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With Aurora Tech Support
When evaluating a managed cyber security solution for your business it can be hard to know where to start and what a modern business needs to stay cyber security safe or even what cyber security is. A free consultation with a member of our team is usually the best first step.
Enterprise-level companies are already spending a huge amount of money on their businesses' cyber security because large hacking groups are actively targeting them for the potentially millions of pounds they can steal, but small to medium-sized businesses are also seen as low-hanging fruit and being targeted. It’s becoming increasingly important to make sure that your business has it’s cyber security solutions in place to avoid an attack. And trust us when we say prevention is better than cure. Most businesses without an active cyber security policy do not recover.
Unfortunately, it’s not just your data you’re required to protect but now with GDPR, you’re expected to protect any data you hold on your customers too.
Cyber security for companies
Cyber attacks are big business, in fact, governments have state-sponsored efforts to actively target Western businesses. For countries with little physical power, cyber attacks are a great way to try and destabilise the West and its economies. This means that you and your business need to have a cybersecurity plan of some sort. Because in truth it’s not a question of if but when will your business be the target of an attack.
Having a cybersecurity plan for your business doesn’t need to be a huge capital expenditure, but it will be a huge capital expenditure or worse the end of your business if you neglect to take the risks seriously. A cybersecurity plan can be put together and reviewed for a reasonable price and the future of your business protected.
Security in IT
Security and cybersecurity preparedness is ever evolving, it’s a real-life Tom & Jerry cat and mouse chase. Attackers are constantly finding new holes and security providers are constantly patching those holes and trying to bolster the defenses. Therefore it’s important to align your business with leading cybersecurity software providers and security experts to make sure that you are as protected as can be.
As I’m sure you are aware IT is an extremely fast-moving sector, and cybersecurity and associated threats are ever on the increase. Protecting your business from attack is never 100% guaranteed.
Governments and large corporations are breached frequently by bad actors. Governments and large corporations spend millions a year on cybersecurity and still are breached at times.
We work with you and your team to protect your data and make it harder for an attack to be successful by using industry-standard cybersecurity software and our team’s knowledge.
Company cyber security
It’s important to look at each part of the chain in your business when developing a cybersecurity plan, find each of the connections and make sure there’s security in place. For instance, let's say your business has an internet connection and 5 laptops.
It would therefore be important to have a firewall on your Router (the device that receives the internet connection and distributes the network traffic around all your 5 laptops) or even better a dedicated Firewall in front of your Router to block threats even before reaching your Router.
Then cyber security protection on each of your devices, again a software firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-malware and backup.
We have simplified this somewhat for the sake of this article, there are some nuances not listed above, but this is a general idea of what you would need in the above example to protect your business.
Business Security
Another important angle when considering a cybersecurity plan is the security of your business as a whole. A huge 80% of businesses do not survive a cyber attack. Therefore the liability for any business is bigger than losing data but the livelihoods of all that work at your organisation.
The knock-on effects of a cyber attack can be huge for the local community that your business operates in.
Threats to businesses
Ransomware.
Ransomware is easily the biggest cybersecurity threat to business. Attackers gain access to your devices and encrypt the data held wherever they can reach (yes including your “backup” on OneDrive, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, etc) and charge a ransom to get the data back.
Phishing.
Probably second to ransomware is Phishing, this is seemingly genuine emails, texts and phone calls to try and make you part with money and passwords. A decent cyber security plan will somewhat protect against this with increased warnings on email and education of staff to not fall for it.
Data Leakage.
Data leakage is the unauthorised transmission of company data to outside recipients either by a team member or a hacker.
Hacking.
Hacking is where an attacker is able to gain access to your network and its devices, as mentioned above. Attackers are constantly finding a new way to bypass protection, but if you don’t even have protection in the first place?
Insider Threat.
As mentioned above, it has happened that rogue team members are sometimes (though rarely) the source of the data leak. A robust cyber security plan will somewhat protect you from this, but unfortunately, whatever you do you can’t stop someone from taking pictures on their phone of company data, etc.
What is cyber security and why is it important
Being online and using online services such as email, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc means that important corporate data is potentially accessible to hackers and individuals looking to extort yourself and your clients. It’s therefore extremely important to protect yourself and your clients from attack the best way you can. And that is where Cyber Security comes in. We secure this data and monitor the system moving forwards to make sure that you, your business and your clients are protected.
Small business information security policy template
When producing a cybersecurity plan for your business, it’s a good idea to also develop a template to follow for new starters and new office locations for your business. This way you can make sure that the cybersecurity plan for your business is deployed as you expand.
If you’d like to have a chat about cybersecurity in your business please get in touch. Click here to find out more.
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