Do you think your business is at risk of being hacked? An overwhelming percentage of local business owners actually don’t think so. But, your establishment might be at risk more than you realize. About half of Bahamian owned businesses experience a cyber attack every few weeks - sometimes without even realizing that their personal and business information has been compromised.
Caribbean based businesses are very appealing to modern hackers. These businesses typically have a moderate amount of data with minimal or no security. Hackers can use the stolen information to steal from many others; including family members of your employees, your customers and most importantly - you. Your business is at risk when you are unprepared for a cyber attack. Hackers can steal money, employee details, customer data, and vendor information. A data breach can damage your relationships with employees, customers, and vendors and this loss of ‘trust’ is mostly irreversible.
Building up your local business’s cyber-security is imperative. By using cyber-security basics, you can prepare your business for cyber attacks.
Use these five tips to better defend your business against cyber attacks
Train Employees
Create a cyber-security policy for your business. It should contain cyber-security best practices that you expect employees to follow. Include procedures for keeping the employee, vendor, and customer information safe. Your cyber-security policy should also contain protocols that employees must follow in case there is a breach.
Update Computers
You should regularly update your computers, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Make sure your operating systems and web browsers are up to date to protect against the latest threats.
Create Backups
Regularly backup the information on computers. If the information is stolen or goes missing, you should have another copy somewhere else.
All important information should have a copy. For example, you might keep vendor information on your desktop. But, you might also have a copy stored in the cloud. Both copies should be secured. You can use encryption and passwords to protect all your important information.
Limit Access
Unauthorized people should not have access to company computers and accounts. Even a well-known, trusted person shouldn’t be allowed to access computers and information that they are normally unauthorized to use. For example, you shouldn’t let a client borrow a company laptop to look something up.
Secure Your WiFi
Your business’s WiFi can be an easy way to access data. Secure your WiFi so only employees can access it. If possible, set up the WiFi in a way that prevents employees from knowing the password.
If you want an open WiFi for customers to use, set up a separate network. Guests should not have the same WiFi access as employees. This will help prevent unwanted people from joining the business WiFi and accessing files.
Not sure where to start?
Securing your business from the digital end may seem like a daunting task, especially if your in-house IT resources are limited. At In-Studio Interactive we help our clients reduce risk and maintain business integrity over cyberspace. In-Studio’s trusted and proven approach drives end-to-end security efforts, supporting your entire organization to help find, fix, and prevent threats before they disrupt your business.
We offer a ‘Complete Security Awareness Training’ for companies of any size. Our core training is a based on ‘modules and courses’ from ‘KnowBe4’; the world’s most popular integrated Security Awareness Training and Simulated Phishing platform.
Completing the top-level certifications ourselves, we’ve decided to bring this knowledge home to help local companies stay protected against cyber attacks.
Schedule a free assessment today and let us help your business stay protected against various forms of cyber threats.