5 Ways to Protect your Business Against Cybercrime

Cybercrime is on the rise and as more of us work, shop, and go to school online, cybercrime is becoming a bigger factor regarding internet safety concerns. There is always some risk related to connecting employees to your company network when they are working remotely, with phishing and other attacks being executed each day.

If you are concerned that your business is not protected adequately against cybercrime, there are some great ways to make sure that this security risk is being attended to properly on a daily basis. You will find that there are some simple ways to keep your business safe that you might not be doing, which can make a big difference to your overall business safety.

If you are ready to learn more about the different ways to protect yourself from cybercrime, read on!

What is Cyber Crime?

Cybercrime is an attack that is done through a computer that can forward illegal ends like fraud, trafficking of illegal items, or stealing people’s personal information and identity. When committed against a business, cybercrime can include ransoming the data of a company and requiring payment to get it back or stealing personal and financial information from the company’s data.

Cybercrime is an increasingly large concern for businesses big and small because hackers are getting increasingly good at breaking through company security measures along with users within the company potentially exposing a business to risk due to errors in their judgment.

Ways to Protect Your Business Against Cybercrime:

1. Use a VPN

If you have remote workers, you need to provide a VPN for them to use to connect to your business network. The best VPNs will make sure that there is no risk of hackers gaining access to your business data and private information through a remote worker’s unsecured internet. You will also be able to secure and protect IP address information through the use of a VPN.

VPN access is becoming the standard for remote workers all over the world, and there are more options than ever for VPN access arrangements. Make sure that you pick a quality VPN and don’t select based solely on price. Your VPN is the most important protection that your business has from cybercrime on a daily basis and it needs to be able to stand up to the challenge.

2. Run An Assessment

There are various companies out there that will be happy to run a simulation on your business and see where your security fails. These fake attacks can tell you a lot about where your network is unsecured or what kinds of risks you have exposed your business to through a lack of defenses.

You can work with the results of the assessment to create better solutions for your cyber security and to implement improved antivirus and access requirements for your remote works and your network as a whole. Being able to know where things are not protected before a hacker finds these weaknesses can be a big help to your overall cyber security plan.

3. Educate Your Staff

Your employees are often the main risk to your business security planning. Employees can accidentally respond to phishing emails, send contaminated emails from their personal inbox to your business, or forget to set up proper cyber security practices on their own home internet. Educated employees are far less likely to make these errors than employees that have had no training in cyber security practices.

While your staff might complain about having to attend these training sessions, cyber security education has been proven to make a big difference in the number of cyberattacks that are successful due to employee error. Always educate your employees, even if they are working in your IT department, to avoid any potential cyber-attacks.

4. Keep Things Updated

One of the biggest factors in successful cyberattacks is often a lack of updates to business software. You should never ignore updates when they are offered for any of your software or cyber security defenses. These updates make sure that your devices and your software are protected from the evolving threats that are floating around online.

If you do not update your devices and your software products, you will open yourself up to risks that hackers and cyber attackers can gain access to on your network without ever being noticed.

5. Limit Access

You should make sure that not every user in your company can access the most important data and information that you have stored for your business needs. Users need to have exactly as much access as they require and no more. If you allow every user to have the same access as every other user in your company, an attacker can gain access to any employee’s profile and steal all of your data with ease.

Limiting access can make sure that there is no single access point for all of your company data and it can also prevent issues with employees accidentally sharing information that should not be common knowledge. At the end of the day, employees have to be trusted to do their jobs, but should not be trusted to have access to every single piece of information that is stored in your database.

Protecting Yourself From Cybercrime Can be Easy

If you use the tips and tricks on this list and make sure that you stay on top of changes to the cyber threat reality, you will be able to keep your business safe from cyber-attacks. The speed with which hackers and other bad actors are creating new security challenges is rapid, but having the right security measures in place can help prevent major issues for your company.

You will find that having a good security protocol in place, providing employee education, and limiting user access can make a big difference to the overall security of your business and its data.