3 Key Areas To Protect Your Small Business From Cyber Attacks

Cybersecurity threats are becoming more and more of an everyday occurrence for small business owners. They are also becoming more damaging when the public finds out. 95% of small businesses who have a cyber attack that goes public,  shuts down their business within 6 months. 

Many small business owners are tring to ignore this issue or assume it will never happen to them or their business. Below are the 3 key areas to help in the event of a cyber attack.

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Device Protection

The first place to start to try to prevent a cyber attack is your devices. This includes up to date antivirus and antimalware software, operating system update monitoring, hardware monitoring, and a sandbox to unpack installed software before actually installing it on your system.  Our partner Your Hometown Techs in Urbana Ohio offers all of these device solutions for as little as $10/month per device., meaning it doesn't have to break the budget for basic device protection.

Network Protection

The second area to focus on for preventing an unwanted cyber attack is  your network. Any wifi connections should be properly encrypted with a strong password. We recommend WPA2 or stronger. You also want to ensure that your network has a firewall properly installed.  This will block access at your router to dangerous or unwanted websites  on your network. You can also control and monitor connected devices on your network preventing someone from hacking in via a wireless connection. Lastly you should have a strong device policy in place clearly defining what personal and business devices can use your network.

Data Protection

Lastly, but also the most important focus, is your data. You should have a local backup of your devices on a server or NAS regularly based on your business needs. This means that it should be creating backups within a timeframe that would cause major issues inside your business. So if your business would suffer by losing the last hour of data, you should be backing up those devices hourly. You should have a redundancy in place on site to help in the event of failed hardware such as RAID on your hard drive.  You should then be backing up your backup server off-site nightly to help in the event of a major attack or a natural catastrophe.  The goal should be knowing how quickly can you get back up and running in the case of a cyber attack.

Ryan offers a FREE cybersecurity assessment to any business interested in better understanding their cybersecurity situation. You can schedule your free assessment HERE.