It’s not easy to keep a company safe on the internet. You require countless tools to protect different parts of your company, and setting those tools up isn’t always easy. But when cyberattacks were up 50% in 2021 alone, you can’t afford to put off securing https://www.cybertalk.org/2022/03/14/daunting-cyber-security-statistics-to-know-for-2022/your business.
Are you interested in learning about the cybersecurity solutions available to help protect your business? Below are some of the best cybersecurity products you can use to stop cyber attacks.
Password Managers
Managing passwords has become a nightmare over the past several years. Most companies now have several online programs they use alongside their desktop software. All of those accounts have usernames and passwords that people need to remember.
The problem is that you need to have complex passwords for each one that is different enough from the others. It’s hard enough for someone to remember one password. Once you start adding more passwords for people to remember, it becomes too much for people to handle.
In many cases, people put passwords on post-it notes and text files on their computers. While this is useful for remembering passwords, it’s not secure.
A password manager solves this problem. You can store all your user accounts in this program and have it automatically fill in login forms. That means nobody in your organization will need to remember their passwords and can log into their accounts more quickly.
Anti-Malware
Anti-malware is a must for a business computer network. There will always be times when employees accidentally download files they shouldn’t on their computers. In some cases, those files will be malware.
The problem is that malware disguises itself as legitimate software. People download these files as email attachments or from the web, thinking they’re downloading real documents and software.
When someone opens these files, malware gets installed on your system. Traditional malware will steal your data, log keystrokes, delete information, and spread it on your computer network. Newer forms of ransomware malware will lock your files and hold your data for ransom.
Anti-malware can prevent many malware attacks from happening. It scans all downloads on your computers and removes files that look suspicious. You also get regular malware-definition updates that protect you against the latest threats.
This is necessary because of the millions of new malware files released yearly.
Firewalls
It’s hard to manage a cybersecurity system when you don’t know what’s happening on your computer network. Individual firewalls can offer some reports, but they have no advanced features that let you control what happens on your network.
You need a hardware firewall to do this. A hardware firewall sits in front of your internet router to control your network’s internet traffic. They have a threat database that alerts you about threats and stops them before they cause problems.
Firewalls can also give you control over the sites your employees visit on the internet. If you want to stop people from visiting shady websites, set a rule on your firewall to prevent access to places you don’t trust.
You can also block traffic from video and audio streaming websites if you don’t want people wasting time on the job. Commercial firewalls offer many other features, so check out what they offer and if they make sense for your business.
Two-Factor Authentication
Complex passwords offer a lot of added security. You have to worry less about employees creating easy passwords and hackers guessing what those passwords are. But that won’t protect you in every situation.
Hackers constantly create new ways of stealing passwords. Some of those ways are complex and don’t require learning information about employees or having them accidentally hand a password over.
That’s why many companies make it a point to add two-factor authentication to their accounts. Two-factor authentication requires a secondary code to log in. This code is unique, so you can’t use one repeatedly.
Your code gets sent to a personal account or device. These include email accounts, text messages, authentication applications, and hardware keys.
This means that a hacker who has a password can’t log into an account if they don’t have access to the secondary code. It adds another layer of security that’s hard to get past.
VPN
A VPN is an excellent product if you have employees working outside the office. In today’s environment, this is becoming more commonplace. You have team members who travel to client sites and employees who want to work from home and on the road.
While working from home might not present the biggest risk, people on the road are another matter. You have to trust that public WiFi hotspots are secure and aren’t compromised.
Hackers can intercept WiFi connections by setting up fake access points. These are called man-in-the-middle attacks. You pretend to be a real access point and monitor what people do who connect to your hotspot.
Your data is at risk if an employee connects to one of these fake hotspots. A VPN helps by encrypting all traffic that happens on a computer.
That means nobody can spy on what’s going on. You can purchase a VPN service from a company or use a VPN built into your firewall.
This is also useful if you have team members who work from other countries that are known for surveillance. You don’t want foreign governments to see what you’re doing, which means a VPN will stop data from being monitored.
Cloud Backup
Data loss is another thing you have to watch out for in business. All the security in the world won’t protect you if you suffer from a drive failure or an employee who accidentally deletes files.
This is even worse when you lose the critical data you need to run your business. Your operation will shut down entirely if that happens, and you have no way to recover the lost data.
Cloud backup solutions help in this situation. Cloud providers offer desktop software that backs up all your files and databases on a schedule. You can schedule more important files to back up more often while leaving less critical data to back up at slower rates.
Once your data is in the cloud, you only have to click a few buttons to restore your data. That means you can get back up and running with less downtime.
Another great feature of cloud backup solutions is version history. If you have files that change often, you have to worry about employees making data entry mistakes. Version history allows you to restore previous versions of files instead of trying to remember what was in a file before yourself.
Encryption
The chances are good that you don’t need all your data at all times. Most of the time, information will sit on your servers and not get used.
There’s no reason to make this information public when you don’t use it. Anyone who suffers from a data breach can gain access to your servers and steal that data.
However, that won’t happen if you encrypt data at rest. Hackers will need the decryption key if they want to access encrypted data.
On top of that, many software applications can handle this process for you. That means employees can access information without the hassle of decrypting files themselves.
You can also use file management software to handle this process. Individual employees can use these programs to view encrypted files without needing to jump through extra hoops.
Security Monitoring
Even though you can do a lot to handle business security, that doesn’t mean you’ll never suffer from attacks. New threats are created all the time, and it’s easy to miss something simple that compromises your business network.
That’s where security monitoring helps. You can hire security experts on your payroll or use outsourced IT support to get an expert to monitor your systems.
You can also use these professionals to get a second look at your security setup. This audit will give you more insight into the things you do wrong and help point you in the right direction. Security professionals can also stick around after an audit to help you solve your most significant security problems.
Don’t Underestimate the Value of Cybersecurity Solutions
It’s hard to defend yourself against cybersecurity threats when you don’t have the latest tools to protect yourself. Hackers regularly discover new ways to infiltrate computer networks. Without the right tools, your company is at risk.
Luckily, there are many common cybersecurity solutions available that will help you protect your business. Ensure you invest in the products and services above to protect your company against cybersecurity risks.
Head back to the blog if you’re interested in more business IT tips that will help your company make the most of technology.
