Cybersecurity Strategies for Small Business Growth
For small business owners, growth is the north star. In pursuit of this, they often find themselves juggling roles from sales, customer service, HR, and marketing. Yet, there’s one area that tends to fall through the cracks: cybersecurity.
It’s easy to understand why. Headline-grabbing cyber breaches usually feature large corporations, giving a false impression that small businesses might be off the radar for hackers. This isn’t the case. In fact, Accenture’s Cost of Cybercrime Study reveals a staggering 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, and only 14% are equipped to handle them.
The threat is real, and cybercrime technology is becoming more sophisticated by the day. But even without the resources of big enterprise security teams, small business owners can take crucial steps to start sealing security gaps now.
Creating a holistic cybersecurity strategy is essential. This encompasses traditional IT security, mobile defense, policy formulation, access management, and WiFi protection, to name a few areas. Here are some foundational measures to bolster your small business’s defenses:
- Risk Assessment and Asset Identification: Recognize the myriad of threats that exist, from phishing to ransomware, and assess what a successful attack could mean for your business. Identify and catalog your key digital assets. Use Tabletop Exercises and Penetration Tests to understand your posture.
- Network Protection: Strengthen your firewall and WiFi security. Every device, including those of remote workers and guests, adds to your network’s vulnerability.
- Credential Safeguarding: Control who accesses what within your company and protect login credentials with robust password management.
- User Education: Train your team in basic security practices. Strong passwords, internet usage, and handling sensitive data should be policy-backed.
- Regular Updates and Patch Management: Stay ahead of exploits like the infamous WannaCry by regularly updating and patching systems.
- Backup and Recovery: Automate data backups to nullify the threat of ransomware. If your data is held captive by hackers looking for payment to grant access, you remove their leverage if you have data backups handy. It’s a best practice to automate this process so you don’t have to rely on individual users to carry out the work.
- Consult the Experts: Cybersecurity can be complex, and professional guidance from experts like CoAction is invaluable. The truth is, cyber threats are not diminishing, and small businesses are increasingly becoming targets. While daunting, small businesses are far from defenseless. Implementing comprehensive cybersecurity measures, like antivirus software, firewalls, and proactive network security, can create a robust defense system.
Explore more insights, advice, and best practices for safeguarding your small business on our blog, and Contact us to talk about a secure future!
