9 Ways To Improve IT Security

In today’s era when data breaches and cybercrime are more prevalent than ever, organizations and businesses can’t afford to ignore information technology (IT) security. From ransomware and phishing attacks to careless password practices, there are many ways for cybercriminals to access your company’s sensitive information.

How To Improve IT Security

With that in mind, businesses must implement strategies to improve IT security and invest in quality business IT support to stay protected from cyber threats. If you don’t know where to get started, below are some of the ways to improve IT security:

Level Up Your Password Strength

The golden rule is creating one with at least eight characters when it comes to passwords because anything else can be quickly compromised. If possible, create long passwords with lowercase and uppercase letters, symbols, and numbers.

Remember that cybercriminals use hacking tools to crack your password quickly. Therefore, passwords with sequential numbers, easy-to-hack personal information, and alphabetical order are never a wise idea.

You should also change passwords regularly to keep you and your business safe from cyber-attacks. So, make sure to require your employees to change their passwords often to secure sensitive information. In addition, your passwords must be different in every account.

Prioritize Data Backup

Most hackers have become more skillful over time. With that in mind, it’s crucial to back up your data to secure your business information and sensitive data from hacking. Generally, data backup is a copy of computer data to restore the original if it gets deleted or hacked. So, backing up your data will prevent your company from damage by restoring lost data.

At present, there are countless software programs like Stellar Data Recovery Professional and others that you can use for automatic data backup. Just keep your backup and original data in different types of data storage. For example, you can create backup data on cloud storage or an external hard drive and keep your original data on your laptop or computer.

Install Updates Regularly

Most organizations that suffered a data breach had the right patches in place but didn’t prioritize updates regularly. If you don’t want to be a data breach victim, you should never take security updates or software updates for granted. Such will help fix the vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can identify. Also, by failing to install updates regularly, you’ll only leave your company exposed.

To keep your system updated, schedule automatic updates. You can also try manual updates. Just ensure that your staff knows when to install updates.

Use Anti-Malware Tools And Antivirus

While antivirus secures your computers by determining the possible viruses like phishing attacks and works, anti-malware tools protect your business from the newest and latest threats that weren’t seen before. Anti-malware and antivirus tools together create the best possible security for your devices. So, it’s critical to install both of them to keep your devices safe from malicious attacks.

Stay Informed

Cybercrime is a huge money industry, which means cybercriminals are proactive with their methods. That’s why you have to stay informed with the latest IT security trends. It’s also the case even if you hire IT security professionals.

Although you’re not directly managing your IT security, the business owner is ultimately responsible for cyber-attacks. To stay informed, join online IT security forums and communities.

Invest In Employee Training

Employees play a crucial role in protecting your business. They must be aware of the possible cyber threats to protect your company. For this reason, you should invest in employee training. When done regularly, training courses can be beneficial to raise awareness among your staff.

Often, a training course includes basics such as:

Avoiding entering dangerous and unsecured websites
Spotting scams, not opening suspicious emails with attachments, and detecting phishing emails
Backing up data and updating software and computer systems
Not sharing company data or passwords with anyone
Using two-factor authentication and strong passwords for work

You can hire service providers specializing in training employees about cybersecurity for training courses. You may also opt for creating a department in your company that focuses on IT security training only. This way, you can ensure that all your employees are aware of cyber-attacks and the best solutions to keep your business protected.

Regularly Review Procedures And Policies

By creating procedures and policies, businesses ensure that employees understand their obligations and engrain the lessons taught during the training. If necessary, provide more technical-minded policies to provide essential assistance for your security solutions. However, make sure to update your policies from time to time.

With every kind of vulnerability discovered in your business, you have to update your procedures and processes to cover that change or fix in working. This is especially crucial when you have a remote team.

Pay Attention To Insider Threats

It’s easy to think that cybersecurity threats come from outside of your company. However, did you know that insider threats can potentially hurt your business the most? The reason behind it is that insider threats are hard to detect and prevent.

It could be as simple as employees clicking on email attachments from allegedly trusted sources and releasing ransomware work. Such threats are the most prevalent globally and can be expensive to deal with.

Pay Importance To Risk Assessments

Risk assessments are one of the first tasks a company must complete when preparing its IT security program. It’s the best way to ensure that the controls you choose are right to the risks your company faces.

Without a risk assessment, your business is liable to ignore threats that might otherwise have some devastating effects. You might also waste effort and time addressing events that are unlikely to occur or won’t cause significant damage.

To perform a risk assessment in your company, follow the guidelines of your IT security service provider. This way, you’ll know the necessary steps to take when dealing with threats.

Bottom Line

IT security isn’t something that you should take for granted. Cyber threats have become too big of a business for it to go away, so companies should take IT security seriously. Whether you’re running a small or a big company, follow the above strategies to improve your IT security and don’t hesitate to work with experts for better solutions to secure your business.

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