Most Common Cybersecurity Mistakes That Businesses Make

In today’s digital landscape, ignoring security measures isn’t an option. Businesses are under constant threat from hackers, malware, system failure and rogue employees. Whether you’re a business owner or IT specialist, having a robust IT security program in place is crucial to mitigating these risks. Here are four of the most common cybersecurity mistakes businesses make and how you can avoid them. 

Cybersecurity Mistakes by Businesses

Untrained Staff

Human error is responsible for the success of many cyber attacks, such as when an employee falls for a phishing scam and clicks on a malicious link. Internal users can expose a business to increased risk. In fact, about 98% of cyber attacks rely on social engineering. New employees are the most susceptible to socially engineered attacks.

How to avoid it — To keep a business safe and running, it’s imperative to invest in security awareness training for every department. Security training can help educate staff about the basics, such as the importance of using strong passwords and how to recognize the most common scams. Regularly retraining both remote and in-house employees to use secure protocols can protect a company from significant losses. 

Not Investing in Systems Visibility and Monitoring

Many businesses use older systems with unpatched weaknesses that can be easy targets for cybercriminals. Hackers need only a single entry point to probe a business network and discover its weaknesses. Active cybersecurity monitoring is crucial to gain visibility over what happens within a company’s system.

How to avoid it — Partner with a managed service provider (MSP). Investing in round-the-clock monitoring systems and upgrading systems regularly can address any security breaches that arise and also help you hunt for threats and investigate automated alerts.

Not Backing Data Up

Although organizations and IT specialists may employ various security measures to prevent ransomware attacks, none these methods are foolproof. Therefore, it’s wise to upgrade systems and back up data. Software updates don’t always involve new functional upgrades, but they may include important security patches for newly exposed threats. 

How to avoid it — Minimize the impact of a data breach, unexpected downtime and ransomware by regularly backing up data to a secure network or the cloud server and developing a disaster recovery plan. 

Using Public Wi-Fi or an Unknown Internet Connection

Many companies offer telecommuting as a perk. Employees therefore are likely to use public Wi-Fi to connect to their corporate email, file servers and business applications. However, public Wi-Fi networks are not secure, and hackers could deploy techniques to intercept sensitive data, including passwords. 

How to avoid it — Employees should never connect to the company network via public Wi-Fi unless they do so through a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is a connection method that is used to add security and privacy to public networks. It masks your location, encrypts data transfers and changes your IP address. Effective cyberattacks can cost an organization more than just monetary profits. Thus, it becomes important to remain vigilant towards it.

So, this was a quick list of some of the most common cybersecurity mistakes that businesses make and how to prevent them. For improved cybersecurity keep reading this blog and share your experience in the comments below.