How to Prevent Cyber attacks on Businesses?

Last Updated on 5 months by Touhid

The main target of cyber attackers are to gain access your system in order to hack your sensitive information, demand money and disrupt your business reputation. In this post, we will explore best tips on how to prevent cyber attacks on businesses. It is very important issue of every organization or individuals to protect their business from cyber frauds and virus attacks.

How to Prevent Cyber Attacks on Businesses?

If you have a small business and if you think you are out of cyber attacks then your idea is wrong. So, start putting a security plan and implement in your business. Here are the some important tips on how to prevent cyber attacks on businesses.

1. Use Strong Passwords
2. Knowledge about Cyber attack
3. Prepare a Cyber Security Policy
4. Use Antivirus Software
5. Up to date Operating System
6. Use Web Application Firewall
7. Train Your Employees
8. Data Backup
9. Keep an Eye on Employees
10. Protect the sensitive Information
11. Monitoring System
12. Use SSL Certificate

1. Use Strong Password

How to prevent cyber attacks on businesses? You should use very strong password for your online account to prevent from cyber attacks on business. We are using very simple password to remember in our memory like as date of birth, mobile no, employee id, and 123456, which is one of the vital reasons for cyber-attacks.

So, create a strong password using letters, numbers, and special characters and change them on a regular basis (i.e., Between 30 and 180 days).

• The password length should at least 10 characters long.
• The password must have uppercase letters (A – Z), lowercase letters (a – z), numbers (0 – 9), and special character (@, #, $, %, ^, (,), &, *!).
• Example for strong password: C#a58^op@9 is a strong password and standard password

Learn More about How to come up with a good password?

2. Knowledge about Cyber attack

If you have basic knowledge about cyber security and how cyber-attacks can impact your business and how to prevent cyber attacks on businesses then it is easy to prevent cyber-attacks. However, here are common types of cyber-attacks which should informed you.

• Phishing
• SQL Injection
• Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
• Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks
• Zero-day-attack
• Trojans
• Data diddling
• Spoofing
• Cyberstalking
• Malware
• Cybersquatting
• Keylogger
• Ransomware
• Data Breach

Learn more about different types of cyber attacks.

3. Prepare a Cyber Security Policy

Cyber Security policies are a formal set of rules which is issued by an organization to ensure authorized to access company technology and information assets. To ensure your organization is protected from cyber-attacks, and then you have to prepare a security policy for every aspect of your business. The security policy will cover the following things:

• Define the technology and information assets
• User’s responsibilities and privileges
• Use of the Internet
• User Classification
• Monitoring Use of Computer Systems
• Remote Access
• Unauthorized Remote Access
• Penalty for Security Violation
• Security Incident Handling Procedures
• Data backup and recovery
• Social media security etc.

4. Use Antivirus Software

Antivirus software is a security programs which has designed to search, detect, and remove malicious programs from your computer and devices. The main objective use of antivirus software is to protect computers and remove viruses once detected.

Your organization should use Antivirus software in all computers and scan computer regularly and ensure the latest version of anti-virus software installed.

Tips

• You can use server based antivirus to prevent from cyber-attacks.
• It is also suggested that if your companies use the Internet then you should use professional anti-virus software such as:
  • Bitdefender
  • Norton
  • Kaspersky
  • Panda
  • ESET
  • Avast
  • AVG

5. Up to date Operating System 

Cyber security expert recommend that update your operating system, anti-virus software and other security applications (such as Firewall) with the latest security features to protect from cyber attacks on business.

By updating security software will ensure that your business is free from viruses and malware.

6. Use Web Application Firewall

A web application firewall (WAF) is an application based cyber security solution tools. It has designed to protect applications, APIs, and mobile apps by filtering and monitoring HTTP harmful traffic between a web application and the internet.

If your company has software applications, website, APIs, or mobile apps then use of web application firewall (WAF) is very essential to you.

A WAF typically protects web applications from different types of cyber-attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site-scripting (XSS), file inclusion, Session hijacking, Layer 7 DoS attacks.

7. Train Your Employees

Employees are unaware of hacking and cyber security threats. So, train your employees about cyber security threats, and also train of them how to prevent cyber attacks on businesses.

Every organization should have arranged awareness workshop and training program on cyber security and how to protect cyber security attacks on business. The workshop and training program may include the following topics:

• Cyber security And its importance
• Different types of cyber attacks
• How employees can prevent cyber attacks?
• Backup and Recovery Process
• How to create a strong password?
• How to update software and OS?

8. Data Backup

When hackers get into your network and try to encrypt your data with malware or damage your data and if you no backup data then you will be a great problem. But if your organization has a backup copy of the latest version, then you can easily recover your data.

Tips

• As part of a data backup plan, you may consider the following strategy:
  • Organizing the data files and folder
  • Use compression method
  • Determine backup schedule
  • Make sure backup data regularly
  • Determine your backup location
• It is better to install secondary storage server physically different location because if the primary server is down or destroy any reason then secondary storage will be perform.

9. Keep an Eye on Employees

Employees are vital elements of your company because they know everything of your business. So, discourage them from leaking out sensitive information of your business and try to make them more faithful to the company.

In addition to this, check on how they use passwords and keep these passwords safe from unauthorized personnel. It is better to use a Password Manager for creating and managing the passwords of your company.

10. Protect the sensitive Information

You should protect the most sensitive information of your company which is vulnerable and can be targeted by hackers.

Please check on how the important data are storage and access by staff and make sure that these data can’t accessed by anyone without authorization.

You can use data encryption methods to protect sensitive information. There are different types of data encryption technique used to encrypt and decrypt the data such as AES, MD5, and SHA 1.

Learn more about Data Encryption

11. Monitoring System

You can develop a Centralized monitoring system in your organization to able to monitor who are accessing in your network, servers, database and printers. You can also track who are trying to unauthorized access into your application or data breach in your network.

12. Use SSL Certificate

How to prevent cyber attacks on businesses? If your organization have websites and web based applications then you should install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate to protect from cyber threats.

SSL certificate is a global standard security protocol which establishes a secure connection between a web server and browser. It also ensuring that all information passed between a web server and browser remains encrypted and secure.

This encryption technique prevents cyber attacker from stealing sensitive information such as credit card number, bank account details and personal information.

Learn more about SSL Certificate.

Conclusion

Finally, cyber attackers are trying to get access your system and want to hack your sensitive business information. So, it is very important for every organization take necessary steps to prevent from cyber attacks on business.

In this post, we have explored the best tips on how to prevent cyber attacks on businesses. Hope the article will be helpful for business organizations or individuals.