Cybersecurity Awareness Month & Your Business
It is imperative that you remain vigilant about your business’ cybersecurity year-round. Since October is cybersecurity awareness month, why not benefit from the opportunity to evaluate your digital security practices, better protect your systems, and empower your staff.
Cybersecurity Stats
In the 1960s, our family used to drive south 1300 miles in the summer to visit my grandparents, and we never wore seatbelts because they weren’t mandatory. It never became an issue because we never had a traffic accident. But that wasn’t the case for everyone, because along the way, we would sometimes witness other people’s auto accidents.
Today, about 90 percent of Americans wear seatbelts—not just because it’s the law, but also because they reduce auto accident fatalities by about 50 percent. This tells me that seatbelts are really effective, but also that they are not 100 percent effective. Whether you choose to wear a seatbelt or not indicates the level of risk you are willing to take.
Risk of Cybertheft
The risk of being a victim of cybertheft is very similar. There are ways of protecting your business against cybercrime, and by utilizing the tools that help, you can lower the risk of theft. Just like seatbelts, there is no 100 percent foolproof way to prevent cybercrime. If you want to reduce the risk of dying in an accident, wear a seatbelt. If you want to lower the risk of your home or car being robbed, lock your doors and install an alarm system. If you want to lower the risk of cybercrime, review our recommendations and implement them where they are needed in your business.
Protection against Cyberattacks
- Train Your Staff to be aware of cyberattacks and data breaches by recognizing oddities in email links and attachments.
- Keep Your Software Up to Date so that your systems are current and at least one step ahead of the cybercriminal.
- Install a Firewall to block any brute force attacks against your network.
- Back Up Your Data on a regular basis to avoid downtime in the event of a breach.
- Control Who Has Access to your systems. Make sure only those who need certain information are the ones with access and have a system in place to terminate the access of employees when they leave.
- Change Passwords on a regular basis. Use long passwords or phrases using a mixed combination of letters, numbers and characters.
- Destroy All Electronic Devices immediately following their retirement. Don’t store old hard drives or electronic devices like laptops and cellphones. Don’t attempt to just erase information before disposing of them. Work with a reputable hard drive shredding and media destruction company who will destroy them so that no information can be retrieved and properly recycle the shredded material.
Richards & Richards is Nashville’s oldest NAID AAA Certified shredding and destruction company. We can help you keep your information secure, whether it’s in digital or hard copy format. We recycle everything we destroy to protect our environment. For more information, give us a call at 615-242-9600 or complete the form on this page and our friendly experts will answer all your questions.
