According to IBM Cybersecurity is “the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks.”
https://www.ibm.com/topics/cybersecurity
Ok, so what does that mean for your business? Well, it means that you need to actively protect your technology from the bad stuff out there.
You are probably used to protecting things in your life. You lock the doors to your home and you lock your car. You don’t give out your social security # to random strangers you meet as you take your daily walk. These are normal, everyday practices that we have done for a while.
Cybersecurity is new. Cybercrime is like the “wild west”, and you need to trust a Sheriff to keep you safe and secure. I’m going to show you 3 examples below.
One way to protect your business is using Multi-Factor Authentication or MFA. This is the process of using your phone as a means to notify you of logins to have you approve them. When you have MFA enabled on an online account, and you log into it, your phone will ding and you will have to click “Yes, that’s me” in your MFA app in order to get into your online account.
Another way to protect your business is to update your computers on a regular basis. Microsoft and Apple put a lot of security updates out on a regular basis, and you installing them will help avoid issues. You can automate this with 3rd party software and make your life easier. You just have to actually click “accept” when your computer says it needs to perform these updates.
Finally, have backups *SOMEWHERE ELSE*. I emphasize that because having your only backups onsite with you or in the same cloud service as you are backing up is silly. If somebody gains access to that platform, they can delete your backups as well. Always keep backups WITH somebody else AT their location. It should be a 3rd party independent cloud service, separate from your others, dedicated to backup and securing your data.
Cybersecurity is a vast and potentially complicated subject and these are just simple examples of what you can do protect your business from bad people. These are certainly NOT the only things you can do, the list of protections is long and growing daily.