A Quick and Easy IT Security Checklist

One of the greatest challenges for businesses is how they protect themselves from threats, including both the physical and digital spaces. Worse yet, the responsibility falls on more than just your IT department. Every employee needs to know and understand how their actions impact operational continuity and business success.

To help in this effort, we’ve put together the following checklist to help you manage the various threats your business might encounter.

Navigating the Modern Threat Landscape

Failure to protect your business’ security infrastructure can lead to several issues:

• Costly operational disruptions
• Permanent data loss
• Damage to your company’s reputation
• Business closure (in extreme cases)

And don’t think your status as an SMB protects you; all companies are at risk, even the major enterprises. At the end of the day, your business needs to be ready, through proactive planning and consistent effort, to respond to emerging threats, both before and during a security incident.

Quick Ways to Jumpstart Your Cybersecurity Efforts

If you want to protect your business, you need to consider efforts at the foundational level for both your physical and digital spaces. Follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way.

How to Protect Your Physical Space and Assets

Before you can protect your digital space, you must first protect your physical space. You cannot have one without the other.

• Protect sensitive items - Be sure to keep paper files that contain customer or employee data, computer servers, critical hardware, laptops, payment terminals, and backup media safely locked away in safe rooms or secure storage cabinets.
• Control access to information and locations - The aforementioned locations that hold sensitive systems and information should also be protected with locked doors and access logs, with access being determined based on the principle of least privilege. Only those whose duties require access should be granted that access; otherwise, you risk accidental (or intentional) theft of information or equipment.
• Dispose of old technology and documents separately - If you no longer need documents or equipment containing sensitive information, take appropriate measures to shred paper documents and erase data found on computers, mobile devices, and hard drives. Don’t just delete files; go through the full-blown data erasure process to guarantee that anyone who uses it in the future cannot access its former contents.

How to Protect Your Digital Space and Assets

Now that you’ve got physical security figured out, here are some ways you can protect your digital spaces and entry points:

• Powerful access controls - All of your accounts, including your computers, email systems, and business software, should be protected with powerful passwords and multi-factor authentication to ensure that hackers cannot get in with just a username/password combination. This is especially important for sensitive accounts, like banking, remote access, and email.
• Update your software - Software vulnerabilities are a common entry point for hackers, so take care to update your operating systems, web browsers, and other applications with the security updates provided by vendors. Also make sure you’re testing them prior to deployment to ensure they don’t disrupt operations or cause further issues.
• Implement backup solutions - We recommend you practice the 3-2-1 backup principle, which is three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site or in the cloud. We also recommend you test your data backups to ensure they work as intended.
• Train your team regularly - Your employees are easily the weakest link in your business’ security infrastructure, so take care in implementing comprehensive cybersecurity awareness training. Train your team on how to identify potential threats, suspicious links/attachments, practice safe Internet browsing habits, and most important of all, embody a security mindset that keeps your business safe. Don’t settle for a one-and-done training; regularly follow up with them and conduct testing to make sure they know what they’re doing.
• Secure your network - You need to take any and all precautions you can to ensure your business’ network is monitoring for, detecting, and blocking potential threats to its infrastructure. You can accomplish this through powerful encryption and password protection, as well as hiding your wireless network name. Employees accessing your network remotely should use a virtual private network to ensure they can access important resources safely and securely.

Keep Your Business Safe

Obviously, this is a lot to take in, so if you need assistance with your cybersecurity, we’re here to help. Our trusted technicians will help to ensure your systems are both physically and digitally safe. Learn more by calling us at (954) 739-4700 today.