Don’t Become a Cyber Security Horror Story This October

It’s October again, which means it’s Cyber Security Awareness Month — and the cyber security landscape couldn’t be scarier for your small business. Cyber insurance is less protective and more expensive than it used to be, your biggest threat to security is your own employees and, what’s worse, bad actors have become more patient and savvier and, unfortunately, more successful.

Queue the scary music, ending in a horror movie scream! But don’t get too freaked out… it’s not all bad news. There are key factors that all small businesses can focus on and steps you can take to minimize your vulnerability to today’s cyber threats.

Classify Your Most Valuable Information

Start with identifying what information is the most important for your organization, like your clients’ information, your financial data and your employees’ personal information. There’s a lot to safeguard, but as a business owner, you must have the strongest layers of protection around what you prioritize as most important, or most damaging for your business to lose should you be compromised.

Practice the policy of least privilege to ensure only the people that need access to this data have it.

Make sure you have a solid backup of this data. The backup must be separate from where the data is hosted and verified accurate. Mistakes happen — a user deletes the wrong spreadsheet or unwittingly lets the bad guys install ransomware — so you need to have a valid backup to restore from.

Too many times a business relies on an outdated process to back up their important data, only to find that when the worst happens, they can’t restore.

Don’t Wait, Authenticate

The next piece to focus on is authentication. We’re all creatures of convenience and we might try to work around having multiple passwords with multi-factor authentication. As a business owner, you need to ensure that basic and reused passwords are not allowed across your organization.

For added convenience, give your users a simple way to manage their passwords. Putting as much of your important data as possible behind a solid multi-factor authentication tool will provide both ease-of-use and security.

Inbox Beware

We all use email all day, every day, and it brings in the scariest threats. Bad actors know the vulnerabilities of email and place emphasis on crafting simple emails to trick you and your employees into allowing them to circumvent your security.

If the email itself doesn’t contain any malicious software, it flies past most protection methods in your email service. This means you must rely on your last line of defense, your employees. Unfortunately, those same employees also happen to be the biggest threat to your business’s cyber security should they allow an attacker to access your network. That’s why security awareness training is one of the best ways to protect your business.

Don’t be scared — there are many resources out there to get your team up-to-speed that are easy, fun and some are even free!

Patches Aren’t Just for Pumpkins

Patching your systems has been in every discussion on cyber security for the past 20 years. Almost all the largest breaches have had a component that involved an unpatched system. Keeping your systems updated closes this window of opportunity. There are many automated tools to ensure the most important systems and computers are kept safe.

Plan Ahead

Verify that your users know what actions to take when they run into problems with their technology. Have a plan in place before potential disasters happen. An incident response plan can stop a threat in its tracks and keep it from spiraling into a total nightmare.

Managed Services Can Save the Day

As you continue to rely on digital systems and data, protecting against top cyber threats needs to be a priority — and that’s where managed services come to the rescue.

Managed services providers (MSPs) offer a comprehensive approach to cyber security, leveraging their expertise, technology and resources to protect businesses from evolving threats.

MSPs can help with the following to keep you covered:

• Monitoring and incident response
• Advanced threat detection and prevention
• Employee training and awareness
• Regular security assessments and compliance audits
• Patch management and software updates
• Data encryption and secure backups
• Endpoint protection and network security
• Incident response planning and support

You can learn more about the latest cyber threats and the benefits of managed services in our blog post, Top Cyber Security Threats and How Managed Services Can Help.

Conclusion

This October, make things less chilling for your business by strengthening your cyber security protocols. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers resources and a toolkit for you to take advantage of to help you and your employees be better prepared. By establishing and following best practices and staying on top of the latest threats, you can keep your business protected and avoid falling victim to the monsters wreaking havoc in our digital world.

Need Help?

Gross Mendelsohn’s Technology Solutions Group is here to assist you in fortifying your business’s cyber security. Contact us here or call 410.685.5512 for help.