5 simple measures you can take to improve your company's security

In our online-entrenched age, and especially as the world continues to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic, it bodes well for your business that it can access a wide range of markets – both familiar and untapped – from practically anywhere.

However, your company’s use of digital tools can open up a range of security holes; indeed, theft of digital information is now the most commonly reported fraud, says the Federal Communications Commission. So, how can you counter that risk?

Educate your employees in security matters

Your company isn’t just a static business entity – it is essentially its employees, and you could have a rather fast-whirring conveyor belt of those. That’s why the onboarding process for new recruits should include training them in an array of measures aimed at helping to secure your business.

As a Forbes article suggests, you should give your business its own cybersecurity policy that details best practices for protecting employee, vendor and customer information – practices like the following…

Keep all of your corporate security software up to date

Even if you have taken over an existing business and, with it, inherited a strong security framework, you shouldn’t be complacent – especially given that all of the firm’s security software must be kept updated.

That software includes not only anti-malware software and firewalls but also the web browsers and operating systems your workers routinely use. You should keep an eye out for when key software updates arrive so that you can always install them as soon as possible.

Employ best practices on payment cards

If you think that using the same computers to both visit websites and process payments seems like a disaster waiting to happen, well, you could be right. That’s why it wouldn’t be well-advised practice – and why you ought to isolate your payment systems from other software that falls short of the same security standards.

You might find that the bank or other financial institution through which your firm processes payments requires you to, as part of agreements you have signed with it, meet certain security obligations anyway.

Be careful which workers you authorize to use which software

While your business might have many different software tools at its disposal, this doesn’t mean that all of your employees should be permitted blanket access to all of them. As a security precaution, you should make sure each employee is handed access only to those specific apps and data systems they truly need.

You could ensure this by implementing a system like Wandera’s private access solution, which would not require you to add any new hardware or install any new certificates.

Regularly back up vital business data

This data – such as word-processing documents, financial files, electronic spreadsheets and human resources files – should be kept as backups in various places. For example, you could keep secure, password-protected backups on your desktop, offsite and in the cloud.

If possible, back data up automatically – or at least weekly if undertaking backups on a manual basis would be the only real option for your business.