4 Steps To Take To Protect Your Startup From Cyber Threats

The Internet is a place where every business, small and large, can improve its processes.  These processes could include marketing and customer support. However, even as businesses prosper in cyberspace, it has also been an opportunity for cybercriminals to execute malicious attacks on unsuspecting businesses. As a result, you need to protect your new business from such ill motive activities from cybercriminals.  

One way that cybercriminals use to steal from small businesses is through identity theft. Thus, you need to protect the information about your customers or suppliers from a security breach. If an online criminal manages to get the details of one of your suppliers, they can disguise themselves and request settlement of a debt owed with them. Hence, fraud prevention is critical by understanding how phishing and other social engineering strategies work.  

Therefore, to help you safeguard your startup business from cyber threats, here are important steps that you can take.  

1. Carry Out Regular Backups  

Even after you’ve instituted elaborate cybersecurity measures, it’s still prudent to regularly back up information. Identify the kind of information that should always have a complete backup. Backups are important to ensure you have a restore point if your information is lost or compromised through a malware attack. You can do a backup on external storage that is stored offsite.  

You can also back up your information in another server that is housed outside your business. If your primary server is compromised or breaks down, you can use the second server as a failover option to keep your business up and running.  

In addition, you can backup business information in the cloud as one of the most secure alternatives. Getting storage space from cloud service providers can help you, especially if your business is highly data-driven, in dealing with large volumes of data. Moreover, with cloud storage, you can perform automatic backup processes. This ensures you don’t have to do the hard work of remembering when to do the next backup procedure.  

2. Establish A Data Security Policy 

Right from the inception of your business, you need to outline practical steps that will ensure robust security for your business information. Budget is sometimes a barrier for many small businesses when they want to institute world-class security measures. However, it’s important to have some level of protection than to have none. You can use cheaper strategies like hiring managed Information Technology (IT) services rather than having an in-house team and buying expensive equipment.  

A data security policy may specify who has access to particular data and who should not. In addition, you can have well-laid down procedures on how data should be collected, stored, and protected. Finally, you can let every employee who has access to private information understand their role in protecting such information. 

3. Encrypt Data  

Data encryption is one of the most secure means of protecting your business information. This is so important, especially when you’re sending sensitive information through the Internet. Even if it’s intercepted, encrypted data can’t help the intruder unless they have the encryption key. Thus, you should send encrypted data separately from the encryption key. 

In addition, you should encrypt data in storage media. This will ensure that, even if someone breaches the security protocols in your business, they still can’t access the information.

4. Educate Your Staff 

Your staff and their gadgets that access business networks might be the target of cybercriminals. Training your employees on how to be secured online helps in establishing a cybersecurity culture. As a result, train your staff on how to collect, store and handle business-sensitive data. In addition, you should let your employees know that it’s inappropriate to share their passwords even with their colleagues at work.  

Moreover, it would help your business if your workers could safely browse the Internet and identify potentially unsecured sites. Social engineering strategies like phishing are other threats that your employees should know how to identify and avoid.  You could let your staff attend seminars hosted by your in-team IT personnel about how they could safely secure their accounts.

Wrapping Up 

Due to cybercriminals’ increased target of business startups, it’s important to have good cybersecurity measures from day one of operation. Remember that cyber threats can ruin the good reputation of your business. Moreover, it can reduce business revenues if some customers move to your competitors after a cyberattack. Thus, implementing the measures given in this article can help you protect your business from an imminent cyber-attack.