Each year brings incredible innovations in technology, but with those innovations come more sophisticated threats to your business’ security. Here are steps to keep in mind when assessing your IT security. These are tips we often share with our customers.
- Assess your vulnerabilities. An IT Managed Services provider can help you with this task, which can often be overwhelming. Included in your assessment would be your firewall and proper scans for viruses and spyware.
- Stay up to date. It is critical that you install all of the latest updates and patches.
- It is equally critical that you back up on a regular basis. (Again, a Managed Services provider can do this for you.)
- Educate yourself and your employees.
- Don’t open attachments that you are not positive are okay.
- Don’t fall for any phishing scams.
- Don’t click on unfamiliar emails.
- Don’t install free software without checking if it is legitimate.
- Make sure that you manage the identities and privileges of your users.
- Make sure that your have a strong data loss prevention strategy.
- Mobile devices in the work place have become a must, but make sure that they are also secure.
- It is more critical than ever for the SMB to work with a Managed Services partner, if possible. Even if you have your own IT employee or team, a MS provider can fill in the gaps and offer expertise, asses threat level, provide compliance and protection services needed to reduce risk and keep your business healthy and free to actually do business. “The cost of avoiding security threats is much less than the cost of recovering from them.” (focus.forsythe.com)
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