4 Essential Cybersecurity Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make

When considering your company’s cybersecurity, it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees… or, in other words, not to forget the basics around which the rest of your protections are built.

Let’s review four cybersecurity errors that could easily domino into larger catastrophes if not nipped in the bud.

Not Training Employees

Let me ask you this: Before you learned to tie your shoes, ride a bike, or drive, were you able to do these things?

Of course not. You didn't know how.

The same can be said of your employees and properly protecting your business. Without intimate knowledge of the best practices that will keep your business secure, your employees will increase the risks you face and potentially facilitate a threat directly. It isn't even that they’ll make a mistake, per se, as the concept of a mistake implies some level of knowledge has been disregarded.

This is precisely why it is so key that you invest the time and effort into ensuring that your team has the knowledge they’ll need to recognize threats as they emerge… and, even more crucially, to respond to them appropriately. 

Not Backing Up Data

At the risk of sounding harsh, we’ve reached a point where failing to back up your business’ data has gone past “irresponsible” and “shortsighted” and is rapidly approaching “stupid” territory.

I understand that this may strike a few nerves. However, I do not apologize for saying it.

Too many feasible circumstances—including security issues like ransomware—could result in lost or corrupted data for a business of any size to lack a properly maintained data backup. Data is just too critical to risk. 

For your benefit, we recommend that your data and any changes to it be backed up at regular intervals throughout the day, with numerous past versions kept in numerous storage locations, at least one of which is held offsite. Ideally, the cloud will be involved. All of these locations must comply with strict access control and authentication requirements to protect your backups from threats.

Trust me, if something does happen to your data, you’ll be happy to have a backup.

Not Planning for Every Scenario

Modern technology allows businesses to do once-impossible things like work remotely and collaborate with people worldwide. Unfortunately, this privilege isn’t exclusively enjoyed by businesses. Cybercriminals can (and very much do) use every advantage that today’s tech provides… and sometimes, these advantages result from a business trying to utilize technology to its full potential.

Take remote work: if it isn’t carefully implemented and monitored, it can easily give sensitive data to a cybercriminal or even give them access to a business network.

It is critical that today’s businesses carefully consider every element of their technology infrastructures to identify all risks so they can be addressed appropriately and strategically. Every business needs the means to monitor its network to spot threats that sneak through and deal with them. 

In addition to all this, it is also important to monitor the cybersecurity industry as a whole, as this will help predict what trends to focus on next.

Not Looking at Security as Everyone’s Problem

Finally, too many businesses fail to incorporate cybersecurity into their company culture at every level of the organization. The fact of the matter is that a threat doesn’t have to hit the CEO to be effective. Anyone can be targeted, which means everyone needs to be prepared.

On the other hand, too many business leaders tend to hold their employees accountable to certain standards but do so with a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. Again, anyone can be targeted, so everyone needs to be prepared.

We Can Help Bake Security into Your Business

As one of the best choices for IT support for South Dakota businesses to consider, we take our clients’ security exceptionally seriously. Partnering with us not only ensures your technology is managed to be effective, but also optimized for your business security… and that’s just the start.

Reach out to us at (605) 644-7360 to learn more about our services.