9 Best Practices for Enterprise Security

How secure is your company’s data? Many recent successful high-profile cyber security attacks and data breaches have highlighted the number of organizations around the world – large and small – that are vulnerable and potentially at risk of being attacked.

There have been many reports of ransomware, hacking attacks, denial of service attacks and data leaks from insiders. No sector is immune – from governments and healthcare to banks, law firms, universities, non-profits, small to medium enterprises and even individuals, cyber security has never been more important than it is today.

Unfortunately many organizations are struggling because they don’t have effective cyber security systems in place. It takes a lot of hard work and the ability to adapt to new and evolving challenges, but there are methods and strategies your company can deploy to ensure your cyber security is best practice.

1. Use a firewall

A firewall is your company’s first line of defense against an outside attack.

Internal firewalls will also provide additional protection. Staff who work from home and access your systems should also be encouraged to use firewalls.

2. Have a cyber security policy in place

This should clearly set out your expectations for staff and the consequences if they do not follow the policy, and the policy should be kept somewhere that is easy for staff to access.

3. Keep software up-to-date

One of the most common ways for organizations to be attacked is when they use outdated software that has known vulnerabilities. Have a system in place to ensure your software is updated as soon as possible whenever updates or patches are released from the vendor.

4. Monitor applications with access to data

There are many applications that are great tools for your business… until they're not. When you allow applications access to your data they become an easy point for hackers to gain entry to your system.

5. Back up your data

Should the absolute worse happen and you can no longer access any of the data on your system, all won’t be lost if you have a system in place to regularly back up your information.

6. Educate your staff

You should ensure all of your staff are trained in cyber security principles – it’s everyone’s business, not just the IT department’s. Education should be regular and ongoing.

7. Use DeskAlerts

DeskAlerts is a powerful internal communication tool that can be used to ensure all staff are provided with important information in a way that they can’t ignore. You can deploy it as part of your ongoing education and awareness-raising efforts, educate them about new viruses or ransomware to be aware of or use it to quickly inform staff when a cyber-threat has been detected so they can take action immediately and reduce the risks.

8. Have a data breach response plan

Should the worst happen, having a response plan in place can help you to recover as quickly as possible.

9. Enforce safe password practices

Staff hate changing passwords, but it’s for the best – many business’ data breaches have occurred because of weak and ineffective passwords.