As a business owner, you may be wondering why cybersecurity is important for business. Another common question that business owners ask is whether they need to pay attention to the importance of cybersecurity. With the rising cyberattacks, it’s about time you stop asking and start implementing such policies in your business.
Statistics reveal that large businesses are prone to cyberattacks. But this doesn’t mean that small and medium-sized businesses are immune from such attacks. As long as you have an online presence, you can be susceptible to an attack. And if you don’t protect your business, you may face devastating physical, legal, and financial implications.
With this in mind, let’s talk about why cybersecurity is important for companies and what you can do to safeguard your business:
What is Cyber Security?
First things first — let’s discuss what cybersecurity is.
It is the state or process of protecting and recovering computer networks, systems, programs, and devices from any form of cyber attack. Throughout the years, cyber attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and targeted towards sensitive data. That’s because attackers have started to utilize new methods to gain access to sensitive information.
With more and more companies becoming reliant on technology, the need for heightened cybersecurity measures is also important.
As a business owner, you are expected to keep your customers’ data safe and secure. Even if you are making use of new technology and cloud security solutions, you need to practice cyber security basics to prevent unauthorized access.
Why Cybersecurity is Important for Companies
Companies need to practice computer cyber security to ensure that their customers’ sensitive information is kept safe at all times. Without the right protocols in place, attackers could gain access to customers’ sensitive data, personal information, data, intellectual property, personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and governmental and industry information systems.
Here are some of the reasons why you need to put cybersecurity on top of your list as a business owner:
Small Businesses Are Targets Too
Many business owners believe that they will never fall victim to cybercrime activities, especially since they are only small. But this is a common misconception. Anyone can be victimized and put at risk of a cyberattack. The sad news is, once you are targeted, you could go out of business in less than a year.
Your Customers Are At Risk
Another reason why you should take cybersecurity seriously is that an attack on your business could put your customers at risk. Once a hacker gains control over your systems, they will also have access to your customer database. And in turn, they can utilize the information for personal gain.
If you do not employ a cybersecurity program, your company won’t be able to defend itself in the event of a data breach. And this could mean that your customers’ private information may be used in fraudulent activity or identity theft. Their data can also be sold on the dark web. As a business owner, you have to protect your customers at all times.
They Negatively Affect Your Business
Merely having antivirus software programs and firewalls on your company computers is often not enough. More and more cybercriminals are coming up with smarter solutions and tactics to be resilient. If you don’t uphold your customers’ information strictly, you may face legal fees.
7 Cybersecurity Tips for Any Business
As a business owner, you need to make sure you have the necessary investments to uphold your cybersecurity policies. This means you need to have advanced cybersecurity measures in place. You should invest in firewalls, data leak protection, encrypted connections, and ransomware protection.
Since cyberattacks can happen anywhere within your organization, it is a good idea to employ strong spam filters to prevent phishing emails delivered to your employees. You also need to regularly update and use antivirus software to make endpoints secure.
Here are more cybersecurity tips to use in your organization:
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Backup Your Data
It is good practice to regularly back up your data. In doing so, you minimize the risk of losing everything once your system fails or a hacker is able to infiltrate your system and hold it hostage.
You should back up company-confidential and sensitive files in a remote and unconnected storage facility. If you practice this tip, you may reduce the need to pay a ransom for your information to be returned.
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Keep Your Software Up-to-Date
When you utilize out-of-date or unpatched software on your company devices, it will increase your security’s chance of getting breached. This is why it is a good idea to keep your software up-to-date.
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Keep Passwords Secure
One of the most common attacks that everyone faces is having their passwords hacked into. This typically happens to accounts with a weak password.
To heighten up your security measures, it is best you make use of a stronger password; one no one will be able to guess.
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Educate Your Staff
In 2019, reports pointed to human error as the cause of 90% of data breaches. This is why it is important you educate your staff and let them know the importance of cybersecurity in any business.
Apart from letting them know of its importance, you should teach them to identify and properly respond to such attacks. By doing this, you can avoid encountering a data breach incident that could be pretty costly for your business.
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Protect Your Sensitive Data
Make the necessary investment in tools that can monitor your third-party risk and limit information loss. These tools also continuously scan for leaked credentials and data exposure to help you be aware of such vulnerabilities.
If left unattended, data leaks can give hackers access to your internal networks and breach sensitive resources. This is why it is a good idea to implement a data leak discovery solution. We highly recommend utilizing Kaspersky Office Security!
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Enable Uptime
It’s also a great idea to choose a powerful data protection solution to enable “instant recovery” of your data and apps. This way, you don’t need to undergo downtime that could significantly impact your business’s ability to generate revenue.
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Have a Plan in Place
It’s essential to have a plan in place in case things go awry with your business devices and data. No matter how well you prepare, there are just some incidents when things can go wrong.
Suffering a cyber attack can be a very stressful time for your business. Once you have a plan in place, your team will be capable of responding to the incident quickly. At the same time, you’ll be able to lessen the damage of the attack.
Having an Incident Response plan will help identify your last-known clean backup and restore it. You also get to have communication protocols with law enforcement. And finally, this gives you isolation procedures for an infected computer over the devices that have not been infected.
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