Most small and medium-sized businesses that suffer a data breach close their operations within a few months due to the high costs. Loss of revenue, downtime, productivity losses, and fees to compensate consumers whose data was compromised, among other expenses, might be incurred as a result of a cyberattack.
You could believe that increasing your cybersecurity spending will protect your company’s interests against a cyber breach. It is true that you must implement suitable IT security measures (anti-malware, firewall, etc.). However, most serious breaches happen as a result of frequent cybersecurity errors made by businesses themselves and their staff.
Many of the most destructive cyberattacks have been discovered to be the result of failure to pay attention to one or more elements of fundamental security maintenance. Here are a few of the most frequent errors in terms of fundamental IT security best practices that businesses do but must not.
Avoiding Using Shadow IT
Shadow IT is the practice of employees using cloud applications for company data without management approval or even awareness of the company. It leaves businesses at risk for storing and managing crucial data in a non-secure environment without any backup strategy. Employees usually start using apps on their own because they’re attempting to fill a gap in their workflow and are ignorant of the risks associated with utilizing an app that hasn’t been reviewed by their IT team.
Multi-factor Authentication is not implemented
According to IBM Security, the most common reason for data breaches worldwide is credential theft. Since the majority of business operations and data are now stored on the cloud, login credentials are the key to several network attacks on businesses. A typical error that puts businesses at a higher risk of experiencing a breach is failing to protect user logins using multi-factor authentication.
Failing to use antivirus and internet security applications
No matter how small your company is, you cannot be fully protected with a basic antivirus program. In reality, a large number of today’s threats don’t even use a malicious file. Phishing emails will include commands sent to safe PCs that aren’t marked as infected or malicious. These days, URLs rather than file attachments are frequently used in phishing to direct people to fraudulent websites. Simple antivirus software won’t be able to detect those links. This is why you should think of a multi-layered strategy when safeguarding your data using antivirus applications.
Not setting up device management
Since the COVId-19 pandemic, the vast majority of businesses have allowed employees to work remotely from home, and they intend to continue doing so. Device management, however, hasn’t always been implemented for smartphones used for business as well as those used by remote employees. You run a larger risk of a data breach if you don’t control data access or security for all the endpoints in your company.
Are you at high risk of a data breach or ransomware attack because your business is making a risky cybersecurity mistake? Contact us at Rapidtech Computer Services to talk to our expert computer consultant in Vancouver to discuss your situation.