8 ways to make your business IT systems more secure
- Implement third party email filtering, the standard spam and virus filtering on most email systems is not sufficient for business purposes
- A decent managed firewall in front of your business network is critical. Don’t settle for the extremely limited firewall features of your ISPs modem!
- Ensure multi-factor authentication is in place for critical systems (i.e. If you use Office 365 enable Microsoft authenticator – its free and gives you a second level of account protection)
- Use long phrases for passwords instead of shorter passwords
- Make sure your data backups are tested at least monthly, and you get confirmation that a test restore was completed successfully. If there are any situations where data loss occurs this is a life saver
- Enable encryption on laptops and external drives so if they are lost the files are safe and unaccessible
- When staff leave the business ensure all their access to your IT systems is disabled that same day. Ensure your staff offboarding process keeps a record of all systems staff have access to
- Faked bank details on genuine looking invoices are becoming a top threat. Have a clear process within your business for when an existing supplier changes bank details which involves someone speaking to a known contact at the company to verify the change of bank details is legitimate