In the current environment, cybersecurity is essential for businesses of all sizes. Many small or medium-sized businesses find themselves without adequate cybersecurity, either as a result of believing that they don’t need it or simply overlooking it among the many demands that come with running a business.
Unfortunately, the reality is that smaller businesses are often seen as an easy target, making them at high risk for a cyberattack. To stay adequately protected, both small and big businesses must develop effective cybersecurity infrastructure. This can feel like an overwhelming task for smaller businesses: There are concerns about limited budgets, IT expertise, and having the knowledge to select from the high volume of cybersecurity solutions available.
The good news is that there are many affordable and user-friendly solutions to make it feasible for all businesses to implement effective cybersecurity. To help ensure that your business is protected, here are six cybersecurity must-haves for businesses of all sizes.
Use protection against ransomware
Ransomware is an ever-increasing problem and is one of the biggest risks for small businesses. It’s particularly concerning because ransomware takes control of files on an infected network and essentially holds them for ransom. What’s more, much of the traditional anti-virus software is ineffective against this threat.
As a result, it’s important to use ransomware protection, like that provided by in order to automatically detect and stop ransomware attacks. Acronis, a cybersecurity-company that provides cyber protection solutions for businesses to protect data in local, cloud, remote, and mobile devices, offers effective ransomware protection for small businesses. ZoneAlarm and Malwarebytes also have solutions that offer this important protection.
Invest in employee security training
Interestingly, a high percentage of cyberattacks are the result of phishing attempts, phone calls, or unsafe web use. While this can be an effective strategy for cybercriminals, the good news is that this type of attack is easily preventable with effective employee training. All businesses should train employees on security awareness to ensure that they are aware of risks and equipped to avoid them.
Adopt multifactor authentication
As phishing attempts become more sophisticated, relying on a single password becomes risky. Instead, all internal systems should have multifactor authentication (MFA). And, where it’s practical, multifactor authentication is recommended for customer-facing applications too. While this can seem cumbersome and inefficient, the reality is that MFA solutions are increasingly easy to use and to integrate into your systems.
Use a Security Information and Event Management system (SIEM)
Keeping security logs helps businesses to be proactive about detecting security breaches while also providing essential information for investigating security breaches. Using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system allows businesses to accumulate log sources and helps to identify certain security issues. Because of these benefits, all businesses should add SIEM security to help protect against and identify security breaches.
Implement effective systems for protecting and monitoring data
Data is the greatest asset that most organizations have. As a result, it’s essential to ensure that it’s monitored and protected. In order to prevent data breaches, it’s important to utilize data loss prevention solutions. Doing so will enable your business to track sensitive information, know when sensitive data is moving through the network, set policies for how data is used, and block any attempts to violate these policies. Acronis’s Cyber Backup and Carbonite’s Backup Solutions are a couple of solutions that are easy for businesses to implement and use.
Have a plan for mobile device security
Even if your business has developed some cybersecurity to protect devices, it can still leave you vulnerable if employees access the network or data on unprotected or unsecured devices. To avoid this risk, it’s important to develop and enforce policies to make sure mobile device usage isn’t putting your network at risk. Such policies should prohibit accessing the network on mobile devices unless adequate security has been installed.
To recap…
In addition to the above must-haves, it’s also a good idea to have a third-party conduct a cybersecurity threat assessment. This can help to identify any areas of weaknesses and ensure that your cybersecurity infrastructure is effective. Going through this process is often worth the time and money because it lets businesses be proactive about cybersecurity and timely identify threats.
The data from recent years clearly shows that small and medium businesses are particularly at risk for cyberattacks. In fact, in 2019 60 percent of cyberattacks targeted small and medium businesses. This is in large part due to the fact that they’re often easy targets and unprepared to defend against a sophisticated attack. Given this ever-increasing risk, cybersecurity is now a must for all businesses.
That said, establishing effective cybersecurity systems does not have to be overwhelmingly or prohibitively expensive. There are plenty of affordable and user-friendly solutions that can help to make sure that your business is protected. Additionally, there are many companies, like Cisco, and Proofpoint, that provide a full line of security solutions. The Cyber-Fit suite of products Acronis offers also makes it easy for business owneres and entrepreneurs to develop a cybersecurity plan from the ground up. To avoid an attack, now is the time to utilize those solutions and to ensure that your business is protected with an effective cyber-security infrastructure.
