Protect Your Online Business with These Security Tips

In the modern world, many entrepreneurs already run their business via the Internet. The coronavirus epidemic forced absolutely everybody to go online last year. Since the way you work with customers and employees has changed, you should also change the approach to defending your finances and vital data from hacks and potential fraudsters.

In this article, you will learn what preventive steps to take to protect your online business and how a quality KYC procedure can help with that.

Risk Reasons

There are several main reasons why your business might be vulnerable to cyber attacks:

You are not sufficiently aware of the possible consequences. It can be either a leak of client data or a complete block of your website without the possibility of its recovery. If you do not fully assess the scale of damage that hackers can inflict on you in a particular field of activity, you can’t take all the necessary measures.

You save on protection. Of course, the introduction of new products and services that ensure security requires certain financial investments. Remember that, in any case, organizing a safety system is cheaper than recovering a business after a fraud attack.

You spend little time on ensuring the proper level of security. Measures taken to protect your business should be comprehensive and address all possible vulnerabilities. You should also learn from your competitors’ mistakes and take preventive actions so that their scenarios do not repeat with you.

You try to implement cybersecurity procedures without involving niche specialists. There is always a possibility that your knowledge will not be sufficient to ensure safety. That is why it is better to turn to specialized companies that offer turnkey products and solutions. They will be able to protect your business better and find all the vulnerabilities within your Know Your Customer procedures, for example.

You choose “convenient” protection but not the best one. Some security measures can limit your freedom of action or delay the verification of new customers. Therefore, entrepreneurs should seek a balance between openness and their own safety. However, in no case should you strive to get more clients at the expense of your protection.

The good news is that you can significantly minimize the risks and reduce the likelihood of a database being compromised. Modern technologies make it possible to prevent threats by anticipating and blocking attacks proactively.

8 Tips for Business Protection

If you want to warn yourself against potential threats or restore your business’s online security quickly in the event of a breach, you need to arm yourself with the right tools.

Make backups

Making backups on third-party media is necessary in case of damage or loss of control over the primary storage location. You can do it yourself if you are a small business owner or ask for turnkey solutions if you have a large company. Data loss can result from server breakdown, program malfunction, and malicious actions. To prevent it, you can do full, differential, or incremental backups. Make sure the backup data is stored in a safe place and regularly check its integrity and functionality.

Apply updates

Always apply the latest security patches for all devices and regularly update your installed antivirus software. Software is developed by people who make mistakes and inaccuracies. To fix the shortcomings and vulnerabilities of previous versions, developers release CMS updates. They should be performed manually on a regular basis, or you can configure downloading new versions on each device automatically.

Use password managers

Promote the use of special password management tools and programs by your staff. Professionals recommend using different strong passwords for each service where you enter your data, and a password manager will store all the information reliably. Where possible, use two-factor authentication, which provides an increased level of security. In any case, never transmit passwords and other data in unencrypted form.

Use firewall

Firewalls can have the form of auxiliary programs or additional equipment. In any case, their job is to protect you from fraudsters by scanning incoming and outgoing packets. Some companies offer products with additional features to provide a higher level of security. While firewalls are known to be prone to false positives, they can be adjusted to avoid interrupting work processes. In the end, the benefits of using them are much more significant than possible disruptions from their alerts

Limit/restrict access

Each administrator working for your company should have their own account with the required minimum set of privileges. The actions of each of them should be logged. The same applies to access via FTP/SSH protocols to your hosting. As part of monitoring employees’ activities, it is recommended to use services that control the movement of documents and corporate data on all connected work computers and laptops. Even if a disgruntled employee decides to take your customer base with them when they leave, the system will let you know about it, and there will be no data leakage.

Establish constant monitoring

To monitor your website or online store, use special software solutions to check their performance. In order to understand what’s going on with your traffic, set up visit counters. If the curve on an attendance graph looks like a roller coaster, you might be hacked. Check your hosting for hacker scripts and viruses regularly. Online monitoring systems will help to detect a malfunction of your site immediately and notify you about it promptly. So, spend some time customizing your notification system.

Check customers thoroughly

Lead screening is common in the finance industry, but it doesn’t hurt small businesses. There are different verification levels, but in general, they boil down to making sure that a person is whom they say they are.

The main task of companies and KYC verification tools that perform the checking is to find out that your customer is not on the sanctions lists and has a clean reputation. A multi-stage verification system will let you prevent identify fraud and not tarnish your company’s name by working with an unreliable person or organization.

Train employees

Remember that the human factor is just as important as IT tools for digital security. If your employees have difficulty distinguishing a phishing link from a real one and are potentially capable of inadvertently giving away their username and password, no reliable solution will help.

Provide basic information security training opportunities for all your employees. Ensure they know how to work with antivirus software, enter and change passwords correctly, know what to do if a computer starts to freeze or execute commands that were not entered by a user, and so on. Make such educational programs part of the company’s policy, and be sure to compile a list of the information that employees are not allowed to disclose under any circumstances.

Take Action Now

With these tips, you will be able to protect your online business from any intruders. However, no matter how reliable your defense is, always have a well-thought-out plan of action in a cyber attack event.

You should not only be able to identify the threat timely and eliminate it, but also learn from the situation that has arisen and, if necessary, quickly notify customers. You may also need legal protection in particularly difficult cases. Cybercrime takes on new forms and grows every year, so you need to be flexible and prepared for any surprises.

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