Top Ten Cybersecurity Solutions For Small Businesses
As a small business in the internet age, you cannot avoid using the internet if you wish to scale and get more customers. Whether for product manufacturing, sales, or marketing, you will have to use the internet at some point. However, as useful as the internet is, it is fraught with many dangers and risks.
There is the risk of data and identity theft either of you or your customers by hackers who can then use the obtained information for fraudulent purposes. There is the danger of leaking your private business documents to competitors who can use them against you. The question then is, as a business person, how can you protect yourself from cybercrime or any form of harm on the internet? Here are ten solutions that you need.
1. Detection software
As a business, it is not just enough to protect your data, you have to be proactive about your cybersecurity. Detection software helps you tell where your systems are most vulnerable and also monitors traffic for potential violations. Detection software can be signature-based, i.e., it detects attacks based on certain sequences in network traffic that is different from its programming, or it may be anomaly-based, in which it uses certain patterns of traffic behavior as its standards and classifies any traffic behavior different from that pattern as a threat.
2. Antivirus software
As internet tools continue to improve and the web becomes more accessible, hackers and malware creators are also getting more ingenious at hiding viruses as innocuous programs that are difficult to detect. Having a good anti-virus for your systems and servers means that they can detect viruses in your system or those sent into your mail before the damage.
Some antivirus software is even powerful enough to clean up infected systems and servers and delete viruses from your system. The more powerful the anti-virus you use, the better protected your systems are.
3. Cloud backup
Data is crucial to any business’s operations. Data loss can be a severe issue enough to destroy your reputation as a business person, if not your business itself. However, mistakes can happen, an inexperienced employee may download an antivirus into your servers, wiping out crucial data, or a hardware problem with the system may occur, rendering the data inaccessible.
With cloud backup, you can access your data any time you need it. Also, with cloud backup, you don’t need to be at the location where your device uploaded the data into the cloud. Your data goes with you everywhere you are.
4. Firewall
A firewall is a security device that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic. Firewalls are especially useful for small business owners who are constantly on the move and often connect to unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots.
The firewall functions as a barrier that blocks malware and application attacks and can also block unauthorized access to your system via the internet. They can also set policies to aid better protection of your system, and detect on the spot whether a certain kind of traffic is harmful to your system.
5. Public key infrastructure services
As a business, you need a set of policies to facilitate a safe and secure transfer of information from one server to the other. This is especially important if your business deals with sensitive information such as financial and credit history, health records, or personal identification records. You need a codified set of policies, roles, and procedures to ensure that every step of the process is secure.
6. Encryption tools
Whatever you are using to store your data, whether you are using a mobile device, a system, or even the cloud, you need to protect your data so that if someone accesses your device, your data is still safe. Encryption tools protect your data location with a passcode called a key. Your key is only accessible to you as the owner of the data and anyone else you give the key to. Which makes it useless to unauthorized people. Getting an encryption tool to protect your data is fairly easy, and it can save you a lot of heartaches later.
7. Penetration Testing
Penetration testing is the process of putting the system’s protections under test with malware or other forms of harmful tools to see how well it is protected and the places where it might be vulnerable to attack. The findings of the test can then be reported to the server owners. As a business, you should conduct penetration testing as frequently as possible to prevent malicious attempts to breach your system.
8. Network security monitoring tools
Network security monitoring tools are designed to provide security for your data such that you can access your data from anywhere you wish without fear of intrusion. Different kinds of network security monitoring tools are designed to offer various levels of protection to your servers from unauthorized devices. NSM tools offer access controls like remote virtual private networks and Zero Trust network access. All of these tools protect your data from unauthorized devices.
9. Web Vulnerability scanning tools
Web Vulnerability scanning tools are automated tools that tell you how vulnerable your systems are to attacks from the web. A web vulnerability scanner may check the website you visit to see if it has the required protections for phishing scams and hacking. Most web vulnerability scanners focus on web tools such as websites, applications, and plugins.
10. Packet Sniffers
Packet sniffers are also known as network analyzers or protocol analyzers. They can scan for activity with a server and other servers within its intranet or on the internet itself. As a business owner, you can use a packet sniffer to detect your employee’s internet activity, such as the sites and what they download. This can help detect potential threats and the sources from which those threats may come.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity has become a core concern for businesses on the internet today. As a small business, you can take advantage of the solutions we have offered in this article to protect your business and save yourself the damage that a data breach might cause your business.
If you want to get started with implementing a cyber security solution for your business, we are available to guide you through the process. You can send us an email or place a call via our website.