With cyber attacks rapidly increasing all over the globe lately, operating a healthy business is becoming an extremely hard task. 79% of financial institutions said cybercriminals have become more sophisticated, leveraging highly targeted social engineering attacks.
In today’s digital world, we are more exposed than ever and ensuring your business’s cyber security protocols according to new technologies to reduce risk and avoid becoming an easy target for cybercriminals has become a must.

Here are some valuable tips for your business to address those risks and reduce cyber-attack probability.

1. Be aware

First of all, you need to compare what system or applications you are using to protect your business. For this, keep an eye on what is high in the market. If you are thinking of jumping on some expensive protectionism, then always remember one thing that the most costly solution is not always the one that will be perfect for you.

2. Educate your staff against threats and risks

Encourage your employees to be adequately trained to play their role in a good way regarding cyber risks.
Educate them properly and tell them why cybersecurity is important and how their help will benefit the business when a hard time occurs. Online training is a great way to implement staff cybersecurity training.

3. Sense to spot spam emails

Nowadays, cybercriminals mainly use fake messages, passwords, and emails to trap your employees. Passwords, emails, credit card numbers can be stolen, sold, or misused by cyber criminals. If stolen, all this vital information can cause a significant loss to the company and heavy regulatory fines.

Employees should ignore this kind of alarmist spam email and never click on such emails as they can hack your whole system easily. Mostly, they contain wrong spellings or offer you a deal that is probably too good to be true.

4. Secure your password

First, you need to generate a good password that cannot be easily tackled. A strong length password having all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols will protect your business from cyber-exposure in many ways.

Ask your employees to use long random phrases as a password, make sure they have a different password for their every account, and always encourage them not to write their passwords on any scrap paper, because they can be stolen by someone or can be seen easily from the window, and then they will easily hack your accounts.

5. Keep updating your system

Any cyber-criminal can easily hack an outdated old system. So here is the most critical point. You should always keep your system and infrastructure updated! When possible, try to update your system to keep it updated according to the latest technologies, and improve your protection to reduce the risk of cyber exposure. This process can be done generally by enabling your system on auto-updates.

6. Get rid of old hardware

To improve cyber business exposure, you should first consider updating old hardware as a starting point. All your outdated hardware can put you in big trouble.
Getting rid of old hardware and disposing of it correctly can be beneficial for you to reduce the cyber exposure of your business. Ideally, hardware should be updated every 2-3 years at most.
Ensure that you are destroying the storage devices when disposing of an old kit. A reputable security firm can do this destruction of old hardware

7. Beware of so-called software

Cyber criminals often try to develop fake Software and attract employees to download it on their official computers. These programs can install viruses automatically on your computer, enabling criminals to get access to your computer. Educate your employees not to install any fake software on company computers like this and avoid these kinds of spammers.

8. Keep your computer screen locked

Encourage your employees to secure their workstations by locking screens and sessions when they’re away from their desks. There are more chances that cyber criminals may belong to your workplace. If a bad actor saw your screen open freely, he would try to hack your system, which would cost you a heavy penalty.

9. Keep Tracking Data Regularly

With the help of your employees, risk professionals should regularly track the most vulnerable data stored on your system. A cyber attacker most often targets official information such as credit card information or trade secrets, so keep in mind that you should monitor these matters regularly to save your business from significant losses.

10. Set out an appropriate policy plan for official devices

It does not matter how many employees work for you. Whether they are working remotely or coming to work in a dedicated space, the only thing that truly matters is what kind of devices they are using.
The most secure method is providing employees with dedicated company devices.
However if for any reason they use their own devices from home, you must have a very clear device approval policy for all personal devices before they are used for official work matters. There should be minimum security software requirements that are endpoint protection. All the devices that they use should be updated regularly and have strong passwords.

11. Prepare for the worst

A backup plan for every business is absolutely necessary to reduce cyber risk. It is important to remember that if a cyber incident occurs, it will affect the entire organization, regardless of size.
Once you have created your cyber risk backup plan, you must write it down and share it with all your employees. You should always be ready for any situation, even if the secure cyber security systems can infiltrate. When you feel any abnormal activity in your system, you should immediately contact your IT department or your cyber insurance provider, to prevent or limit the damage.