Don't Overlook Your Network Security

It’s not difficult to overlook the importance of network security if you run a small business; you may think your operation is too small to be the target of malicious attacks. Unfortunately, this dismissive attitude can put your business at risk, as even a simple security problem could be enough to expose you to dangerous entities. To be blunt, we would call it foolish not to secure your business; and one of the most infamous security failings in history originated from this kind of carelessness.

The Equifax Issue
During May and July of 2017, a credit-reporting firm called Equifax was victimized by a data breach that exposed an alarming 148.1 million records containing personally identifiable information. To put this in perspective: the Equifax data breach exposed almost half of the population of the United States.

As a result of this breach, the former Equifax CEO Richard Smith was cross-examined by Congress. Smith’s defense argued that “human and technology errors” were at the heart of the problem. In the end, the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Greg Walden, came to the following conclusion: “I don’t think that we can pass a law that fixes stupid.”

How to Fix Your Data Security
There is no guarantee legislation would resolve the issue, but you still need to make sure that your business is doing the best that it can to prevent threats from infiltrating its network. You can start by executing specific standards on a company-wide level or a case-by-case level.

Listed below are some ideas that you can begin with:

• Start with compliance: Compliance regulations do not always have data security as a top priority. However, it’s still a critical aspect of managing your data security, as you could potentially be subject to fines and other troubling regulations.
• Resolve vulnerabilities: Nearly all exploits rely on vulnerabilities remaining unresolved in network infrastructures. These exploits also usually exploit vulnerabilities that are at least a half a year old. You should make patching these vulnerabilities a priority so that you can best secure your data.
• Centralize your data security: There needs to be someone at the wheel of your data security endeavors. If there isn’t, you make protecting your data much harder. This person should be responsible for implementing access control and making sure that nobody can access data that they wouldn’t need for their standard workday.

Inspiring Employee Security
Employees hold more influence over your organization's security than they may realize. This makes it difficult to protect critical assets because if you’re overly cautious, you could be compromising your organization's ability to operate as intended. For your benefit, here are a couple of ways that your business can help employees remain aware of their responsibilities.

• Lazy credential habits: Password issues have persisted in business for a long time. Employees should NEVER reuse passwords or usernames for every account that they have. Each password should be complex, containing letters, numbers, and symbols to maximize security. You can use a password management system if this gets to be a bit too difficult for your employees.
• Oversharing information: You should help your employees work toward reducing just how much information they share about themselves on social media; one possible benefit is that their passwords are not as easily predicted. Avoid using personal anecdotes whenever possible, and restrict who can see what information to reduce the chances of this happening. You also don’t want information to spread outside of the office, as an invoice or receipt with a customer number could be all a hacker needs to create problems.
• Using the wrong Wi-Fi: Public Wi-Fi is dangerous and thus not the ideal way to access secure data. You should work together with your employees to make sure that they have secure access to company documents whenever required. A virtual private network is a solid way to do this because it encrypts information sent and retrieved by your devices.

Does your organization need to increase security? Macro Systems can help. To learn more, reach out to us at 703-359-9211.