7 Important Cybersecurity Principles That SMBs Should Adhere To
With the business world becoming increasingly digitalized, small to medium sized businesses must be especially conscious of their organisations’ cybersecurity standards.
Cybersecurity should be a number 1 priority for most businesses. There may have been a time when smaller organisation could get away with being less vigilant about their IT security. But since businesses has become reliant on technology, and digital data in businesses has thrived, there is no longer any opportunity for leniency. We discussed this with TechQuarters. They are a managed service provider that has provided IT support for Healthcare, and a number of other sectors whose security requirements are very high. We asked them what they think are the most important cybersecurity principles for small to medium sized businesses to invest time and money into – this is what they said.
- Employee Training/Education
First and foremost, proper cybersecurity must be held up by company culture. This means that staff at every level of the business should be well educated and trained on basic cybersecurity principles and practices. Everyone from the CEO to the interns should understand their responsibilities in keeping company data, accounts, devices and networks secured. A good way of guaranteeing this is by including comprehensive security policies in an employee handbook which can be referred to. Some businesses may also elect to use training videos for employees to access on-demand – this can help reinforce security knowledge.
- Mobile Device Management
The last 10 years of businesses has been (at least partially) defined by the use of mobile technologies in most organisations. Devices like smartphones, tablets, 2-in-1 devices, etc, have enabled businesses to work more flexibly. For mobile devices to be used in a business, they need to be managed by the company – i.e. company data and apps on a device must be protected. When we spoke to TechQuarters, who are also Microsoft 365 consultancy specialists, they said that many modern business solutions like M365 offer built-in functionality around mobile device management.
- Backup & Disaster Recovery
With the amount of precious data that businesses have nowadays, it is important to make it as redundant as possible – in other words, it must be very hard for a business to lose their data permanently. This is why backups should be a core part of a business’ security strategy. Cloud computing and storage means that businesses can now perform whole organisation backups as frequently as they need (even hourly). Disaster recovery is a related principle that governs how quickly a business can restore their data and get back to normal function.
- Secure Remote Access
One thing that businesses all around the world have in common is that, for the past few years, the way they do business has changed significantly – with much more of a focus being put on remote and hybrid working practices. As a managed IT services company, TechQuarters have seen many of their clients looking to implement hybrid and/or remote working over the past three years. They told us that the most important part of enabling remote working is ensuring that employees have secure means of accessing company data and communications.
- Zero Trust
A growing trend in cybersecurity has been the concept of zero trust. It is one of the most reliable ways to maintain maximum levels of security within an organisation’s network. The concept of zero trust mainly refers to never assuming that someone who is trying to access an account is who they say they are. Instead, trust is only granted once the user has verified their identity, which must be done every single time one accesses an account, device, file, folder, etc.
