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Expert Answers to Biz Questions Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
5 Ways to Digitally Protect Your Small Business
So much of what we do is online these days, which is especially true for people with small businesses. Whether selling goods or promoting them, the internet has become a vital platform for any company's expansion, but it also puts these businesses at risk of security breaches.
Protecting your small business's information is just as important as having a virtual presence, if not more so. If you haven't given much thought to malware, hacking, and fraud prevention, here are five ways to digitally protect your small business.
1) Back-Up Your Documents There are plenty of ways to back up your important documents, and every business owner should be aware of them.
These strategies include:
Some companies will even do these tasks for you. These external parties have become popular in recent years due to their expertise and digital know-how.
According to River City Data, you'll need to look for a service that knows how to digitize, organize, and protect documents securely.
2) Install a VPN Installing and working under a VPN, or Virtual Privacy Network, is essential to protecting your IP address. VPNs are known for securing a private connection from your device straight to the internet, making the probability of you getting hacked significantly lower. It is one of the fastest and easiest ways to secure your internet connection
VPNs have become essential for traversing the internet, and there are plenty of options to choose from.
3) Regularly Change Your Passwords It's not the oldest advice in the book for no reason; passwords are the protection measures that keep others from accessing your sensitive information. Hackers are constantly testing their limits of surpassing security, so it's important to take your passwords seriously.
Making a complicated password with a variety of letters, numbers, special characters, and cases is integral, and changing it every four to six weeks is vital. Accounts such as email addresses should be updated even more often due to the sensitive content they may hold.
4) Maintain Virus Protection Software One of the easiest ways to get hacked or to have your software compromised is getting a virus. Thankfully, many virus protection software options prevent and identify viruses as soon as possible.
You should install and update these programs regularly to keep up with the latest virus protection security measures. If hackers spot the bug in the software, it does not take long to supersede, and that's why updates—including general software updates for your computer—should be run as soon as possible.
5) Confirm Your Data is Encrypted Our virtual safety is defined by the websites we use and software we're running. That's because anyone else on that website or the developers of that software could access us. Identifying whether a website is encrypted is pretty straightforward (it's usually the lock-looking icon next to the HTML address). Thankfully, our computers have a way to recognize if software is or is not encrypted.
It is always a good idea to double-check the encryption levels of every website you're on, double-check the senders of every email, and never click on pop-ups.
The Take-Away As helpful as the internet can be, it can also be dangerous if you're not actively protecting yourself against hackers, scammers, and viruses. Using the internet is one of the greatest gifts modernity offer to the small businesses, but you must be mindful of how you use it to prevent security risks.
By following these steps and treating the internet with as much caution as you do eagerness, you will be protected and ready to thrive.
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