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Cyber attacks are an unfortunate fact of life in today’s technology-driven world. Both at home and at the office, there is an increasingly long list of threats waiting for the opportunity to target an unsuspecting and unprepared individual or company, often with devastating results – especially for businesses. It’s hard to miss the headlines detailing the latest cyber threats, but despite this heightened awareness, many businesses are still vulnerable to an attack – and they know it.
According to a recent study conducted by industry-leading cyber security provider Webroot, 96% of the 600 small and mid-sized businesses they surveyed believe that they are susceptible to external cyber threats. 71% admit that they are not prepared to adequately respond to these threats, with 94% stating that they plan to increase their cyber security budget in the coming year to correct that.
If your business would fall in with that 71%, you’re far from alone. It’s not a great position to find yourself in, especially given the seriously scary cybercrime statistics from the last few years, but it’s easier than you might think to improve your odds of handling an attack effectively. Investing in the latest cyber security solutions is the best way to help your business withstand cyber threats, but that is not the only step you should be taking.
Having a plan in place for how to respond to various types of threats and worst case scenarios can make a huge difference. Your business needs to be able to respond to a security threat quickly in order to minimize the damage caused as a result and have resources in place you can count in a crisis. Working with a Managed Service Provider is a great way to make sure you have access to immediate assistance when something goes wrong.
The faster you can start eliminating the threat and restoring access to vital data and applications, the less costly the incident will be for your business. This is especially critical in the event of a ransomware attack. Without reliable data backups and a means of accessing those backups quickly, the damage to your business could potentially be irreversible.
More important than having a plan to deal with threats is having a plan to stop them in the first place. Educating your employees to spot threats and keep them from successfully targeting your business needs to be a key part of your overall cyber security plan. Your staff are your first line of defense and taking the time to make sure they can recognize phishing attempts and other common cybercriminal tactics and avoid falling for them gives your business an edge when cyber security is concerned.
Investing in mobile security along with your business’ internal network security measures can help protect your employee’s mobile devices against malicious applications and other threats that can target these devices. This is especially critical if your staff routinely accesses sensitive or otherwise important businesses data remotely using their smartphone or another device.
Ensuring that all of your devices, workstations, software, and applications are kept up to date with the latest patches is one of the best ways to keep known threats from wreaking havoc on your business. Software vendors routinely release patches to deal with vulnerabilities that have been discovered, and antivirus, antimalware, and firewall software all rely on a threat database to filter out harmful content. Installing these patches and updates as soon as they are made available will help your technology to protect itself, and keep the vast majority of threats at bay.
When you’re ready to start investing in new cyber security measures, it’s important to make sure that you’re making the most of your IT budget. Choosing the right solutions to meet the needs of your unique business is more important than simply going with the latest offerings. Building a secure IT environment is about making sure that the solutions you have in place won’t impede your staff’s ability to use your technology the way that they need to. Security solutions that complicate basic tasks can prompt employees to take risky shortcuts in order to stay productive, undermining your security efforts.
Speaking with a knowledgeable and experienced IT support provider is the best way to get the right solutions in place for your business. Technology professionals can evaluate your business’ existing IT infrastructure and recommend solutions that compliment the parts of that infrastructure that are already working well, and help improve the parts that aren’t. A tailor-made security solution will offer the best possible protection against a wide range of threats.
Want to learn more about the best way to protect your business against today’s many cyber threats? Contact the Nachman Networks team at sales@nachnet.com or (703) 600-3301. We’re the cyber security professionals businesses in Washington DC, Northern Virginia & Maryland trust.
