Our Guide to Cyber Security

If you are a small or medium sized UK business this guide will be perfect to protect your business from potential online attacks.

Recent studies show that 45% of small businesses identified a security breach of attack in the last year and cyber-attacks on small businesses cost the economy over £5 billion a year. Here are some simple steps to help protect your business.

Passwords to Protect your Data

Make sure all your devices, such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones have password authentication, this can be a PIN or fingerprint recognition. If you choose to have a password that is a word then you need to make sure that it is a strong password which includes numbers and capital letters and if possible, symbols.

Backing up your Data

First you need to decide what data you would like to back up, this should be data that is essential to your business, this should also be connected to the device that holds the original copies that no other members of staff can access. You should back up your information every day, and there are ways to get your data backed up automatically.

Protecting your Business from Malware

Make sure that antivirus software is installed on all computers and laptops in your business, and the antivirus that you use is not dodgy. You need to keep all your IT equipment up to date so your business is super safe. You also need to control how your staff use USB drives and memory cards as they could be exposed to unnecessary risks.

Avoiding Phishing Attacks

One way of reducing the potential damage to your business is by giving your staff the lowest level of user rights that they need to do their job and make sure that they are aware of normal working operations just in case a member of your staff gets sent a fake invoice, staff need to be trained to know what is bad for the business. Your staff should also know how to report an attack and who to report it to. You need to check for the obvious signs of phishing as it is getting harder to spot what is real and fake, check for spelling or grammar errors, who it is addressed to, the time frame or whether it is something out of the ordinary. If it is too good to be true, then it probably is.