How To Protect Your Business Against Cyber Attacks

Protecting your business against cyberattacks isn’t always straightforward. However, there are several things you can do to mitigate this risk. 

Cyberattacks are a problem for businesses of all sizes because they can cause reputational, operational, and financial damage. Regulators often punish businesses further for personal data breaches, compounding the problem and making it even worse.

The good news is that there are several things you can do to lower your risk, and many of them are highly effective. 

In This Article:

5 Ways to Prevent Cyber Attacks in Your Business

These five things can help prevent your company data from becoming exploited by cybercriminals.

1. Secure Physical Access

The first thing you can do is secure physical access to your buildings. Criminals will sometimes try to gain access to your sites to install malicious code using pen drives or engage in acts of sabotage. 

You can prevent this by protecting server rooms and keeping doors locked. You can also get your security to operate procedures where they only allow authorized personnel to enter specific parts of your business. Again, this reduces risks, including those from internal bad actors. 

2. Put An Incident Response Plan In Place

You can also do things like putting an incident response plan in place. These help you react when things go wrong and prevent operations from getting out of control. 

Response plans usually tell you what to do in the event of an attack, outlining the various steps you need to take. You want to regularly test your response plans in simulations to ensure that they actually work. 

Otherwise, you can sometimes find yourself flying blind.

3. Get Insurance

These days, you can also mitigate risks by getting cyber insurance. These products are specifically designed to protect businesses against things like data breaches and ransomware attacks that conventional insurance policies might not cover. 

Getting insurance is usually straightforward. And today, there are multiple vendors offering these types of services. Which you choose is essentially up to you. 

4. Limit Personal Device Usage

Limiting personal device usage among your employees is also a good idea. Regulating this reduces your business's risks even further. 

The problem with personal devices in a work context is that they aren’t as controlled as in-office computers. You can’t always see what staff are doing, including malicious acts that could damage your brand as a whole. Furthermore, they may not have the security needs of the company at the top of their list of priorities, and, as such, they may be at higher risk of hacking. 

If your company can afford it, consider paying for employee devices such as laptops and cell phones so you can implement the strictest security measures. If that is not feasible, then implement guidelines that limit the use of personal devices on company premises, explaining your reasoning for doing so.

5. Data Encryption

Data encryption is another way to protect against cyber attacks. It uses ciphers to encode information as it travels between two points, making it impossible for interceptors to unscramble and interpret. 

Unfortunately, listening devices are all over the place on the internet. But it turns out that encryption can bypass almost all of them, rendering them useless in the face of today’s technologies.

So there you have it: some of the ways you can protect your business against cyber attacks. Want more business tips? Subscribe to the PFC newsletter for the latest business news and insights delivered bi-weekly.

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