How can you save your company from total damnation with cyber security?

by ​Chris Mercer, Guest Contributor

The more connected companies become to the internet, the more hacks are taking place. Just in 2017 there were some whoppers. Equifax was hacked, which put the personal data of half of America online, Yahoo announced that three billion of their accounts had been hacked and even the NSA – which is supposed to be as secure as they come – had their toolkit exposed.

And those are the big boys. These companies have thousands of people working on their cyber security. So what can a smaller business do? I mean, sure you might not get international headlines but what does that matter if it turns out your entire company has been compromised?​

Here are some of the important cyber security ideas you should consider.

Never forget the weakest link
The first thing to realize is that in cyber security the biggest problem isn’t actually your computer systems but the people that use them. There are a lot of reason for this, but mainly it’s down to the mistakes people make. They choose passwords that are too easy to break, they use the same passwords for a wide range of different services, or they leave information in a place where hackers and crackers can easily find it.

And if hackers can get the passwords to your system, it really doesn’t matter how secure it is. They’re going to get in.

For that reason, make sure that you educate your staff and that some areas of your network are not accessible to everybody. Also, make sure you teach them how to use the tools out there to increase their security, like password managers. These things will help shore up the weakest part of your cyber security.

Update your systems
On an almost daily basis new mistakes are being discovered in software and apps. To protect you against these, the people who have made these software packages offer updates. Of course, these updates only work if you actually use them. For that reason, make sure you update regularly.

In this way, you that the window between when a weakness in software is discovered and when it’s no longer in your system is as small as possible.

When you’re no longer use something, decommission it
Just as important is turning off and taking down functions that you’re no longer supporting. This is a big deal, as often the moment you no longer support these functions you will also stop updating them and stop paying attention to them. That means that while you might diligently update the parts in use, these parts can often still be running on old software, thereby leaving gaping hole in your cyber security that those who mean you harm can exploit.

Don’t let that happen. Turn these things off and take them offline as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s an app like a citation machine or a wordpress website. If you’re not using it, take it down. You can always put it back up again if you change your mind later on.
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Create backups
Even if you follow all of those ideas and more, you still have to assume that sooner or later you are going to get hacked. That’s an unfortunate consequence of being online.

For that reason, make sure that you make it as easy as possible for your system to be recovered. One of the best ways to do that is to have a backup strategy and create regular updates that you can return to if your system ends up becoming compromised. Often, steps like these are going to be the difference between taking a hit and going down for the count.

There are a lot of services out there that offer backups. Consider using one of them rather relying on in house. The reason this is a good idea is that then to take you down, they don’t just have to hack your system but also the system of the company where you have your backups.
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About the Author:

Chris Mercer, pro writer, developer and founder of Citatior, a powerful academic formatting tool for the students, that creates high-end citations. Follow me on LinkedIn! 

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