Small businesses account for 43% of all cyberattacks, which have dire costs for owners. You may end up with substantial financial loss, fines, penalties and lost customer trust. If you’re not assessing your company’s cybersecurity health, you need to start.
Our Miami cybersecurity company recommends following the basic guide below to begin the assessment process:
Work With a Security Company to Run Penetration Tests
Cybersecurity companies can help you determine major faults in your existing security and find ways to patch these holes. For example, the company may try accessing your network through:
- Common security holes
- Phishing attacks
- Social engineering
- Etc.
One of the crucial components of penetration tests is the reports that they provide. The company can offer you strategic recommendations that will prevent your network from being an easy target for hackers.
Often, hackers will focus on the weakest security flaws and try to capitalize on them.
If it’s obvious that you have hardened your security and are not an easy target for an attack, they’ll often go to the next company that is an easy target. Of course, if there is a significant financial gain to be made, the hacker will do all that they can to access your network.
Even major corporations, such as Microsoft, that have extensive security are still victims of cyberattacks.
Follow Strategic Steps to Harden Your Security
Hardening your security is possible, if you take additional steps, such as:
- Integrate strict access controls to prevent unnecessary users from accessing crucial system data or locations.
- Install software and hardware firewalls to prevent unwanted network traffic. You should have a cybersecurity professional integrate strict rules for your firewall.
- Employee training on the best practices to follow when using the Internet or downloading files will also help. Email remains one of the weakest links in small business security because employees often fall for social engineering or phishing attacks.
- Anti-malware software should be installed network-wide to prevent any malicious software from being installed on the network.
- Bring-your-own-device policies must be reviewed because you have less control over what transpires on the employee’s device. The employee’s lax security measures can cause extreme security risks for the entire network.
- Multi-factor authentication is not just for banks and financial institutions. You can also integrate these measures into your business’ authentication so that it’s possible to prevent unwanted access to vital systems.
- Data backups and restoration plans ought to be in place. If you neglect this single point, it can cause your business to experience failure. Imagine losing all of your customer or client data and not having a viable means to restore it. The impact could lead to failure.
- Update policies should be in place that outline how fast updates are pushed to the network and who will be responsible for executing the updates.
Your small business is a lucrative target for hackers. If you work on assessing your security weaknesses and find ways to proactively harden your security, you’ll be in a much better position to prevent attacks.
If you want to have a complete cybersecurity health assessment, hiring a security company to test your network is recommended.