Team Partners Telecommunications

Keeping you safe from cybercrime

Posted on Aug 24, 2022  | Tags: security

There’s a suggestion of cloak and dagger shenanigans behind the whole cyber-security topic that makes it a subject many companies tend to shy away from, attached to which there’s a belief amongst smaller enterprises that cyber baddies only swoop on big business and, being smaller, we’re safe because no-one would bother with us.

It’s not true and you’re not safe, not least because cyber baddies often, if not usually, bundle together hundreds of phishing type emails when they launch an attack. Yours might be amongst that number purely out of happenstance because, maybe you stayed at a certain hotel or flew a certain airline some time ago and your details were amongst thousands of others that were stolen from them.

There’s also a belief that protecting against cyber crime is unfeasibly expensive due to the deep expertise needed to combat it successfully. Not so. There are several steps any business can take to protect themselves and we’re going to look at five of these.

The first is…back up your data. Do you do this? Do you, honestly? Most of us would say we do, and then realise that it’s been three weeks since we last did. Making a final back-up the last thing you do before leaving the office is just good practice. What do you do?

Before moving on, let’s just look at backing up a little deeper. Firstly, what are you backing up? Everything, or everything of importance? This begs the question of what is important, the answer to which is, whatever you need to run the business; your customer details, orders, sales, quotes, banking details, the everyday details you can’t do without. Do this every day and if you ever experience a ransomware attack, you’ll be able to rebuff it without paying a penny. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be a cyber-attack. A fire could easily put you in the same position.

Where do you keep your back-up? Answer? Hopefully nowhere near your computer! That may sound obvious, but what may be less so is the importance of restricting access to the important information your backup contains. Unless you’re happy for your staff to know about everything, keep your back-up away from the office and somewhere safe…and certainly not connected, either physically or on a local network, to whatever device the original data is kept on.

A potential solution as to where to store your backup may be ‘the Cloud’. You’re probably already using it to store data, maybe without being aware that you are. Unless you have your own email server that’s where your emails are stored, and you may not think of the cloud as being particularly safe, but it is. Your data is secure off-site, it can be accessed by you easily with the right passwords and Cloud storage doesn’t have to be expensive. You might also consider investing in a relationship with a professional IT company. A good local company will be able to help you deal with everyday IT problems as well as security considerations, without the expense of a specialist cyber security company.

But our top tip? Whatever you do, wherever you store your back-up, do it daily!