Here’s a sobering statistic for small businesses seemingly too insignificant to worry about cybersecurity: 75% of small business owners in the US reported being affected by at least one cyberattack in 2023. Not taking your company’s cyber defenses seriously amounts to accepting the potentially devastating consequences of an eventual, inevitable incident.
Even small businesses with meager or non-existent cybersecurity budgets can proactively reduce the chances of becoming victims. Here’s a basic primer on the core steps you can take to achieve this.
Employ System & Network Security Tools
Many cyber defenses can be automated, providing a baseline for comprehensive security. Firewalls and intrusion prevention systems work on the network level. They block harmful outside connections, balance incoming traffic, and prevent users from interacting with known malicious websites.
Individual devices connecting to the network benefit from anti-malware. Regularly scanning their systems can expose and quarantine threats like viruses, ransomware, and rootkits before they can infect other systems and disrupt normal operations.
Employee Training
As cybersecurity tools become better at identifying and mitigating threats, attackers increasingly focus on humans as the most unreliable factor in your defense strategy. Countless scams, phishing emails, and other types of social engineering target unaware employees.
Their goal is to extort money or trick victims into revealing their account login information. Once they’re inside your systems, attackers can lock them down or steal sensitive data, such as customer information or company secrets.
Investing a little to bring everyone up to speed on recognizing and preventing digital threats now will pay dividends for your business’s long-term cyber resilience.
Maintain Regular Software Updates
The operating systems and programs your business depends on can also become security loopholes the longer their security vulnerabilities remain unpatched. Enforcing automatic updates on all devices guarantees that all software is protected from known exploits.
Additionally, it’s prudent to create a standardized list of programs allowed on company devices as well as establish BYOD guidelines employees can follow to minimize risk.
Use a Business Password Manager
Secure access to all internal resources and third-party dependencies is vital for intrusion prevention. Employees lacking cybersecurity awareness may not use secure credentials, leading to takeovers that can affect multiple accounts if the same password was carelessly used for them all.
Password managers mitigate such risks. They generate complex, unique passwords and storing them securely within an encrypted vault. Employees can fill credentials in automatically without having to remember or leave them out in the open. A password generator may also let admins introduce two-factor authentication for crucial accounts, preventing the use of stolen passwords for unauthorized access.
Implement a Data Backup Strategy
While some cyber threats are stealthy, others do damage prominently in hopes of immediately sabotaging your business. For example, ransomware locks down system files to make computing resources inaccessible, and malicious insiders may delete your databases as revenge. Even if there’s no immediate cyberattack, aging hardware and the ever-present possibility of natural disaster jeopardize your data’s safety and integrity.
Regular and frequent backups of key databases and other digital assets are crucial for maintaining business continuity. Even a standard 3-2-1 approach to data backups will significantly improve your resilience and speed up disaster recovery.
Take Control of Your Digital Footprint
Small businesses need to balance cybersecurity with growth through an active online presence. The necessity of maintaining a public face also leads to situations where entities you have no control over collect and spread undesirable or even false information.
This can negatively impact your cybersecurity because it makes targeted attacks like phishing and social engineering easier. Taking down unsanctioned sources of information on your company and employees is time-consuming and ineffective if undertaken on your own. The best data removal services can do a much more thorough job of lowering your vulnerability to attacks that hinge on harvesting such information by getting data brokers to take it down.
Conclusion
Small businesses face countless obstacles and disadvantages in a landscape of growing monopolies and increasingly sophisticated digital threats. Adopting the tools and practices outlined above isn’t a recommendation — it’s a prerequisite for doing business in a trustworthy, sustainable manner.
James is the head of marketing at Tamoco
