Safeguarding Success: 4 Key Security Tips for Growing Businesses

06 Aug Safeguarding Success: 4 Key Security Tips for Growing Businesses

Posted at 08:49h in Cybersecurity by Simon Spencer

Just like your physical security, your business’s cybersecurity is essential. After all, data is one of the most valuable resources you have available — and leaving the front door open would mean that anyone could gain access to it.

With 50% of businesses experiencing some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months, it’s obvious that cyber attackers aren’t slowing down. And, with attacks getting more dangerous each day with new technologies and strategies, it’s important to be aware of how you can stay protected.

That’s why in this article, we’re going to go over the four most important security tips to ensure you have all the information necessary to protect your business. With these strategies, you can ensure that your business remains protected in the long run and that you have everything you need to fight off cyber attackers.

Tip 1: Implement Strong Access Control Measures

Much like it’s a given that you need to have a lock on your physical door, it’s important that you put a lock on your virtual door as well. Your data is so valuable, and anyone gaining access to it could be catastrophic. On top of this, anyone who can gain access to your business can cause disruption, and harm your business in the long run.

Implementing strong access control measures is the solution to this. There are many ways of doing so — stronger authentication requirements, multi-factor authentication, and even using more advanced tools are examples of this.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the most essential security tool in the modern world. Adding another factor of authentication means that anyone who gains access to credentials will be blocked from access due to not having all of the factors of authentication required. This is the gold standard for cybersecurity, and not having it could spell disaster all around.

On top of this, there are other access control methods you can use. For example, Microsoft’s Entra ID mixes MFA with other access controls and identity management. With this, you can ensure that specific data is only available to users with a specific level of authorisation.

This will let you implement the principle of least privilege — the principle that everyone should only have access to the information that they need for their role — and ensure that nobody can have access to sensitive information unless they explicitly need it.

Tip 2: Educate Employees on Cybersecurity Best Practices

Ensuring that your employees are educated on cybersecurity will significantly improve your business’s security posture, and greatly reduce the risk of unauthorised access to your data through your employee’s misinformation.

The best way of doing this is creating a security-conscious culture — by having everyone aware and knowledgeable about security risks, everyone will be able to make sure their personal security is at a high standard. This will increase your security posture as it will negate several attack vectors.

Conducting regular training programs on cybersecurity topics guarantees your employees are educated on a variety of topics, including —

Phishing and other Social Engineering: Training your employees about the risks of social engineering attacks, such as phishing attacks, and how to spot them, will ensure they don’t fall victim.
Data security: Teaching users about the importance of data security and not sharing data will help curb insider risk.
Password security: Training on high password security and MFA will ensure that credentials aren’t vulnerable to attacks.

By creating a clear company-wide policy, you can easily make sure that everyone is aware of the essentials of what they need to know when it comes to cybersecurity.

Tip 3: Regularly Update and Patch Systems

A huge vulnerability for organisations when it comes to cybersecurity is software and systems, and vulnerabilities inside of those systems. After all, it’s not uncommon for software to have flaws, and some of those flaws can be used as exploits.

The way that companies fix these vulnerabilities is through patches and updates — which means that if there’s a patch, generally it’s important to apply it to fix a security issue. The longer you take to apply these updates and patches, the longer you leave yourself open to a possible breach or attack.

Using automatic patching software can help with this greatly, as it will mean that you don’t have to manually update. This will ensure that no update is missed and that you’re always protected against in-software exploits as much as you can be.

Tip 4: Utilise Additional Features for Cloud Products

Cloud security is also incredibly important. With many organisations putting their data within the cloud, ensuring that you do whatever you can to protect that data is imperative.

While cloud providers do have massive amounts of security considerations even before you consider your own security, there are lots of features that they provide for you to take security into your own hands as well.

For example, Microsoft Azure provides a few different security features that help you protect your cloud implementation —

Microsoft Sentinel: Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solution. It gives you security analytics and threat intelligence across your organisation and is a unified solution for threat detection, hunting, visibility, and response.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Microsoft Defender for Cloud lets you prevent and respond to threats towards your Azure resources. It gives you security monitoring and policy management and also works with a broad ecosystem of security solutions.

How We Can Help

Your organisation’s cybersecurity is vital. These four tips will ensure that your business is protected from any attackers, and will give you the coverage you need to make sure that you’re covered on all vectors.

If you need help with your cybersecurity strategy, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure that your cybersecurity implementation is perfect for protecting your business — with around-the-clock support to assist you with anything you need.