Collaborative Post
If you run a small business, you may not realise it, but you are constantly at threat from an online cyber attack. If you handle customers data in any way, be that in the form of names and email addresses, bank details, addresses, phone numbers, or even identify specific data such as a passport or national insurance/ social security number, then you will need to ensure that you do everything in your power to protect this information.
Data protection is not just a matter that is an ethical priority, it is also something that is governed by law. To not protect the data of any customers is to be in breach of this law, and this may result in your business facing a hefty fine.
When we talk about protecting data, we mean limiting the internal access to this information, using appropriate levels of internal security, e.g. passwords, and ensuring you have taken all of the measures possible to prevent your business getting attacked by cybercriminals.
A data breach could spell the end of your business. Not only would the loss of your customer’s data mean that they may fall victim to fraud or identity theft, even in the best-case scenarios, but you would also lose consumer confidence and your customers would leave in droves.
There are many ways that you can ensure that you keep your business safe from attack. Here are some examples.
Review Your Access
When accessing any of your companies most sensitive information, ensure this is done through your reputable custom workstations. You should have passwords set up for every piece of software and every machine. Each member of your team should have their own unique password for accessing any area of your business technology. You should make your team change their passwords periodically. Once a month is ideal. If the entire company all does this on the same day and makes a standard practice of it, it will soon become a habit that people won’t find annoying. You may also want to include multi-factor authentication for certain elements of your business’ data, particularly if there is a greater value to this information.
Make sure that you remove the access of any former employee once they leave.
Educate Your Team
Phishing emails are hard to spot. They are often from brands that you know and they are designed to scare you into taking immediate action. For example, you might get an email about irregular activity on your PayPal account, it will tell you to click on a link to find out more information. You’ll be directed to a login screen which looks like the real thing. You’ll place your login details in- and by this point, hackers now have access to your account. This is one of the most common ways of criminals obtaining sensitive information. Train your staff to ignore links within emails, and if they need to access an account to check for irregular activity, they should access it through the regular URL.