Replace Dated Security Platforms With a Streamlined System

Cyberthreats have never evolved as quickly as they do today. They’re getting more sophisticated and more dangerous as the world continues to move online.

Small businesses often look to fix small problems as they occur, on a piece-by-piece basis. That means that every day, small businesses looking to protect themselves depend on a number of solutions that weren’t designed to work together and weren’t designed to solve every problem together. Sound familiar?

As you can imagine, this isn’t the right way to do things. Patchwork solutions weren’t designed to offer comprehensive cybersecurity. Each item was designed to fix a specific problem, and odds are your team doesn’t have time to ensure that all of the potential holes are filled, or to even stay in touch with all of the providers to continually check for updates. And the last thing you want to do is compromise customer information or put yourself at risk of a data breach.

Replacing the mess with an integrated, comprehensive security package, one that will serve as a strong first line of defense for your small business, is an important first step to simplifying and streamlining your security solution—and also, to improve it.

Endpoint Detection and Response solutions offer a comprehensive security solution that not only continually analyzes for known threats on your network, but also for suspicious processes that mimic malware behavior—and stops them dead. That means that even if a threat has never been seen before, your IT solution knows how to secure itself!

Implement cloud solutions to cover remote workers at your small business

Let’s be honest. A lot of us are going to be working from home even after the pandemic. That means that for your on-location IT infrastructure to accommodate remote workers on its own, all business your network must be routed through the main office.

This increases network security risk and reduces performance, as your business is now going to have to accept incoming requests and maintain network security over a much wider range of unknown devices and remote networks. That means additional resources devoted to security. However, there’s another option.

By moving your on-location IT work to the cloud, you move the security to where your workers are – that is, to a remote location. And since your cloud provider

can offer security implementations along with its cloud services, you’ll be looking to meet the requirements of your small business down the road as your business scales. That means flexibility, and a cloud provider can offer flexibility without you having to invest in additional major infrastructure.

The bigger and more valuable your business is, the more you’ll want to protect it. However, you won’t need to worry about managing connections with multiple security merchandisers down the line, if your seller provides an integrated cybersecurity solution.

Reducing Your Security Footprint

As the threat of cyberattacks continue to increase, shifting the burden of security to cloud-based Software-as-a-Service(SaaS) solutions, like Office 365, enable workers to work smarter, briskly, and more collaboratively without sacrificing security. Virtual private network implementations enable users to connect to the remote office while protecting critical data.

That all sounds great. And it is! But probably, small business teams are used to doing things its own way. For example, while they’ll probably use the major pieces of Office 365 such as Word or Excel, it might opt to stick to using some of the same old software they’ve been using for other implementations when they could get by using the included software.

This is to be expected—after all, even though Office 365 is powerful, it can’t do it all. If a third-party team collaboration software solution has a particular feature set your team can’t do without, for example, then so be it. There’s no One Ring To Rule Them All, and there’s no software solution to rule them all, either.

However, you should be mindful of which of these apps you allow on your system. Implementing a lot of new apps greatly expands your security footprint. Too many of these new apps will impede the capability of your IT team to manage them—after all, just because your team might not be using a particular app at the moment doesn’t mean that it’s not exploitable in case a security flaw is discovered in it. Leaving unneeded apps on your business network is a surefire way to find out if your antivirus software is up to date (hint - you don't want to find out if you don't have to!)

Still, your employees are going to want to be left to their own devices, so to speak. Left unchecked, this leads to shadow IT – the use of unsanctioned and unmonitored operations throughout an association. Don't even let them install security apps without your permission!, Worse yet, you might not even know they’re there. And since you can’t cover what you can’t see, these apps pose a major threat to your corporate network. That means company data, or other vital data, could be at risk. Sensitive data is never worth risking!

The way to combat this is two-fold. First, audit and evaluate each individual third-party app or solution your team uses. Is it even necessary? Is it impossible to transition to an existing app, such as an Office 365 product offering, to do the task instead? And does it do something important that no other solution does?

Second, implement a policy to limit employee access by disallowing app installation without administrator privileges. You can do this with a group policy, so you don’t have to stand over your employee’s shoulders to make sure they’re not installing anything they shouldn’t. While this sounds like it may be an annoying oversight, in truth it’s one of the most critical—and most simple—security implementations a small business can make.

Uncover the primary  motivation behind achieving Cyber Essentials certification and how it can  elevate your organization's security posture. Click here!  

Wondering how Endpoint Detection and Response  (EDR) can safeguard your small business? Learn how EDR can detect and respond  to threats effectively, bolstering your cybersecurity posture. Click here!