Three Effective Ways to Protect Your Business From Hackers

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As a business owner, chances are security plays a major role in how you run your business—and if it doesn’t, it probably should. Protecting your business from potential threats should be at the top of your priority list. New business owners might not want to put the money into proper security because it can be pricey, while larger corporations are always looking to shave dollars from their spend. However, it’s immensely clear that the cost of cleaning up a breach is much more significant than the cost of preventing one. 

In one survey, IBM spoke to business owners who had been hacked, and 66% of them weren’t confident they could recover from the breach. Another study from Hiscox found that cyberattacks cost small businesses $200,000 to fix on average; an amount that can be crippling for many new companies. Large businesses spend millions reversing damages. With that in mind, here are three important and effective ways that you can protect your business from hackers: 

Conduct Regular Security Audits

Security audits help you identify security risks and come up with solutions to address those risks. Regular audits that occur once or twice a year to help ensure that you’re never behind on processes and technology that can help keep your business running smoothly in the long run. 

As your company grows, chances are you’ll need new hardware or software to continuously meet security demands. This is because any time you’re evolving as a business and implement new hardware, you’re essentially creating new security endpoints. The same applies to software: new programs can create additional vulnerabilities. This doesn’t mean you have to review your security architecture each time you build your business, but that over time, you need a high-level overview of how those changes have affected your security. 

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) can do wonders for your business. A CASB is essentially an encryption and data authentication hub and for all your business enterprise needs. Traditionally, enterprise security managers didn’t have transparency regarding data protection. Today, this is especially important, with many personal mobile phones having access to log onto the network. 

With cloud computing becoming ubiquitous with businesses today, each organization needs to have consistent security across each cloud application. With CASBs, you have total visibility into cloud usage. This is especially important when modern enterprises are using hundreds or thousands of third-party apps to access data. Cloud-based apps and data can become easy targets for hackers. 

Today’s most popular technology companies use CASBs to spearhead their own security efforts, including IBM, Cisco, and Oracle. In fact, as the technology continues to evolve, many argue that a CASB is just as important as a firewall. According to a study conducted by Gartner, 60% of large enterprising will employ CASBs by 2022. And furthermore, Forrester predicts that the cloud security market will be valued at $112.7 billion by 2023. With cloud app governance, data security, high-level protection, and cloud compliance, there’s no denying that CASB can create a strong barrier between your business and internal and external threats. 

Security Awareness Training

Security awareness training helps protect your business from phishing and other online threats. As a business, you are vulnerable to all types of phishing threats; studies have shown that one out of 99 emails is a phishing attempt. Therefore, it’s more important now than ever to train your team in the ability to recognize and react to those threats appropriately. 

Even with all the best technology, every once in a while, a risky email will slip through the cracks. For example, spear phishing attacks are highly targeted and thoroughly researched, and these emails are masked to look as though it’s coming from an executive in the company. This makes spear phishing attempts difficult to detect without a trained eye. 

Studies have shown that the vast majority of breaches are the direct result of employee negligence; clicking on links and opening email attachments that contain malicious malware. With the right training, you can put preventative practice into play; the last the you want to do is have to react to a breach and risk your reputation as a business. You’ll increase compliance, security, and boost morale when your team is educated and informed.