Do Any of These Cybersecurity Basics Sound Familiar? (They Should!)

While there are plenty of cybersecurity protections for your business’ technology, it is just as critical that you and your team are prepared to stay as secure as possible. To accomplish this, we wanted to share a collection of cybersecurity basics to get you started on the right foot.

You Need to Follow These Cybersecurity Basics in Your Business

Updating Software

Software updates can be a pain to manage, but they are a critical element that needs to be prioritized as part of your overall technology management. The reason is simple: many of these software updates are necessary because they help shore up vulnerabilities that would otherwise let threats in, so neglecting these updates will leave your business open to attack without cause.

These updates also benefit device health and operability, but the cybersecurity aspect alone should be motivation enough.

Using Strong Passwords

Passwords are essential to modern cybersecurity, as they are often the first line of defense an account has to protect itself. Naturally, these passwords must be sufficiently secure to uphold this responsibility properly. So, how does one make a password more secure?

First and foremost, every password needs to be unique and complex. Use a combination of alphanumeric characters and symbols to create random sequences or passphrases (complex strings of random words interspersed with numbers and symbols). A standalone password management application—not one built into a browser—can make it much easier to keep all of these passwords organized and accessible without sacrificing their security.

Appreciating the Severity of Threats

It can be too easy for a team to assume that a small business doesn’t have to worry about cyberattacks simply because it is “too small to be a worthwhile target.”

In the simplest terms possible, this is a load of nonsense.

Modern security threats are far less hands-on than they once were and, as such, can be distributed at a scale that maximizes the cybercriminal’s take. Attack vectors like phishing make it easier for a cybercriminal to spread out their scam attempts, either scamming someone at first touch or identifying vulnerable users within an organization. This all makes it absolutely critical that everyone on your team is aware of the threats they’ll face so they can be better prepared to encounter them.

Backing Up Data

There are plenty of reasons a business needs to maintain a data backup, most of them disastrous. In addition to the potential for a cybercriminal to wreak havoc on your business by altering any data they find stored on your infrastructure, there are plenty of natural causes that could lead to this data being lost. User error, severe weather, and technology failure are also too common to overlook. As such, you need to maintain a data backup strategy… preferably one that follows the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:

1. You maintain at least three copies of your data.
2. Your data is preserved in at least two storage locations/formats.
3. At least one copy of your data is stored offsite, preferably in the cloud.

Not Clicking Every Link

Links are a simple way for attackers to hide some of their most common forms of attack, such as phishing, as we discussed earlier. By making a link appear to lead to a different place, it is far easier to snare an unsuspecting user and extract data from them. This means you need to be sure that your team knows to check any link they did not expect to receive by hovering over it to present the destination’s URL and by confirming the link’s legitimacy through a different means of communication. The same guidelines also apply to unexpected email attachments.

Using Multi-Factor Authentication

We already discussed the importance of passwords, but the hard truth is that they aren’t enough anymore. Nowadays, your best bet to remain secure is implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever available.

MFA doubles the requirements for someone attempting to access an account, requiring multiple proofs of identity before approving a user. So, while a user would traditionally need to provide their username (or their identity) and a password (proof they are who they claim to be), MFA requires them to provide more—and what is requested is usually more difficult for someone to replicate than a password.

MFA will typically ask for something you know—your typical credentials, something you have—an access key or card, and/or something you are—biometric data. This considerably boosts the security of a given system, protecting the data within.

We’re Here to Help Your Business Accomplish More, More Securely

We can also do plenty more than what is described here to help you protect your business. Contact Texas Professional IT Services LLC at (832) 514-6260 to learn more.