4 Easy Steps to Increase Your Business’s Online Security

Online Security: The world of business has come a long way since the days of fax machines and shorthand, and you can now quickly and easily complete many transactions and team meetings online. However, just as technology improves on a daily basis, so too do cybercriminals. As such, your confidential business data is at risk of theft and infiltration by elite scammers and hackers. To help you to protect yourself, here are four ways you can ensure your business’s online security:           

4 Easy Steps to Increase Your Business’s Online Security    

Use a VPN

Accessing your systems on public wi-fi can be compared to leaving the doors to your offices unlocked, as these insecure networks offer no protection for users. If you do need to access a public wi-fi connection to complete work – for instance, if you are working at a coffee shop or on a train during a long commute – protect your work by using a VPN. These virtual private networks work by establishing a private network from an unsecured internet connection, disguising your IP address to provide complete online privacy and security. 

Use a secure enterprise messaging workspace

Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, you and your team might have been forced to work from home rather than coming into the office every day. As such, you may be experimenting to find the most efficient way of communicating with remote colleagues to facilitate the smooth completion of daily tasks. While instant messaging applications like WhatsApp do enable instantaneous responses, they may not be the most secure option when exchanging confidential business information. A secure enterprise messaging workspace, such as mattermost.com, will provide a safe and secure environment in which your team can exchange sensitive information with confidence.

Spam protection

Over the course of the pandemic, internet scammers have become ever-more sophisticated in their fraudulent emails, to the point where you might at first glance believe that it is genuine. However, mistakenly clicking on a link can provide the scammers with an entryway to your network and confidential business data. Protect yourself and remove the reliance on human judgment by installing spam protection software on your devices. These work by flagging and filtering suspicious emails, redirecting them to your junk folder before being eventually deleted, so that you do not mistakenly open a suspect email.

Firewalls

The internet can be a dangerous place, and you might find your business network the target of malware, such as Trojans, if you stray onto an unsecured website. Firewalls are your first line of defense in internet security, as they prevent malware such as Trojans from infiltrating your network. To protect yourself, ensure that the firewall is switched on in your internet router. A firewall works by monitoring incoming and outcoming traffic to your website and determining whether these sources can be trusted. If the source seems suspicious, the firewall blocks it from your network, thereby preventing malicious outsiders from gaining unauthorized access to your network’s confidential business data.