Incredible Ways to Tackle and Avoid Cyber Attacks

The number of scams in almost every industry is rising phenomenally every year. Unfortunately, the cyber world is highly susceptible to crimes, security issues, and other scams these days. The countries that often do highly confidential and financial business deals are more susceptible to such cyber-attacks. Some of those countries that are usually the targets of cybercriminals include the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Unlike most people think, small businesses or startups are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks since the security measures employed at such enterprises will be poor when compared to that of established businesses. Hence, it will be easier for cyber terrorists to break into and hack the data. Do you run an online business and are worried about being targeted by such anti-socials? Then, it is recommended to employ the brilliant methods mentioned below to keep your business safe.

Hire an expert

One of the simplest yet efficient ways to tackle the security issue is to hire an expert who is trained to prevent and counter cybercrimes. For this, you can either consider a veteran candidate or you may outsource the task to a reliable and credible company. Usually, the experts will continuously try to hack your network system to figure out the weak points. This will help them employ better security measures to secure your confidential data. Furthermore, choose someone familiar with all the latest hacking methods so that you can ensure that your network is strong enough to withstand all such threats.

Have a backup

What if the security of your network is breached and your data is lost? Do you have it backed up somewhere? Of course, you might find this an obvious thing to do. However, some newbie entrepreneurs and startups often ignore this step. On a related note, no expert technique is unfortunately 100% immune to the security breach. Hence, you must always be prepared to counter such attacks by storing all your vital data on a remote system. One of the best methods that most veterans tend to employ when it comes to data backup is the cloud storage, which is quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive.

Watch your competitors

If you are running your business in a highly competitive field, the chances for your rivals to break into your security system and steal the data and resources are high. Hence, always keep an eye on your competitor virtually. Alternatively, you can take lessons from their mistakes as well. On a related note, in case any of your competitors have been hacked, check out the steps they take to handle the situation. You can watch their right and wrong moves to help modify your cyber defense and response strategies accordingly.

Train your employees

You may hire an expert to look after the security of your business. However, putting all the responsibilities on the shoulders of a single person is not a wise choice when running a business. Rather, train all your employees in order to prevent and respond to cyber-attacks. You may leave this task to your security expert. Note that only a few small and medium-sized business enterprises in the United States train their employees on cyber-attacks. Sadly, studies claim that cyber attacks mostly occur in such companies and the reason is usually their employees’ lack of security measures. That being said, using strong passwords and VPN are two of the simplest and common methods employed by various companies to secure their data.

Install network intrusion prevention and detection system

To offer extra security and monitor your system flawlessly, you may rely on an intrusion prevention system such as Snort. Such software will instantly alert or notify the authority when someone is trying to access the areas of a network where they do not have clearance to. Additionally, such systems are designed in a way to respond to such threats. Hence, your data will be secured even when the hackers try to breach the security system when there is no one at your workplace. The software will also take note of the intruder who frequently tries to access the restricted area so that you can be well-prepared.

Use strong passwords

As mentioned multiple times, using strong passwords is one of the simplest yet significant ways to secure your data. Untrained employees usually use their names, date of birth, favorite places, etc., as their passwords so that they will always remember it. However, this step can make such employees soft targets of hackers. To avoid this, train your employees well and ask them to create a strong password that includes at least six characters. Plus, use upper case, lower case, symbols, alphanumeric combination, etc., in your password to make it even more complicated. In simple words, try to create a password that a cybercriminal can hardly hack.

Have dedicated banking machines

If you run a small or medium business, the number of equipment or computers that you use will be limited. However, you can enhance your cybersecurity to a great extent if you can dedicate a computer solely for your banking and other financial purposes. It is to be noted that if you use a single computer for all tasks such as financial transactions, browsing data, social media marketing, emails, etc., you are making it vulnerable to viruses and cyber-attacks.

Needless to mention, having a dedicated system to carry out the monetary transactions and store financial data and other sensitive information will be ideal to tackle this issue. Furthermore, make sure that only the employees who deal with the banking tasks in your company have access to this computer for better security.

Encrypt sensitive data

Another way to secure your confidential information is to encrypt it when sending online. Note that companies are likely to transfer a ton of data through emails or any other type of messaging tools daily. So, encrypting it before sending will secure it even if someone hacked the data. Similarly, encrypt all the sensitive data that are saved to a flash drive or any other removable storage devices. Hence, the drive will be fairly useless even if someone steals it. Furthermore, always have a recovery plan and methods to instantly determine the data that has been hacked.