Ways to Prevent Cyber Crimes From Derailing Your Business

One of business person major concerns is how to make business immune to exposure from cyber crime and its effects from increasing cases of cyber crimes. Here are a few of tips that will help you ward off cyber attacks :

1. Hype Up Your Security Consciousness
Your employees can be the biggest threat to your business even though they may not be directly involved in crime, they are usually the gateway where hackers have access to your information.

For instance, when employees use poor passwords on their files or computers, they make their computers accessible to hackers. To prevent this, you can use longer or more complex passwords. The rule of thumb is that passwords should be long and include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Hackers usually find such passwords difficult to break. In addition, passwords should never be reused for multiple accounts.

2. Protect Your Computers
You need to give your computer systems the best protection available. There are few steps to fortify your computer :

Install antivirus programs on your computers – Viruses may break the immunity of your computers, making them vulnerable to external attacks. It is advisable to install latest antivirus programs on your computers and to keep them regularly updated.

Install firewalls – Firewalls are specifically designed to serve as guards to your network. Installing a powerful firewall on your system makes cyber criminals ignore your computer.

Upgrade your Operating System – The Operating System on your computers controls all the activities on those systems, including your private and sensitive information. Latest versions are always equipped with the most potent protection against cyber attacks.

3. Be Prepared For Invasion
You should always prepare for the big “What if…?” what if hackers detect a loophole in your system and capitalize on it? You should be prepared for such invasion by doing these :

Install intrusion detection – A good intrusion detection tool will notify you immediately your system is breached.

Back-up your information regularly – The safety of your business is more guaranteed if you regularly back up your information. You should back up your files, data, and other resources that are the backbones of your business. You can always turn to the backed up files in case of data loss through the invasion.

4. Restrict Access To Sensitive Information
Making all the sensitive information about your business accessible to every Tom, Dick, and Harry is a good recipe for vulnerability. It is not wise to not know who accessed what and when. More so, if few people have access to such important information, it will reduce the chances of exposure to unauthorized individuals with evil intent. Restrict access to such sensitive information to the few people only

5.Hire a Security Expert
You may find it difficult to find out if your business is vulnerable to attacks if you’re not experienced in assessing cybersecurity risks. Having a security expert will cover up your inadequacies here. His job is to routinely check your systems for potential risks and prevent them. In case of intrusion, an expert, will use his expertise to mitigate the damages. An experienced professional can identify risks and close security gaps before problems materialize.

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toby-nwazor/5-ways-to-prevent-cyber-c_b_12450518.html