. MFA requires a user to provide additional verification factors beyond their username and password. This is usually done via a one-time password (OTP) sent to your email or phone.
Hire an MSP for Your Cybersecurity
Sometimes the most effective way to solve a problem is to leave it to the experts. A managed service provider, or MSP, provides businesses of all sizes with professional cybersecurity services.
MSPs like Alt-Tech Inc. are dedicated to providing high-quality, expert cybersecurity services to their clients. They offer the opportunity to delegate all that time-consuming IT work to someone else, so you can focus on other important tasks.
Keep Software Up to Date
Operating systems and software are constantly releasing new updates. It might be frustrating to spend so much time downloading them all, but keeping them up to date is more important than you might think!
Many software updates are security updates. This means that the software provider has found a potential vulnerability in their system, and it needs fixing. They will update and reinforce their code to patch up this hole, but until you download the update, hackers can still take advantage of that vulnerability. Because of this, it’s critical to keep essential software up to date.
Protect Your Business with an Expert Cyber Security Team
If you’re in need of professional cybersecurity services, look no further than Alt-Tech Inc. Our team of cybersecurity experts is prepared to keep your business safe. Contact us today to get started.
