7 Cybersecurity Mistakes Businesses Often Make
Any business, whether a brand-new start-up or an enormous corporation, needs cybersecurity. It’s essential. It’s about protecting your business, customers, clients, and employees. With good cybersecurity defenses, you can rest assured that your company’s data stays protected no matter what. The question is, what defines good cybersecurity, and is yours up to scratch? Many businesses think they have a robust cybersecurity system, but there are still gaps that hackers can get into, making them vulnerable. To ensure that doesn’t include you, here are seven cybersecurity mistakes businesses often make.
1: Not Proving How Secure You Are
You might have excellent cybersecurity, but do your clients and customers know that? For example, imagine you are creating a new kind of software for a client. You must show them that this system is 100% secure and safe. Fortunately, you can do that with SOC-2 reporting. SOC-2 reports allow you to identify your most important security practices and their effectiveness, including access control, two-factor authentication, quality assurance, performance monitoring, and more. This data will help prove its security, enabling you to build trust. If you are building software for a healthcare organization, you need to be in compliance with HIPAA; learn more here: https://duplocloud.com/blog/hipaa-compliant-cloud-storage/.
2: Avoiding Software Updates
Many employees click “not now” when a pop-up reminds them of a software update. Did you know that this could put the company’s data at risk? The updates are there for a reason – they smooth out the kinks by fixing bugs, adding new features, and including new securing patches. It’s a way of making the system better and more secure, so updating software whenever it tells you to is important.
3: Weak Passwords
You likely know by now to use a strong password. Do you know what a strong password is? While the chances are you won’t use a password like “business” or “password,” that doesn’t mean yours is good enough. For a strong password, everyone in the company must use one that is at least eight letters long and includes a combination of upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters. Do this, and hacking becomes much harder for cybercriminals.
4: Forgetting to Back Up Data
While strong passwords and software updates will undoubtedly help keep hackers out, there is still a risk. Unfortunately, there always is. That’s why it’s important to back up your data – something many companies forget to do. Think about the sensitive data you could potentially lose! Ideally, have at least three copies of your most essential data, with one being a hard copy. That way, you always have it there, just in case.
5: Using Public Wi-Fi
More companies hire people to work from home these days. That means a lot of employees work from cafes and other public spots. While this on its own isn’t bad, it can mean that employees use public Wi-Fi while accessing the company’s system, which could prove detrimental. Public Wi-Fi is never secure, and accessing it means you put whatever data you access at risk. Avoid this common mistake by letting employees know not to use public Wi-Fi when accessing the company’s systems.
6: Thinking You’ve Covered Everything
Cybercriminals always get better at hacking. Think about it – to them, hacking is their job, and their goal is to hack into your systems. Whatever barrier you put in place to prevent that, they figure out ways to work around it. You cannot let them. You need to stay two steps ahead, and to do that, never assume that you’ve covered everything. Keep in the know about cybersecurity, or hire someone who knows what they’re doing.
7: Not Educating the Staff
The chances are your most techy team members know all about cybersecurity, and they work hard to protect your data on all fronts. What about the rest of the team? Remember, it only takes one data breach to lead to a business’s downfall, so you cannot let it happen once. Avoid that by educating all your staff on the best cybersecurity practices. Things like educating them about phishing scams are a good start, but don’t let the education end there – keep it fresh and up to date. Perhaps consider investing in cybersecurity training courses for the entire team. With better education, you have a greater chance of keeping the hackers out.