If you think the risk of a data breach or cyberattack is low, think again. According to the 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, every industry is at risk: last year, attacks were present from manufacturing to retail and from healthcare to administration, and everything in between. The worst part is, not all attacks are from external sources – some are internal, and of course sometimes viruses get through accidentally due to employee mistakes.

No matter your industry, you have a lot to lose: your data, customer base, industry secrets, and proprietary information are all targets for attacks. We’ve put together five easy tips you can implement right away to help protect your business.

Implement an Employee Policy for Safe Use

Many businesses do not have any type of policy in place that sets boundaries for what employees can and cannot do on the internet and in e-mail accounts. Each company should create a formal policy which all employees (current and future) need to sign which details information like e-mail best practices, rules for internet browsing, accessing social media sites, and completing personal tasks (like banking) on company time.

Remote Monitoring and Management Agents

Having Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)  on every computer and server allows your business to be in a proactive rather than reactive position with security. RMM can automatically advise your IT team that there is an imminent disk failure, low disk space, overutilization, and more to ensure it is fixed before you face an IT emergency that prevents your staff from getting work done. Depending on your anti-virus software, RMM can also alert your off-site tech experts when malware is present. Which leads us to…

Install Proper Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Software

When you have a team of IT experts monitoring your network, a proper business class anti-virus solution will have the ability to alert a central web portal when a virus or malware is present. Because we are monitoring that portal, we’ll be able to tell when a machine has any kind of problem before you or your employees notice. We can then push commands to that computer to clean it of the virus, and update the anti-virus software if needed. In the case that a virus can’t be cleared through a command sent via the portal, we’ll be able to notify you and your employee, connect manually, and remove it that way.

Have a Proper off-site or Cloud Back-up of all Data

At the absolute minimum, your business should have a cloud backup that can safely copy your data for you at regular, frequent intervals. This way, you have access to a backup in case of a ransomware attack, hardware failure, computer damage, or theft.

Install a Backup & Disaster Recovery Device

Hands down, the best thing you can do to make sure your business is protected in the event of any kind of attack or damage, is to install a Backup & Disaster Recovery (BDR) device with a cloud backup component. If you have onsite servers, this is especially important. In fact, in our opinion here at Info-Tech, it’s crucial. Read our blog on BDR devices for more info, or contact us today to ask about protecting your business.