Protect Your Customer's Information Now Instead of After a Breach

In the business world, it is important to learn from the mistakes of others. This minimizes the risk of what happened to them taking place in your organization. For the most part, this does occur in most business segments except one—cybersecurity.

Since March of 2013 there have been 10 significant data breaches across the globe. This means some companies didn't properly ask the question “What is cybersecurity?" In the end, the result was a loss of critical information, loss of income, and loss of credibility.

Avoid being part of this list

Regardless of the size of your business, you don't want to be added to this list. While you can't guarantee your customer information will be compromised by a cyber attack, you can certainly minimize the avenues where malicious activity can get through. Here are a few ways to do this.

Implement a strong security plan

You can never put cybersecurity at the bottom of your to do list. Every expansion in your business requires an equal increase in security. In turn, a strong security plan must be put in place and regularly reviewed.

When doing this, consider the strategy put forth by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

• Research recent attacks encountered by your business;
• Determine the best ways to protect the most vulnerable customer information;
• Set up detection tools that stop or redirect attacks;
• Create procedures to respond to attacks as quickly as possible with a minimum of damage;
• Work on a process to recover any lost data from a secure secondary location;

Even if it takes time to enact all of these steps, having a plan means you take cybersecurity risks seriously. In turn, this helps reduce the stress of your customers and employees.

Enable Multi Factor Authentication

The age of the password is, depending on who you speak with, ending or has already ended. This is due to the way users create passwords. Or, more accurately, recreate them.

Over half of users surveyed admit they use the same password in multiple locations. In the same poll, 91 percent of those questioned revealed they recycle passwords by changing a few letters or numbers.

To prevent attackers from breaking into your systems through this mechanism, you must consider applying multi factor authentication (MFA). Through biometrics like face recognition software or codes sent to a person's cell phone, MFA minimizes the risk of malicious activity.

Though attackers may be able to get through a user's password, they have a harder time getting past the next level. This is due to a personal connection to MFA. Unless the attacker has a customer's personal phone or biometrics, they will be stopped. In addition, your security team will be alerted to the attack.

Upgrade security hardware and software

A security plan and multi factor authentication only work when the firewalls and endpoint protection software are updated. Without the proper equipment or applications, attacks could remain steady on your network. Eventually, one of these will get through to breach your customer's information.

Therefore, ensure all of the necessary rulesets have been applied to your firewall and virus protection software. In most situations, these rules are automatically updated. Nevertheless, when you hear of a new attack, you want to confirm the hardware and software contain the necessary barriers to prevent them reaching into your infrastructure.

In the end, your success revolves around the success of your security. Without a proper plan, your customer information or your systems can be taken hostage. Dealing with both situations can cost you and your clients millions of dollars to correct.

If you haven't reviewed any of your security settings in a while, get together with the appropriate representatives from your IT team. Consider options like MFA to reduce the risk of malicious activity and maintain continuity of business no matter what the situation.