By Jon Hoehne, CMIT Solutions
Running a business means managing countless visible risks daily. You can see when equipment needs maintenance, hear when something’s not running right, and feel when workplace dynamics are off. Digital risks can often be out of sight and out of mind. While you can’t stand over employees’ shoulders, you can build IT security controls that protect your specific systems, accounts, and data.
Understanding Your Risk Factors
The first step is understanding where you’re vulnerable. What are your risk sources? Here are two that affect most businesses.
Your Inbox is Ground Zero: If your business uses email, it’s a major source of scams and malware. Even with robust junk and spam protection, novel scam emails continue to reach inboxes. Employees aren’t looking for trouble when they use email, it just finds its way in. Email service providers work hard to filter threats, but malicious messages slip through. Attackers know there’s always a small chance they will succeed. Phishing attacks lead to all sorts of problems, some of the worst being losing control of your account, info stealing malware, and ransomware.
Your Data Usage: If you lose access to your data for any reason, how long can your business operate? An hour? A day? A week? How long will it take to recover? Even if you don’t consider your business to be high-tech, consider what your team needs to do each day. From creating invoices, ordering from suppliers, scheduling appointments, to providing service to customers you have some need for digital information. The more dependent you are on your data, the greater the impact a disaster or ransomware attack will have on your business.
Two Must Haves
Start with these two critical controls that provide the most protection for the effort.
Require Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Everywhere: Why everywhere? Consider what’s behind each login. Your online banking contains your financial data and your ability to easily perform online transactions. Your file sharing systems hold sensitive documents. Your email accounts contain years of business relationships and confidential communications.
If your usernames and passwords are stolen, often by malware sent to your email, MFA is designed to stop unauthorized use. Most systems now offer MFA by default and have no additional costs. For systems that don’t, third-party tools can enforce MFA requirements across your organization. Yes, employees might grumble about the extra step, but it’s a small inconvenience compared to a breach.
Implement and Test Backups Regularly: Understanding how long you can operate without data helps you develop a realistic backup and recovery strategy. You don’t need an overengineered solution designed for a Fortune 500 company, but you do need something that matches your actual business continuity needs. More importantly, you need to test it. Draw from your own experience to create simple, value-added test scenarios. For example, “Client X’s data is corrupt, and their file won’t load. Let’s restore last night’s backup.”
Building Your Security Foundation
These are just two examples of common risks and IT security controls. The larger your business gets, the more potential cybersecurity risks will be introduced. One way to sustain growth without burdensome cost is to work with a Managed Service Provider. The role of a Managed Service Provider (MSP) is to deliver enterprise-class IT security that fits the goals, capabilities, and budget of the client.
A good MSP will:
- Conduct a risk assessment specific to your business
- Create a security roadmap that addresses the most critical risks first
- Provide the resources to manage and implement the security controls on that roadmap
- Provide ongoing monitoring and response capabilities as your business grows
Identifying your unique risk factors and implementing robust security measures like MFA and regular data backups will provide significant mitigation. Partnering with an MSP can further enhance your security without overwhelming your resources. As your business grows, remember that proactive cybersecurity is an investment in the resilience of your business.
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