Key practices for securing your small business’s IT environment

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Key practices for securing your small business’s IT environment

If you run a small business, Your IT environment is one of your largest Liabilities. With almost all of your data flowing through a computer system at one point or another, your IT environment deserves the very best in security implementations.

As a small business owner, It can be very easy to let your security priority slip. There are bills to pay, Offices to run and Clients to support. How Can I improve the security of my IT environment without having other area’s of the business suffer? Fear no more, Techbug has compiled a list of quick, easy and proactive steps you can take to reduce the risk.

Ensure you have a robust, automated backup solution

Backups! We have all hear of them. Whether its a simple backup to an external hard drive or a Multi-Terabyte Redundant storage array. They are all the same right?

Unfortunately, No. Backups, While simple in nature, need to be designed with dependability in mind. It’s just not good enough if your backup solution costs $100,000 but the weakest link is that its user operated. Similarly, a backup solution needs to incorporate some form of fallback solution, in the event that the first backup fails.

Commonly, many IT professionals follow the 3,2,1 rule for backups and Security. This general rule reminds us to have at least 3 copies of your data at all times. Incorporating 2 different devices to backup to. And Including 1 Backup off site.

Generally, many companies resort to a cloud backup managed by an external Company. As this often results in the cloud backup having multiple backups of itself, leading to a greater degree of security.

Techbug Recommends SharePoint as the most robust and securable Cloud Storage and Backup solution.

Ensure that all your IT systems are kept up to date

This might seem obvious, but a surprising number of computer systems are not running the latest security patches. In other Words, Think about that annoying prompt you get regularly to “Upgrade to Windows 10!”

Because of the constant influx of new security flaws and vulnerabilities, It is absolutely vital that You keep your system up to date with security patches. Most vendors keep on top of these security vulnerabilities and release regular updates to fix them.

Therefore, It is Highly advised by many security professionals, to set aside a regular time to have these patches installed.

Techbug Recommends an RMM, Remote Monitoring and Management, solution for Medium and Large Businesses. Allowing Updates, Security Patches and Antivirus Definitions to be kept up to date. For home and small businesses, A regular security checkup is highly recommended.

Antivirus, yes, more than windows defender is necessary

While most tech products come with a built in anti virus. In most cases, this is pretty useless at protecting your Data. These built in “anti-virus” programs are little more than a piece of paper trying to hold back a volcanic eruption.

It is Therefore Highly recommended to invest in an advanced Anti Virus from a trusted Security Provider. For instance, We at Techbug, recommend eSet For home security. And Webroot for business, because of its robust security definitions and remote endpoint management.

Whichever Solution you go for, ensure that all machines in your environment have it installed. This covers all points of failure, avoiding any intrusion from any desktop.

In Conclusion, these are just a few quick steps to securing your IT environment, giving you peace of mind. IT security doesn’t need to be hard or time consuming. Rather, it should protect you and your environment. Yet have the capability to help you recover in the event of a security breach.

If you or your company would like a security consult, feel free to contact Techbug on 1300 655 121. And we will work with you to arrange a security implementation that will suit your companies needs.

November 21st, 2019|