With so much business being conducted online, making sure all your information is secure should be one of your company’s top priorities. And although no business anticipates that it will be them who’s hit by a data breach or hack, it can be detrimental to your business if and when it happens. To combat against this, it’s important for businesses to know just where their vulnerabilities lie and how to keep those vulnerabilities from being exposed.
To help with that, here are three of the biggest online threats to business and what you can do to minimize them.
Customer Information Breaches
If you do business online with customers, you have to protect their data against breaches at all costs. Having customer data being stolen from you via the Internet will not only cause your customers’ information to be out and insecure, but it will result in a loss of trust for your business which could lead to a drop in market share or even a lawsuit, especially if the information leaked was financial or credit card information.
To best protect your customer’s information, StaySafeOnline.org suggets for business to always update the software they use from trusted resources, use firewalls or other filters and more to ensure that there are no holes in your business’s secuirty for your customers’ data.
Business Website Hacks
Not only do you have to worry about your customer’s or client’s information when you conduct business online, but you also have to worry about keeping your own data and sensitive information out of the wrong hands as well. This task can be especially hard when you are using multiples types of online softwares or when your business requires you to keep a lot of your information on online servers like the cloud.
One of the areas you should be most focused on securing for your online business is your website. If hackers are able to get into your website, they can cause an untold amount of damage to your business. To keep this from happening, John Rampton, a contributor to Entrepreneur.com, gives business owners 12 tips for keeping their website secure. Some of these tips include always having the most recent security software updates, encrypting files, backing up your information frequently and many more.
Employee Mistakes
While you may not have thought of this, careless routines on the part of your employees can also be a big way you can have security breaches within your company. For this reason, it’s important that you express to your employees just how important online security is to your company and what could be the consequences if they are a player in an online security breach.
To get your employees on board with your security protocols, Michael Sanchez of Cisco recommends for businesses to consistently educate their employees about online security measures as well as create a culture where employees can come to you if they suspect a security breach has occurred. Your employees are going to be your front line of protection, so make sure they know what they’re doing.
By taking the right precautions and being aware of what could be hazardous to your business’s online security, you will have a better chance of avoiding data threats and information breaches within your business.
