6 Key Elements To Protect Small Businesses From Hackers!

According to security experts, small businesses are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Hackers know very well, the owners of these small businesses are not spending money on proper security strategies. The most valuable things for a small business are not all the equipment and tools which they are using. The most valuable thing for a small business is customer database. Hackers always looks forward to steal personal information of people. If you owns a small business and you are collecting personal or financial details of people for transactions then your database is treasure for hackers. Cyber crooks may use personal information of people such as PII (Personal Identification Number), Full Name, Residential Address and other sensitive information to do frauds by changing their identity. It is your responsibility to make your customers happy. Therefore, protection of your balance sheets and customer’s data is a must for you. Here are some security tips to keep your systems safe from hackers:

Keep Your Systems Up to Date

As we often wrote in our articles, “Every Outdated Software is a malware”. It is true also. If you are using a software and you have got a notification to update it, it means that Software Company has make some changes in the code of software to patch its security loopholes. If you will not update that software, hackers may exploit that security loopholes for their personal benefits. Therefore, always use latest version of every software and never ignore security updates of software as well as operating system. In this cyber world, a little mistake may lead you to a huge risk. If you are using outdated version of any software, it is the time to update it into its latest version.

Change Passwords Regularly

Normal people do not bother to change system passwords. Some type of computer users are okay with that but if you are using systems for your business, it is a must for you to change its password after every 25-30 days. You can select a date and can mark it on your calendar when you will change system’s password every month. Ask your employees to do this. A strong password contains both upper case and lower case letters, numbers and some special characters. A strong and unique password is hard to crack with tools and other password cracking techniques. Never set same passwords for all accounts, because when hackers got usernames and passwords of any victim, they try it on all social and financial accounts. An example of a unique password: “if you were born on 7th of October in New York, you can set your password as: 1Wb007iNy!

Be Professional With The Visitors

When any outsider comes to your working place, always ask him/her to show a photo Identity. You can note it down to keep his/her records. You can also note down the time and date when he/she visits. It will help you in future to investigate if you noticed any black hat and unwanted activity. Also don’t give your personal and private information to any visitor because he/she could misuse it to harm you and your business.

CCTV Cameras And Digital Locking System

You can install CCTV cameras at the entrance of working place and at all the cabins and rooms. By doing this, you can record the activities of your employees. If any employee is using any other employees system in his absence, you can see it from footage. It will also help you to keep an eye on thieves and outsiders. IP based CCTV cameras are also hackable therefore proper security configuration is must for cameras also. Moreover, you can use digital locking systems on doors. You can provide an ID card to each employee to swap it every time when he will come in or will go out. This will help to maintain physical security of workplace.

Never Write Passwords Anywhere

You can strictly say your employees, not to write down any type of password and information on pin boards, anywhere on table or under the keyboards. Your close friends and colleagues could misuse it to steal your working files and your personal information. If you have to go anywhere, always lock down your system. There is no need to write passwords in text files also. Never share your password with anyone. In this cyber era, you can’t trust anyone.

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Organise Small Security Seminars

It is very important for you to aware your employees about latest cyber security trends. For this, you can arrange 5-6 hours security seminars after 4-5 months. You can contact security experts and Cyber Defence Intelligence for cyber security training. Your employees should be aware about, how hackers can gain access of any computer to steal information, how they can misuse data of customers, what the symptoms of a hacked computer system are and how to protect a system from hackers. If you don’t want to organize seminars, you can spend one or two days with your employees after 4-5 months to discuss latest security trends and cyber security threats.

We can’t say that for small businesses, security doesn’t matter. It is most important even than big companies, because big companies are using different type of techniques to store their database, but your data is available in your computer systems. If your systems are compromised, you can’t do anything ahead.