Information security can be extremely intimidating to small business owners, conjuring up images of expensive new equipment and highly-paid contractors; however, there is a lot you can do with a minimum of IT knowledge to keep your business safe.
To this end, here are five things you can do to help safeguard your business’s data security without having to massively increase your IT budget.
Prioritise Employee Education
While there is always a lot of fear surrounding the idea of hackers, the reality of the situation is that most data breaches are caused by phishing or social engineering.
What this means is that many data breaches can be avoided entirely through employee education. Employees learning to recognize phishing and social engineering attempts can go a long way towards securing your network.
Avoid Storing too much Customer Information
‘Too much’ information is a bit nebulous; however, the fact of the matter is that the more information you store, the more you are risking if there is a breach, especially when it comes to payment information.
As a starting point, review and reduce the amount of information you store, and especially avoid storing all the information that would be needed to make a payment from the customer’s card; for example, you could omit the card CVV data or even refrain from storing credit card information altogether.
Keep your Network Physically Secure
Network security usually focuses on the digital end through endpoint security solutions from experts such as promisec.com; however, if someone has access to the physical machine, they can achieve far more than if they only have digital access.
Make sure all devices lock and require login credentials to access them when left unattended, and consider disabling USB ports to further limit access on devices where possible.
Ensure your Software is kept up to Date
Automatic updates can be annoying, but they are usually pushed out to fix security issues. Failing to update software, especially operating systems, leaves your systems vulnerable to exploitation simply to save a few minutes of updating.
Secure your Wireless Networks
An open wireless network might be convenient, but it is a huge security risk. Where you require passwords everywhere else, an open wireless network simply lets anyone in. Even if you share the password with customers, at least go this far towards securing your networks.
