The online hacking industry has gone creative and nasty in its ways to make attacks and take advantage of vulnerabilities. With this, the rising rate of cyber crime is a growing concern for many in the market. Cyber criminals can steal a company’s data, money, employee details, and clients information. SMBs, also known as Small to Medium Businesses, are one category who need to think and implement about having strong business internet security in order to prevent data loss.

According to statistics, since the year 2013, a total number of 13443149623 records are being stolen which makes a count of 6,130,027 records stolen everyday worldwide. It’s time to protect your business, employees, and customers from online dangers by tightening your business internet security. In this post, we will be taking a look at some of the best cyber security practices for SMBs:

Policy Making

Carelessness in clicking links and attachments, sharing sensitive information over insecure online platforms, etc are some common reasons to data breaches. From educating your employees to deploying standard security procedures, an SMB should always make strict policies to enforce security and confidentiality of information about the business. You can also formulate reward programs for employees who find and suggest ways to improve cyber security of the company.

Frequent Backups

Often a small virus attack leads to great losses because companies haven’t backed up their data efficiently. Therefore, use appropriate backup methods, both offline and online, for easy recovery in case of disaster.

Add New Resources Carefully

It is quite a common scenario in SMBs to hire new employees on a small pay scale. However, you never know when a new employee could turn out to be an information leaking agent. Insider attacks are also a major reason behind data breaches these days. So, it is better to screen and utilize the potential of existing employees before you add someone else. Also, ensure that employees have the only required access to company information.

Secure Admin Credentials

Keep the credentials of all admin accounts such as domain admin accounts safe and secure. Only authorized users shall have the rights to use these accounts and not everyone in the company.

Change Passwords time and again

Accounts with passwords that are unchanged for long also become prone to attacks. This is because cyber crooks keep on trying to break such accounts using one or the other password cracking methods.

Patch and Update

Security alerts and software patches shall never be ignored. Usage of outdated software versions can become a golden chance for attackers. In the year 2018, the world has seen some of the biggest data breaches where personal information of millions was compromised. Though security updates might appear a little inconvenient and time consuming, but ignoring them would lead to a more unpleasant experience. Keep all systems in your company up-to-date and avoid using pirated software.

Secure Your Machines

Proper monitoring and control over the computer machines in the company network helps a lot in preventing cyber attacks and keeping the company network secure from other malicious content. By installing endpoint protection on all computer systems, a company can keep a tab on what activities are being carried out in the network.

Most of the SMBs think that they have quite a little to interest hackers, but this is a pure myth. It is needless to say that a successful cyber attack can cause severe damage to business internet security including financial, reputational and legal losses. So, the need of the hour is to inculcate the above-mentioned measures in your security policy.

Also, read our post on How to Recover From a Cyber Attack? Solution for Enterprises