Cover Your Assets: 3 Cybersecurity Best Practices for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, cybersecurity may be the last thing on your mind. After all, it’s not like you’re a multinational company that’s bringing in millions in revenue each year.
This may come as a surprise, but small business owners are often targeted by criminals and hackers. In fact, it’s estimated that 43% of all cyber attacks target small businesses.
Small businesses are great targets for hackers. Most small business owners don’t invest in cybersecurity protection, so they’re sitting ducks for criminals.
Do you want cybersecurity best practices you can use to protect yourself and your customers from criminals and hackers? Read on to learn the best way to protect yourself.
Cybersecurity Best Practices: 3 Essential Tips
You don’t need to invest in a huge IT force to protect your business. There are some very simple and inexpensive things you and your employees could do to protect your business.
There’s no need to invest in any fancy software or take complicating computing and security classes. As long as you do these three things, you’ll have protection against any hacker.
Secure Your Payment Methods
If someone is hacking a small business, they’re probably after credit card and payment processing information.
This can go both ways for businesses.
If you don’t use secure payment methods someone could steal card numbers you use for business purchases. Someone could even steal the card numbers of customers that you’ve processed payments for.
Be sure to isolate payment systems from other less secure programs. Also, never use the same computer that you use to process payments to browse the internet.
If you process payments online, be sure to use secure payment portals to keep your important information safe. Go the extra mile and consider additional SOC as a service help like what’s on this site.
Also, it doesn’t hurt to contact your bank or card processors to make sure that you’re using the most up to date equipment. It’s also a good idea to make sure that you’re currently compliant with their security standards.
Change Passwords Frequently
Changing passwords a simple thing to do, but a lot of business owners don’t do this. Some may remember to change passwords when employees quit or get fired, but many hope that former employees forget passwords.
Changing a password when an employee leaves is a good security practice, but if you want to protect your business, get into the habit of changing your passwords often.
You should update anything that requires a password or code to access at least every few months. Also be sure to make the passwords unique. Don’t recycle passwords or make tiny variant changes.
Don’t Forget About Mobile Phones
Do your employees use their phones to access an online portal to clock time or submit time off requests? Do you use square readers to process credit and debit card payments?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you have another cybersecurity risk on your hands.
Cell phones may have made our lives easier, but they’ve also made cybersecurity much more complicated for small business owners.
Require employees to encrypt their data, password protect their devices, and install security apps. This keeps their phone secure when they’re on public networks.
Remember, phones get lost or traded in all the time. Be sure to create reporting procedures for lost or stolen equipment, and have your employees wipe phones before they trade them in for new ones.
Improve Your Business
By following cybersecurity best practices, you’ll protect your business, customers, and employees. If you stay vigilant and do the three simple things we listed in this post, you won’t have a problem keeping your business safe.
Now that we’ve covered cybersecurity, let’s find new ways to enhance your business.
If you want to bring in new customers and impress clients, you’re going to need the right promotional merchandise to make a good impression. Check out our post on affordable and creative giveaway items you can use.
