3 Practical Ways to Keep Your Business Safe From Hackers

If you’re seeking ways to protect your business from hackers, a layered approach to cybersecurity is a non-negotiable foundation for your strategy. Much like how the house on the street with floodlights, security cameras, and an alarm system is not an easy target for burglars, we’ve found that businesses with multiple cybersecurity strategies in place are unattractive to hackers.

There’s no silver bullet solution with cybersecurity. A layered defense is the only viable defense.

James Scott, co-founder of the Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology

The threat continues to grow even for small to medium-sized businesses.

They’re [hackers] constantly developing new ways to compromise our networks and get the most reach and impact out of their operations. That includes everything from selling malware as a service, making advanced hacking software broadly available to even unsophisticated criminals, to targeting vendors, evading a company’s defenses by compromising trusted outsiders with access to its network. Even accessing scores of victims by hacking just one managed services provider with privileged access to all of them.

Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

But all is not lost. We believe that you can protect your network with this multifaceted approach that we mentioned earlier.

We’ve compiled three tips to help you create a layered approach to cybersecurity and protect your business from hackers:

1. Educate employees on ways to keep your business safe from hackers.
2. Keep all systems updated to protect your business from hackers.
3. Back up data and monitor backups.

3 Ways To Protect Your Business From Hackers

When a hacker goes after your data or network, the very survival of your business might be at stake. Malware and ransomware are growing threats, and hackers often gain access to your network and data through phishing emails, weak passwords, or unpatched software vulnerabilities.

Educate Employees on Ways to Keep Your Business Safe From Hackers

Employees need to understand they are the MVP of your cybersecurity team. Without a doubt, they are a critical line of defense against hackers.

Encourage them to use strong, unique passwords that have not been used on other sites. Often, hackers gain access to a password as a result of a data breach from another website that an employee used for personal purposes. Then when the employee reuses the password at work, it gives cybercriminals an open door to access a company’s network.

It’s also important to help employees learn about the dangers of phishing emails. Phishing emails are fraudulent emails that contain a malicious link, designed to get access to your data or systems.

Read our blog, Don’t Click That Link! Show Your Employees How To Prevent Cyber Attacks, to learn 9 things your employees should never do. We’d also suggest you share this Fortune video with your employees to start a conversation about phishing emails and cybersecurity.

Keep All Systems Updated to Protect Your Business from Hackers

Software companies are often releasing updates and patches. But you might wonder if it’s really that important to protect your business from hackers. It is! Most updates will help strengthen potential security weaknesses that software companies have identified. It’s commonplace to see hackers break into a system through an unpatched vulnerability, which could have been fixed with a software update.

Some businesses find they don’t have the manpower to stay up to date with these critical security protections. IT management companies like SandStorm IT can step in and help to ensure your IT’s security. Patch management allows for the centralized management of the detection, download, installation, and reporting of patches on a computer system. Patch management automates the entire process so you don’t have to spend man-hours manually checking and applying patches on each workstation.

Backup Data and Monitor Backups

Ransomware attacks are a growing threat, but the good news is that an up-to-date backup can significantly minimize the damage. In a ransomware attack, a hacker gains access to your network, then shuts off your access to your network and data until a ransom is paid. Companies without a backup might not be able to recover from that.

However, with cloud-based backup or off-site data storage solutions, a business can get back to normal operations by quickly restoring locked or lost files.

However, even if you think you are performing regular backups, it’s important to monitor backups to make sure they’re in fact happening. Unfortunately, we’ve seen companies who thought they had backups discover they didn’t when they needed them most. That’s why many people choose managed IT companies, like SandStorm IT, to manage backups.

SandStorm IT is here to help!

At SandStorm IT, we’ve made it our mission to ensure that business owners can rest easy knowing they have strong cybersecurity in place. Schedule a call to discuss how we can partner with your business and help you with all of your IT needs.