5 Ways Businesses Can Prevent Cybersecurity Attacks

The pace of cyber-attacks on businesses is growing ever faster. It’s necessary to be vigilant and keep up with the latest developments to ensure your business doesn’t take a hit. The cost of dealing with a ransomware attack or a denial of service (DDOS) attack taking down your business interests is no small thing.

Here are five ways that businesses can work to prevent cybersecurity attacks.

1.      Educating the Employees

While IT staff are usually up-to-date on the risks of cybersecurity issues, the regular office workers are not. Most have little real understanding of computers, smartphones, and the internet. Sending an email, sure, but basic sensible security precautions for cybersecurity is well beyond their understanding.

Businesses owners and managers need to appreciate that information which gets transmitted from a company happens almost always from employees. Not understanding the implications or being clear about whom they are conversing with, they tend to give away security-sensitive information without meaning to do so.

To avoid this, employees must be educated on the do’s and don’ts surrounding company data and access.

2.      Lock Down Third-party or BYOD Technologies

Allowing access to the company’s network by a third-party or an employee using their own smartphone (or one provided by their employer) has unique risks.

For the average employee, they really will not appreciate the security risks inherent in accessing the company’s network from their personal device. A potential attack could originate from their device once they connect up. They’ll need to be advised about the risks and what security methods must be maintained such as virus and malware scanning on the device before letting them access internal networks.  

3.      Regular Backups and Cloud Storage

Every business must have a complete IT service management setup to protect from an infection of a virus or malware or a successful cyber intrusion. The ever-present threat is that the company’s network gets sufficiently compromised that it becomes essentially unusable at that point.

In which case, it’s essential that a service provider offers and completes regular daily backups to a cloud storage facility. They can also be provisional local backups too, but this must be to separate media that’s not plugged into the network to avoid the local backup being comprised too.

4.      Use Random Passwords

Strong passwords are vital for all company systems and users’ access. They also must be changed on a regular basis, including whenever an employee leaves the company’s employment.

Hackers use dictionary lists of popular passwords and run automated checks for which password from their file is the right one. It’s, therefore, necessary to use randomly generated numbers, characters, and symbols for a password that won’t be in any list that a hacker can procure and try on the company’s systems.

5.      Hire Expert Assistance

Getting security assistance to vet your network to see that everything has been done to protect from potential attackers is well worth the expense. It is not a sign that the IT department doesn’t know what they’re doing. Cybersecurity is evolving so fast now that only dedicated teams focused in this area are current with the latest threats and how to protect against them. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can never be too careful. It’s an area that most companies are lax on and that needs to change. If that’s a fair assessment of your company, then invest in shoring up the defenses before it’s too late.