Today’s business relationships have a high level of complexity, often due to interconnected systems and the need to share information at all levels. Integrations between organizations may be operationally efficient, but they can cause a lot of cybersecurity concerns. A threat assessment of your business may turn up multiple areas where hackers could infiltrate your sensitive information and business-critical systems. Cybercriminals don’t discriminate based on the size of your business: small organizations are nearly as likely to be attacked as large scale enterprises. These six cybersecurity tips provide you with an added layer of protection for your business.

1. Strengthen Your Passwords

While technology professionals generally understand the value of having incredibly secure passwords, it can be challenging to convince users the value of regularly changing their access information. Keep fighting the good fight with your users — weak passwords and those that contain information that’s easily guessed such as family names or birth dates are causing an unacceptable level of risk for your organization.

2. Control Access to Data

Perhaps you gather credit card numbers or other PII (Personally Identifiable Information) in order to charge an order or answer customer questions. That’s fine, but are there individuals who have access to this sensitive data who truly don’t need it? Protect your customers and your employees by limiting the access to certain pieces of data to a “need to know” group of individuals. If you must store this information, regularly audit access levels and login information to ensure that employees don’t have extraneous access levels when they move between departments, for instance.

3. Never Skip an Update or Patch

Software that hasn’t been updated or patched regularly is one of the most dangerous things in your business. Software vendors release patches and updates anytime there are significant changes in the platform or to fix vulnerabilities that have been discovered. Skipping these patches can have immediate and long-term negative consequences.

4. Use Data Encryption

Encrypting your data — both the data that’s in motion and data that’s resting — is an incredibly important component of cybersecurity today. If your data isn’t already encrypted in the cloud, work with your solutions provider to add another layer of protection to your data. If your critical data is protected by 256-bit security, hackers will find it difficult if not impossible to crack the code and make any sense of the encrypted data. Unfortunately, hackers have determined that they only need to block you from getting your data, hence the rise of ransomware.

5. Practice Proactive Data Protection

Protecting your information assets requires a multi-faceted approach that includes robust backup and restore options, improved internal security practices and enhanced monitoring and reporting. CoreArmor from Coretelligent provides a holistic approach to safeguard your organization with infiltration testing, vulnerability assessments, compliance reporting and discovery management reporting.

6. Control Your Endpoints

Employees are continually on the lookout for ways to become more productive regardless of their physical location. That has caused a rise in the number of laptops, tablets and smartphones that access corporate networks from remote locations or via WiFi networks. If the data being accessed on these diverse endpoints aren’t secure, cyber criminals can gain access much more easily than in the past.

Taking these steps will help reduce the risk of a cybersecurity incident that could cost your organizations tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus a great deal of lost productivity. The unfortunate reality is that many businesses will be hit by a hacker at some point. Quick notification of any breach allows you to begin remediation immediately to reduce the overall impact on your business. Contact the security professionals at Coretelligent today at 855-841-5888 or fill out our quick online contact form for a personalized initial consultation.

»

Latest Insights / Articles