Why do small businesses carry a large security target?

why-do-small-businesses-carry-a-large-security-target

Larger enterprise has dedicated IT professionals to handle network security. As an SMB, stop asking why do small businesses carry a large security target? Protect yourself.

It is obvious that unsecured networks will lead to data leaks, data corruption, and many other problems, however, there are simple ways to protect your small business and avoid becoming a large security target.

Here are five simple IT security recommendations for small businesses to protect themselves, their data and reputation.

  1. Employees make a BIG difference to your network security. It is extremely important that you make employees aware of the importance of network security. Majority of network breaches happen due to business users that are not aware of safe IT policies and IT practices. Most times corporate users are not even aware of these policies or why they have to follow them. A corporate security policy should define the level of security and the roles and responsibilities of corporate users, IT administrators, managers and managed IT services providers. You need to ensure that an extensive IT security policy is in place and corporate users are trained.
  2. Backups, Backups, and Backups. I am sure you noticed that backups are important. All companies must have data backups in place. They need to be secure and scheduled. Daily incremental backups of data are important as well as offsite for disaster recovery. If your business suffers data loss, you need to be able to recover quickly to avoid huge downtime and loss or productivity and profitability. How much would downtime cost your business per hour?
  3. Your passwords are weak. You need to establish a strong password policy for your company.You also need to develop a strong password policy with your IT outsourcing team to ensure all network devices including routers, printers and firewalls are using strong passwords. Weak passwords will jeopardize your company security, user accounts, data, and reputation.
  4. Keep your systems up-to-date.If you work with a reputable managed IT services provider, you should already have this in play as it is the most effective way to manage your risk. Think of this as regular maintenance on your car. By having an effective business-class anti-virus, business class next generation firewall and other security tools on your network is a security base but not enough.  All these IT security tools need to be updated and patched regularly to ensure they are fully protecting your network and eliminating vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and cyber criminals.
  5. Have full controls of your data. If you limit and control access to sensitive information, you will limit the exposure of your company.Any access to information on your infrastructure that contains specific sensitive information such as files, folders and applications should be restricted.  Access should only be given if a user needs it for their specific job function, however, it should be reviewed frequently so changes can be made as necessary.

Why do small businesses carry a large security target? Simple, they do not enforce these five simple security measures to protect their business, data, and reputation.

365 iT SOLUTIONS delivers industry leading Managed IT ServicesIT Support ServicesIT Outsourcing ServicesTech Support Services and Cloud Services in the Toronto area.

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