Three Simple (and critical) Steps Towards Better Security

Posted by Jim Van on August 5, 2011 under data security, eOffice, security, small business | 2 Comments to Read

I was recently asked to write a piece concerning small business network security. Regular readers of this blog may observe that security is often a topic here. There’s a reason for that: a recent study by Comcast, no small player in providing internet services to small businesses, found that a shocking 74% of respondents had some sort of security ‘incident’ over the past year. Here’s how to keep your business out of that group:

Passwords: Experts and even hackers agree that one of the principle causes of security is hacking simple passwords. using a password with a recognizable word or sequence is the number one vehicle for hackers when attempting to breech a security perimeter. So, your spouse or child’s name, or even nickname, and most birthdays, are not good ideas. Instead, transposing some numbers for letters works well: ch3r9L4522 combines the name Cheryl with the last 4 digits of the phone number in your childhood home, for example. Make sure it’s something you can easily remember. Oh, and create a new password and change it every three months. Painful? Perhaps, but not if you’ve experienced the pain of a security breech…

Security Software Updates: Strange as it seems, a 2009 report from the Computer Security Institute swowed that nearly half of all participants had not updated their security software in at least two months, or had failed updates when automatic updates were turned on. This is another simple process: most security applications have a button that can be clicked to check the update number and date, and some will indicate whether the update succeeded. Check it weekly. Threats change quickly in this space.

Use one security app — never multiple ones: Gee, if one anti-virus app protects me, why shouldn’t I load a second one for twice the protection? Nice thinking, bad idea. Without getting too geeky here, most anti-virus programs have what is called an Heuristic Component. It does about 40% of the work in protecting your network & system. Two Heuristic Components tend to cancel each other out, which means that you’ have only 60% of the protection that would normally be afforded you by the use of a single updated application.

E-mail: the single greatest source of infection these days is from E-mails containing viruses, often, but not always, sent from someone you don’t know. Most security software has an E-mail component that will scan both incoming and outgoing E-mails for viruses. Use it.

with the growing use of mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones on many small business networks, the threats to one’s business network have grown exponentially, We’ll cover some ways to protect devices and the networks to which they are tethered in a future posting.