Businesses are the livelihood of entrepreneurs and budding businessmen and women alike, both locally, nationally and internationally. Built from the ashes of an idea, they are sometimes the sole source of income for many, so naturally, the owners are protective of what they have built. As time progresses, so do technological advancements. Day by day there are further risks posed to businesses globally, both from technological criminals, but from physical crimes as well.
How do you protect your business and your livelihood from attacks such as these? What can you do to lower the risk of losing income? If you have found yourself asking yourself these questions and more, fear not, for you are in the right place; we have you covered! We have compiled a bunch of helpful tips for you to use, when wanting to protect or upgrade the security of your business, both online and offline. Go forth and trade with confidence and read on for more!
Up-to-Date Cybersecurity Systems
First and foremost, review the cheap VPN services to ensure that your business has secure and stable lines of cybersecurity. While this can be a sometimes-costly, one-off purchase – particularly for small businesses – it is something that should be prioritised when wanting to guarantee that your business is safe from viruses, hackers and other unpleasant things; you would probably be paying out more to cover damages and losses, than you would for upgrading or implementing a cybersecurity system within your business. Making certain that everyone within your organisation is updating their devices when new updates are available, is paramount; the updates are created to patch ‘gaps’ in the programmes which could be putting you at risk of a cyber-attack.
Using a cybersecurity system is particularly important if you are a business with a lot of devices on the network; cybersecurity systems will secure the network and any devices that are on it, leaving you with peace of mind that your business’ information is secure. Furthermore, these types of security systems are great at detecting any malware or hackers that might be attempting to infiltrate your business network, so is well worth the investment. You will need someone within your business network who is clued up on all thing’s cybersecurity and IT, and how they work, which leads us onto our next point…
Secure IT Systems
Working in tandem with cybersecurity programmes, having a stable and private IT network within your business will also help to minimise the risk of an attack on your organisation. The last thing that any business wants, is for a virus or hacker to infiltrate the system and cause havoc with your information. Having a secure IT system within your business is important, but so is having someone who knows how to use the system, and how to fix it if anything should go wrong. This is a job that can be completed by someone who is in house, but sometimes it is best to hire the services of a professional by outsourcing the job, including to that of IT support companies in London.
Totality Services are an example of a company which provides IT support to businesses all across the country, no matter where they are based. Employing the services of a company such as this, will leave you assured that your business is as protected as it can be. IT companies in London – like this one – use end-to-end encryption as part of their packages, securing any correspondence between yourselves and them, so that no outsiders can get access to any sensitive information. To find out more about how you can use a business like this to protect your own, or to simply find out more about how best to protect your business from cyber-attacks, head to their website.
Sensitive Information Stored Correctly
One of the easiest ways to prevent an attack on your information and to protect your business, is by ensuring that sensitive information is stored in a safe location. It is advised, that for important and sensitive information, that you also have a physical copy, along with a digital. Covering your bases by having both, will ensure that you are protected if one or the other get misplaced, or in the worst case, stolen. Putting the physical copy of this information in a secure filing cabinet or vault is a sure way to guarantee that it stays safe, while storing the digital copy in a safe and remote location is also advised; this could be on a memory stick, external hard drive or encrypted filing system on your device.
Storing passwords and other safety information should be done in a safe manner also. Whether that be by use of encrypted documents on your businesses network, or by keeping them safe in a filing cabinet that is locked at all time, it is important to keep them secure, but also in a place that can be accessed if necessary. You don’t want to have forgotten an important password and have no way of accessing it!
While most people will store information digitally and not think twice about where it is stored, ensuring that documents are in relevant – and sometimes, encrypted – folders, is a great way of ensuring that information is stored correctly, and subsequently, safely. Furthermore, it is often helpful to keep track of the types of information that are stored in certain places, by taking an inventory of both physical and digital pieces of information. This way, you can closely monitor where the information is, and alert the relevant people if it appears that the information has been compromised in any way.
Securing a Property
While currently, most businesses are working from the comfort of their own homes, there are some who are still going into their workplace. It is important, of course, to protect the digital aspects of your business, but the same can be said for the physical aspects. The first being, ensuring that the physical office space or the property that you work in, is secure from burglars and thieves. Particularly if you have left items of value in a workspace which you won’t be in for a while, you want to make certain that doors and windows are locked, and that the valued items are stored out of sight of prying eyes. If you have window shutters at your place of work, it is advised that these are pulled to, further securing your work premises, and preventing anyone from looking or getting in.
Similar to that of ensuring you have measures in place to protect from any cybersecurity, you will want to have some sort of physical security system in place too. Systems such as these, are present on most buildings across the globe, and inform the building or business owner if there has been a breach of security.
Assess Practices Often
In order to stay one step ahead of any potential hackers or infiltrators, you will want to assess and reconsider the practices that you use on a regular basis. Businesses become more susceptible and vulnerable to cyber and physical attacks when they fall too much into a routine. Keeping things mixed up every now and again will prevent anyone out there from memorising the routine that you have and using it as a window of opportunity when planning their method of attack.
