Best cybersecurity practices to protect your business

The digital era’s criminals are getting smarter, and are using more and more elaborated cybercrime practices — malware, ransomware, spyware, phishing, and plenty of others as well. More and more website owners want to know how to check if their website is hacked.

Cybercriminals are smart, indeed, but you can be smarter! What you need is to follow the best cybersecurity practices for your business.

Statistics that show why cybersecurity is important

Here are just a few cyberthreat facts and figures — not to scare you but to show you that cybersecurity impacts everyone.

• According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime will reach $6 trillion annually by 2021.
• IT Governance UK reports that because of data breaches 1.76 billion records were compromised worldwide in January 2019 alone.
• According to IBM, it takes companies almost 200 days to discover and almost 70 days to fix a data security breach.
• Varonis estimates 58% of companies have 100,000 folders open to anyone’s access.

Best cybersecurity practices to keep your company protected

Protect your business from rising cyber threats by using the following cybersecurity practices that approach it from different angles:

• technical steps related to your software and hardware
• raising cybersecurity awareness and responsible practices among your employees

Only one approach will not work — they only work in combination. So let’s begin reviewing these cybersecurity practices.

1. Install and regularly update protective software

Make sure your company’s PCs are equipped with antivirus, antimalware, and antispyware programs. This software should always be kept up-to-date because its creators release patches to keep it properly responsive to the current cyber threats.

2. Apply a strong password policy

Having unique and complex passwords for all company’s accounts, as well as IoT devices, is an essential cybersecurity practice. Regularly changed passwords with 10+ characters, numbers, uppercase, and lowercase letters will significantly complicate life for cybercriminals.

To make it easier for employees to remember complex passwords, you could use password management software. Similarly, to make sure all of them strictly follow the password requirements, it’s best to enforce these rules on the software level. 

3. Use multi-factor authentication

An additional layer of security can be provided by multi-factor authentication. It will require not only a username and password but more factors ranging from one-time CMS codes or ReCaptcha for your website to biometric authentication (fingerprint, facial recognition, etc.). Artificial intelligence technologies allow miracles today in this area. 

4. Make regular backups

Backing up your most important data is a must-have cybersecurity practice. This includes your website’s files, your company’s financial data, customer information, human resource information, and so on. You should set up automatic backup savings. 

5. Review access rights

Make sure every employee has access only to what’s necessary for their job, nothing less and nothing more. Regularly review the access rights of people who change roles or leave the company. Special attention should be paid to privileged roles with access to sensitive information, including the super admin of your website.

6. Use email encryption

If you send your corporate email in plain text, it is very easy to intercept for third parties. Protect your sensitive information by using a good cybersecurity practice — email encryption. The text is encrypted on the sender’s part and decrypted on the recipient’s part.

7. Avoid opening suspicious assets

Cybercriminals that use the phishing technique often take a chance on users who open suspicious links, pop-ups, email attachments, and so on. Educating your employees and installing the relevant software to prevent this is the best solution.

8. Update your website’s CMS and plugins

If your corporate website is built on a CMS, an important cybersecurity practice is to rely on new releases. This includes both the core and add-on extensions. Security updates make your website more protected against the latest vulnerabilities.

Use the cybersecurity practices today

Whatever help you need in implementing the cybersecurity practices, our web development agency is here for you. Contact us and let’s discuss how we can secure your company in everything elase related to your website and software. Stay protected!