No matter how small or big your business is, you are not exempt from malicious attacks, whether online or within your premises. When you are protecting your business from possible threats, you are not only protecting yourself. You are also protecting your clients whose sensitive information may be stored in your system.
Contrary to popular belief, hackers are not the only cause of data and information breaches. In fact, 90% of data breaches are caused by insiders or by the company's own employees. Data breaches can happen due to malicious intent or simply due to completely unintentional accidents.
A study from Gallagher about UK businesses found that around 3.5 million businesses suffered losses due to data loss and downtime caused by human error. Another point identified was that business owners were worried that human errors might increase their exposure to cyber-risks.
Businesses are well aware of the threats that hackers pose, and they are prepared for them. These are the kind of data breaches that reach the major news outlets. They are already addressed by security measures that most businesses implement in their network.
What makes inside threats difficult to combat is that they are mostly not done to cause damage. They are usually unintentional and accidental, making them difficult to address and prevent.
However, hope is not lost. Through holistic, comprehensive, and multi-layered security measures, you can reduce and mitigate the risks of a data breach. This includes setting up an authentication system for investing in reliable o365 backup.
Know Your Users and Invest In A Secure Authentication System
Start-ups and small businesses that deal with sensitive information should have a decent authentication system in place. You must start with knowing and classifying your users according to their functions. An authentication system acts as a filter to who can access your network.
The next step after authentication is authorization and access control. Through access control, you can protect your data and prevent unauthorized access. It can protect sensitive actions such as funds transfer, provisioning of services, and other actions related to your business. Access control can also limit queries and access to certain data and information, depending on the user's authorization level. Access privileges can be defined depending on the role of the user.
Do Not Forget The Importance of an Audit Team
You do not just audit the flow of cash in your company. You also need to audit every activity of every user in your network. This will ensure that an erring staff will be held accountable for any lapses or mistakes that can lead to a serious data breach, downtime, and loss.
When your employees know that their every action in the network is being monitored, they will be more careful and vigilant. A regular audit allows you to review important and sensitive actions taken in the network, the user that implemented the action, the device where it was done, as well as the complete timestamp. Questionable actions can be traced and dealt with accordingly.
Invest in a Reliable Back-up
It happens. Someone with a super-user account accidentally wipes out all of your important records. Or an employee received a seemingly harmless e-mail that actually contained malware that deleted your files. A reliable back-up allows you to restore your data based on the most recent snapshot before all files and records were deleted.
Your back-up can also be used to audit business records either for filing of taxes or other regulations. Having a reliable back-up, either locally or by the cloud, can save you if something goes missing from your records.
Files are not the only artifacts that you should back up. If you are using Microsoft Office 365 for your productivity tools, you will need to back up your Exchange Online, OneDrive files, SharePoint, and Teams through an o365 back-up. Investing in one ensures that your operation will not be hampered even when someone accidentally deletes everything.
Loss of important data can lead to downtime and will affect your business. A back-up will save you from business interruption that can lead to loss of income. It will also save your staff from having to re-do things all over again.
Empower your Staff
Sometimes, your staff members are not aware of the threats that may put your company at risk. When you provide your employees with cyber-security training, you train them on how to protect themselves and the company against security threats. If your employees do not know how to identify threats, they wouldn't know how to react accordingly.
An empowered and knowledgeable employee can help protect your data and company from security threats as much as the best security software. Do not forget to include security awareness in the onboarding and continuing training of your employees.
Whether you are just starting or you have been in the industry for a long time, securing your company from within is important. Your company is not exempt from security attacks, and you need to fortify your walls from within.