Why You Need Cybersecurity for Your Business Technology Solutions

As discussed in our previous blog, many business technology solutions exist now to make running a business easier and more efficient. If you are a small business owner or a CEO and wonder why you need cybersecurity, the reasons are abundant, and one of those reasons is that some of these popular solutions create vulnerabilities in your network. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, more than half of all cyberattacks are committed against small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), and 60 percent of them go out of business within six months of falling victim to a data breach or hack. In addition, 66 percent of small-to-midsized businesses had at least one cyber incident in the past two years, according to Mastercard.

Cybersecurity is vital to any business. An I.T. firm like SkyViewTek helps businesses identify vulnerabilities in their systems and processes, and works with the business’ owner and employees to have a strategy established to help minimize risks, while having an incident response plan in place in the event of a breach or loss of data. Below we discuss just a few examples of business technology solutions that put your business at risk of a security breach, and why you need cybersecurity to protect your data, your network, and your business as a whole.

Email is often the main starting point of cyber security incidents, especially within a business environment. So it’s important to have a well-established and proven email platform – like Microsoft 365 – to setup and manage your business email. Microsoft 365 also offers additional security monitoring and antivirus monitoring.

At the end of the day, it’s up to email users to monitor their email and take precaution before opening an attachment or clicking a link. Always err on the side of NOT clicking and, instead, calling the sender to confirm the email is legitimate first BEFORE you take action.

Computers and servers have limited life span. Our best practice is to implement a refresh schedule to proactively replace hardware every four to five years, along with warranties. This helps minimize emergency support situations and helps keep employees more productive by providing up-to-date hardware.

Replace business-critical software every two versions. This enables your team to receive current enhancements, features, and benefits to the software while maintaining access to the vendor’s support team when needed. But first, work with your IT partner to ensure the software will integrate into your existing computer network and meets (or exceeds) the minimum system requirements.

Pro Tip: For your email and Microsoft Office licenses, we recommend that you subscribe to Microsoft 365 “on the cloud” for regular, automatic, and ongoing updates.

What is ERP? Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the umbrella term used to describe a suite of software applications that help businesses improve efficiency, increase productivity, and gain a competitive advantage. ERP software is used by companies to manage everything from finance and accounting to supply chain management. For example, QuickBooks or SAP.

If you use an ERP system, then your company’s information will be stored in the cloud and / or on your server, and accessed by users who may or may not be physically present at the location where this data is being stored. Therefore, it’s important to proactively manage access to your data and monitor it accordingly.

Video conferencing that allows users to stream meetings live and record and store video, as well as make the footage available for viewing on the Internet. We require video conferencing in today’s post-pandemic world. Zoom and Microsoft Teams are a couple popular examples of a video conferencing provider. Keep in mind, your subscription level to the tool is typically correlated to the level of security. The device or computer you use to access the tool is key too. (See item #2 above.)

Cloud services are a convenient way to store and access your data without having to worry about buying, maintaining, and upgrading your own servers. They are often used for things like email, word processing, and other business applications.

The most important thing about using cloud services or storage is making sure that your information is secure. Cybersecurity experts have found that many people fail to take basic steps to protect themselves from cyberattacks when using cloud storage or other types of online storage.

The most important thing about using cloud services or storage is to keep in mind that you still need to protect your data as if it was on your computer. In fact, the need to properly back up data that resides primarily on the cloud becomes more relevant when you think that now your data resides on someone else’s computer, whether you use Microsoft, Google, DropBox, etc. Backup, redundancy, and security all become more complicated when you have a third party involved. A good Cybersecurity strategy should take all the pieces into consideration:

• WHERE is data stored?
• WHO has access to it?
• HOW do we get to it in case the Internet goes down or you have a billing dispute, for instance, with the provider?

For all six of the above noted items, it’s important to follow Password “best practices.” For example, we recommend using complex passwords, MFA (multi factor authentication), 90-day password change policy, and more!

So why do you need cybersecurity? Businesses with networks, especially when employees also work on other personal networks at home, are vulnerable to many forms of cyber attacks. Subscribing to SkyViewTek’s proactive monitoring and IT support services includes a partnership with us to create a collaborative cybersecurity plan designed just for you, to meet the needs of your business and the potential types of cyber attacks you could face. SkyViewTek’s experienced and highly qualified professionals provide a wide range of IT services, such as managed services, computer and server maintenance, cybersecurity, and more. We also specialize in ensuring that your business is IT compliant with third party organizations, such as HIPAA and PCI. For more information, contact us today.