Last year 2 of every 5 businesses had some sort of cyber attack or data breach. That is a scary statistic when you think about it! Part of the reason for this is likely due to more people being based at home because of covid 19 and the current IT support services are likely to be over whelmed and unable to deal with the number of requests that they get.
A lot of these cases are usually the companies own fault for not implementing some basic security essentials. How can you go about making sure this doesn’t happen to your company. Well, there are certain things you can do yourself to help boost your IT security. We will now take a look at those in this article.
Passwords
We all like to pick easy passwords because they are easy to remember. We also have so many websites and tools that we all log into each day that its just easier to have one password. This is the worst mistake you can make as once a hacker has access to one account they will have access to all of your other stuff as well.
We recommend using a password manager like LastPass which can generate passwords for you which will be almost impossible for people to guess. You could also look at Multi-Factor authentication. This acts as a fail-safe for passwords. When you login in MFA prompts you to take another action, the most common is to input a code that is sent to your mobile.
Install Regular Updates
We all hate seeing the “install update” pop up and close it so that we don’t have to wait around while it updates. These updates are usually very important though as its likely they will have security updates in them which will help protect your company. Don’t close the update popups, say yes to them, and let them update while you go on your lunch.
Take Regular Backups
Make sure you have some kind of backups for your most important data. Maybe have a backup on a local machine and a backup in the cloud. Theres software out there that will schedule backups for when you are in bed. It could not be easier and there’s no excuse not do to this.
Antivirus Software
Its important to have this installed. These will pick up and dodgy looking emails that have weird links in and flag them as suspicious.
Staff Training
All of the above can be linked into staff training which only has to take a few hours a year. Go over the basics, make sure everyone sets new passwords each month and let them know to look out for phishing emails.
Summary
Sadly, IT security is never going to be something we can take for granted. Cybercrime has become too big of a business for it to ever go away. So businesses must continue to take their IT security seriously.