Cybersecurity is vital for businesses to remain secure. Companies have a lot of confidential information they don’t want to get from competitors. Additionally, businesses also store a lot of personal information on their staff, clients, and vendors.
This makes it a nice target for hackers and other cybercriminals. Cybersecurity is your best defense against these bad actors. But isn’t cybersecurity complex? It doesn’t have to be. You can implement a few basic protection measures right now to be safer without needing specialized knowledge.
In this article, we share a few cybersecurity tips for beginners to help you protect your business better. Discover a few simple solutions, such as security training for staff and using a cURL POST request to transmit HTTP data securely.
Consequences of Security Breaches
Some businesses may think it’s better to hold off on cybersecurity until they can afford the services of a specialist. However, this is a mistake. By not acting immediately, you leave your business vulnerable to attack. Security breaches can be debilitating for any business and force many to close their doors permanently.
Some of the consequences of security breaches include:
- It opens you up to identity theft
- Systems become vulnerable to account takeovers
- Financial losses due to remediation and penalties
- Loss of productivity while dealing with a breach
- Loss of reputation
- Loss of customers
- Data privacy becomes compromised
Basic Cybersecurity Tips
So, what can business owners start doing to improve the security of their business? Here are a few basic tips you can implement immediately to bolster the security of your network and systems.
1. Protection and Your Software
The software that you use can inadvertently introduce vulnerabilities to your system. This is why it’s crucial to ensure that your software always stays updated. Updates don’t just include improvements to how the software works but also crucial security updates.
There’s also vital software that you can use to add additional protection to your systems. These include antivirus programs, firewalls, ad-blockers, and more.
2. Improve Login Security
The importance of protecting your login credentials cannot be stressed enough. With access to your login credentials and passwords, a hacker or cybercriminal can cause untold damage. As such, it’s vital that business owners put a strong login credential protocol in place.
This can include policies to ensure password hygiene in which staff must use strong and unique passwords for all accounts, and these must be changed regularly.
In addition to stricter login and password protocols, you can consider multi-factor authentication and access control. Multi-factor authentication gives you better security and control over who can access information. Similarly, access control limits who has access to certain information, which protects it better.
3. Conduct Security Training
The biggest cause of data breaches is due to human error. 74% of breaches include a human element, such as employees misplacing login credentials or clicking on a phishing link. As such, ensuring your staff are trained to understand various security risks and how to deal with them is more important than ever.
You should also have a cybersecurity response plan in place that clearly outlines the protocols employees should take if they suspect a breach or potential vulnerability.
Security training should be given to all new employees before they even start their job. Companies should also have yearly refreshers to keep security at the forefront of everyone’s mind. These refreshers can also include any new developments or additions to your security plan. These can also be emailed to all staff as the protocols are implemented to keep everyone informed at all times.
4. Protect Your Connection
It’s also a good idea to protect your online connection. Accessing the internet can introduce vulnerabilities to your system. As such, it’s vital to ensure you do everything you can to protect your connection. VPNs and proxies are a great way to add protection to your connection.
These tools can also have additional benefits for your business, such as allowing you to bypass geo-restrictions and hiding your identity online.
5. Protect Your Server
You should also protect your servers, as breaches can also occur when an unauthorized individual gains access to your servers.
The best way to protect your servers is through physical means. This includes locking doors, restricting access to only authorized individuals, and adding additional passcodes and biometric identification protection.
6. Send Data Securely
Finally, when you’re sending data, there’s a chance it can be intercepted, which causes a breach. This is especially true when sending data over a network. In this case, using a secure cURL POST request is a good solution.
cURL is an open-source command-line tool used to send HTTP data securely. A cURL POST request is used to send data to your server. You can also use a cURL POST request to upload important files to your server or submit web forms more securely.
Protect Your Business by Implementing Cybersecurity
With an increase in data breaches, cybersecurity is more vital than ever. You don’t even need a cybersecurity specialist to get started.
You can already start protecting your business by implementing a few simple practices, such as better staff training and protecting how your data is transferred to the server with a cURL POST request.
