5 Tips to keep your Business Cyber Safe.
What a healthy time we live in for cyber-attacks, spam and scams to infiltrate our businesses. The impact a cyber-attack has on most small businesses can be devastating. Monetary loss is one of the most common consequences your business could suffer under a cyber-attack. The reputation of your business, whether it is large or small, could be tarnished from a cyber-attack. Not just for your staff, who can fear their personal details being exposed, but valuable customer data, can be stolen and abused. Hackers can seize your entire IT infrastructure and take control of your software system resulting in total loss of productivity. Keeping your business safe from hackers should be a priority on any business owner’s list, because in only a few seconds your entire business can be affected and no longer working for you.
Keep reading for 5 tips that can help keep your business safe online.
Tip 1. Send Confidential Details, Encrypted.
We recently worked with a client who was corresponding in emails containing highly classified and confidential information. The client needed to share information with B2B customer and B2C customers. Many of our client’s B2C customers did not have access to secure email systems and were using free services such as Hotmail and Gmail. By utilizing A&S Tech’s secure email services, our client was able to send confidential emails to any of their B2C customers by pressing 1 button. This would send an email to our client’s customers with a secure link they could click on and see their emails outside of their free email service. Also, our client would get a notification when their customer had clicked on and opened their secure link. To learn more about this service and how it can be implemented for security in your business, click on the following link. If this is something your business is interested in, contact A&S Tech to get this setup today.
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Tip 2. Use 2FA for emails and WebApps wherever possible
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a subdivision of MFA (multi-factor authentication) where the end user is asked to provide two methods of verification, as opposed to more. 2FA is more simplified for the user, instead of it being so difficult for the end user that they just give up on using the service, 2FA gives you another layer of security, after a password, while still making it easy on the end user. If your business is using Microsoft 365, and an attacker hacks an employee’s credentials, they have access to everything that person does, intellectual property, private data, and their email account. 2FA protects that important information from the bad guys. Credential harvesting is on the rise through phishing attacks. Fake Office 365 login pages are used to trick people into giving over their passwords and usernames. But, if you are using 2FA the attacker cannot access a user’s account, because having the username and password is not enough. To learn more about this option for your business security click on the link below.
Set up 2-step verification for Office 365 | A & S Tech IT Made Simple! (aandstech.com.au)
Tip 3. Don’t use the same password in multiple locations (use a password manager)
All of us have passwords to keep our online data protected. Most of us are typing passwords daily, and if we are using safe password practices, we have different passwords for every login we have. With the number of logins required, we can get sick of juggling passwords, remembering what password belongs to what login and easily slip into bad password habits of using one to cover our many logins, or worse, writing them down or saving them in our Google docs where they can be accessed by someone other than ourselves. The solution to this chaos, is a password manager. A password manager will not just store and retrieve passwords from an encrypted database but will generate strong passwords that are extremely secure. To learn more about password manager and how it can benefit your business’s security, call us at A&S Tech.
Tip 4. Get Dark Web Monitoring
The Dark Web poses a huge threat to any business, large or small. Small businesses can be more at risk, because unlike large companies that spend thousands of dollars on cybersecurity, smaller businesses don’t always see the Dark Web as being a major threat to a criminal attack, don’t put the necessary cyber security measures in place and therefore become a prime target. Cyber-criminals profit through phishing attacks or stealing user credentials, stealing and then selling your company’s secrets, credit card information, emails, financial transactions, and user logins. It is scary, serious business. Dark Web Monitoring is a necessity in your business. Dark Web Monitoring is an identity theft preventor. It monitors your information on the Dark Web and alerts you if your business information is found online. If any vulnerable data relating to your private information, consumer data, key assets or business is found online, Dark Web monitoring will alert you of the attack. At A&S Tech we can help implement Dark Web Monitoring for your company and keep your business’ most private and sensitive data, secure.
Tip 5. Backup your Cloud Data
Data is valuable and requires backup to keep it safe, when the bad guys hack your business, they want your data, because that can used against you for their financial gain. Cloud back up is a safe, reliable and economical backup solution. A huge advantage to cloud backup is its ability grow and manage the demand of your data, as your data capacities change. Data that is backed up by cloud is retrievable after a loss occurs and is protected by a high-level security. Cloud backup is cost-efficient and user friendly. Using a cloud backup solution does not require more physical space taken up in your server room, so it is a more energy efficient solution for your data backup and protection. Contact A&S Tech if you have any concerns about your data backup solution and we can help provide a safe and secure Cloud backup solution for your company.
