Protecting your business and keeping your business safe online, whether it’s small or big, can be complicated. The consequences of external attacks and even security breaches have put internet security incredibly high on the agenda list.
Shut your Doors to Malware
The very first thing that you need to do is try and make sure that you are closing your doors to malware. You would never dream of leaving your back door open at night, would you?
So try and not to invite cybercriminals into your company. If you do not secure your computers, then this is well what you could be doing. Malware at the end of the day is very malicious. It is completely designed to infiltrate your PC network and it can cause a huge amount of damage.
If you want to help yourself here, then you need to make sure that you are protecting your PC as much as possible. You need to try and set up a firewall and you also need to make sure that you invest in a good internet router as well.
Your internet router should have an onboard firewall, but sometimes you may forget to run it. If you want to work around this then try and make sure that you do everything you can to check your existing router to make sure that it is up to scratch.
Write your Policy
Size is not relevant when it comes to the world of online crime. Fraud and smaller companies are much easier to target because they do not have any kind of limited or in-house IT support. Teach employees about their jobs and also re-teach them about your security requirements.
Your policy should include share turn-offs and turn-ons if possible. You also need to look into which applications can be loaded on to the company computer and which ones are not allowed. It’s helpful to require strong passwords and to also enforce consequences.
What happens when the policy you have is not followed? Back up your words here and put in the work to ensure that everyone is following the rules that you have set.
If you are concerned about your business being affected, now would be the time for you to seek legal help so you can get some safeguards put in place to keep your business safe. You might also want to look into wills and trusts as well.
Social Media
At the end of the day, social media is here to stay. For this reason, you need to try and empower your employees so that they are able to follow the best practices when it comes to your general guidelines. If you want to help yourself, then it’s a good idea for you to decide on who can speak for the company.
Make sure that you only allow these employees to speak on the behalf of the company as well as writing about external or internal events. Define what you think is confidential, whether it’s in your security policy and also make sure that you cover things like Twitter, LinkedIn or even Facebook.
This should all be done in your non-disclosure agreement. At this point, it’s well worth trying to look into your social media guidelines as well to keep your business safe. If you do, then you will soon find that it is easier than ever for you to make things extra secure.
Define your Blog Tone
In terms of your blog, you have to make sure that you protect your customer’s information and their egos too. Remind your customers, if possible, not to share personal information in a post and also find out where they should go in regards to asking questions that happen to involve some kind of confidential information.
Decide when you should be giving out support information and also try and make sure that you get executive and sponsorship ownership too. This will help you to get the guidelines you need quickly and it will also make it much easier for you to develop your social media strategy.
Another thing that you need to do is make sure that you are only publishing information that you are comfortable with being in the public eye. If you assume the worst, then this will help you to get the best results. Encourage any team members to limit the amount of personal information they share online. If possible.
Protect with Passwords
Like it or not, your password is the gateway to your network. It’s so important that you set a strong password as this is the best way for you to stop unwanted access to your computer.
The more keystrokes and even characters that you add to your password, the stronger it will be overall. Strong passwords tend to require at least 8 characters so keep that in mind if you possibly can.