5 Small Business Security Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore

As a business owner, you’re responsible for the safety of your employees, your customers, and their data. Read this article to learn what small business security tips you can use to keep your business safe from the inside out.

These days, it seems like if attackers are not after your money, they want your business data.

Nonetheless, business data security should be just as important to your organization as the safeguards you have in place to protect your money.

Here are 5 small business security tips you can’t afford to ignore.

1. Data Compliance

Businesses in specific industries bear the legal responsibility for protecting the customer data they handle or process. Therefore, its in the best interests of these organizations to provide compliance education to minimize risk exposure.

It’s not just your employees that need to learn about relevant cybersecurity regulations. The vendors who have access to your customers’ information should also be part of your training program.

Some study-worthy data security standards and rules include:

HIPAA: Requires entities handling, maintaining, or transmitting electronic protected health information (EPHI). This is regardless of whether the data is on-premise or in the cloud.

PCI: Stipulates data security requirements and protocols to govern the receipt, processing, maintaining, and sending of credit card information.

GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation holds companies responsible for protecting any EU citizen’s personal data.

2. Security Threats

Information system users should be aware of the cyber threats they face in the workplace every day to stand a chance of thwarting them. As such, security training should cover risks digital data and physical data.

A solar gate opener can help you protect physical data.

Users should learn to distinguish between genuine email content and fake website links. The links invite them to provide user authentication or authorization credentials.

Clickbait is a scam disguised as offers from genuine brands to platforms for launching malware attacks.

3. Application Training

User training should also include applications that your organization is using. These could be part of your cyber security awareness training program. Using data sharing platforms presents a unique set of security challenges.

The people handling these applications should be familiar with the relevant software security standards.

4. Remote Working

Off-site working is another area that exposes company IT systems to a broad array of cyber risks. The threat of data breach is evolving daily.

Employees should understand the gravity of logging in to company resources via public computers or personal devices.

5. Employee Negligence

According to Shred-its 2018 State of the Industry study, 84% of C-Suites and 51% of SBOs in the U.S. consider staff carelessness as the most significant data security threat.

However, most of these employees bear only part of the blame. That’s because the organizations they work for are not providing adequate training on information security protocols.

A company should have clear procedures for handling confidential electronic data. Your personnel should also use cyber security best practices when handling such information.

Implementing Small Business Security

You can lock the front door, install an alarm system, and get a guard dog. But if your users leave the door unlocked, put the dog in a locked room, and don’t arm the security system, then you just wasted a lot of money and time.

It doesn’t have to be this way for your small business security! Explore our blog for more tips.