Businesses of all sizes, from start-up companies to large corporations, are increasingly becoming victims of cyber crime. In fact 87% of small enterprises faced security breaches in the last year alone, proving that it’s not just companies with large profit margins that are being targeted by hackers.
Running a business website comes with its advantages – i.e. increased customer reach and easier promotion of products or services – however, promoting your business on the World Web Wide can leave your company, its data and your customers exposed to fraud. Check out this essential guide to protecting your business and its data, and trade online securely and free from breaches.
Keep Confidentiality High on Your List of Priorities
Your customers are important to you and any data that your customers enter during a transaction should be fully protected to ensure you remain a reputable and responsible online merchant. The storage of customer data is an area that can often encompass a lot of weak links with hackers quick to expose failings in your IT infrastructure.
Make sure you comply with information security management standards by only storing the minimal amount of customer data needed for refunds and chargebacks. Retaining this level of confidentiality throughout your business will not only leave you less vulnerable to cyber attack but also reassure customers that you are following protocol and protecting data like names, addresses and credit card details effectively. The data that you do store should be encrypted correctly to ensure only the user and the intended recipient can decipher it.
Improve Your Password Policy
Ensuring both the back and front end of your website exercises a failsafe password policy is a simple yet effective way of protecting your website and your company’s data from being targeted by viruses, Trojans and other malicious security breaches. Make it mandatory that passwords either customers or staff members use has a minimum amount of characters (in this case the longer passwords are always better) and a mixture of numbers, mixed case letters and symbols to prevent hackers from getting an easy ride to your data.
Protect Hardware In-House
It’s not just measures online that prevent security breaches, what you do offline and in your office is an important part of protecting data. If you have your own server in-house, make sure all access to this area is restricted to prevent your online security being compromised in person. In addition to this, any external storage devices used throughout the office by employees, such as hard drives and USB sticks, should be locked away at the end of every working day.
Test Your Defences
Investing in regular online security scans or penetration testing from a qualified vendor is highly recommended. The methods used by hackers are become increasingly advanced, leaving untested infrastructures and websites vulnerable to the latest techniques used to break down the most hardy defences.
Enlisting a web application security expert ensures both your hardware and software can be fully tested for vulnerabilities and any loopholes that could be exploited by hackers are successfully closed. These ethical hacking services are more affordable than you think and even test your wider infrastructure to provide a security solution that grows with your business and incorporates the latest advancements to protect your business and its data effectively.
Always Update
Keeping your anti-virus and firewalls fully up-to-date can often be a tedious task, and in most cases many individuals choose to simply click ‘Update later’ to avoid disruption to their working day. However, updating your operating systems and browser when prompted is an essential step in maintaining online security; always run regular updates to protect your data and customers from hacking and fraud.
This post was written by Brittany Thorley, a business security expert that enjoys sharing her expertise across the web. She assists businesses of all sizes with advice on web application security and ethical hacking.