When you own a small business, it’s often a culmination of years of hard work, long hours, and plenty of hustle. To physically protect your business, you may have installed a security system at your office. However, if you haven’t thought about virtually safeguarding your business, you’re putting everything you’ve worked hard to build at risk. Network security from an IT support team is your best option to ensure you protect your business.
InnoTek Computer Consulting has helped hundreds of small business owners improve their network security to protect their organizations against cyberattacks, data breaches, and digital theft. Our friendly and knowledgeable team members will work with you to ensure your networks are safe and protected from ransomware, viruses, trojans, and other threats that are looking for even the smallest digital door to open and wreak havoc on your business.
In the meantime, here are five easy actions you can take right now to keep your network safe.
1. Get an IT Support Team
Did you know that small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are easy targets for cybercriminals? A lack of resources, knowledge, and experience often leaves SMBs vulnerable to risks easily blocked by larger organizations with a more significant knowledge base of proper network protocols and more extensive support staff.
Cybercrime is becoming more prelevant. By October of 2021, we reached 1,291 data breach incidents, compared to 1,108 data breaches 2020 as a whole. If you aren’t protecting your business by hiring an IT support team to help with proper IT security services, then you are putting your business at risk of reputation damage, financial ruin, and legal reprecusions.
What Does an IT Support Team Do?
An IT support team, like the one at InnoTek, helps small business owners like you take a proactive approach to prevent unauthorized access to your network and other security issues from arising. We can help with network planning, auditing, monitoring, and complete IT systems management to protect you from external and internal threats. In addition, our team can help your business with business continuity services, 24/7 remote monitoring with cloud services, and email security.
2. Provide Security Awareness Training for Your Employees
The second simple thing you can do to keep your network safe is to provide security awareness training for your employees. Whether you know it or not, your employees are your greatest asset but also your most significant security threat. From falling victim to phishing emails or phone scams, poor password practices, and posting personal information on social media, your employees can lead hackers and other cyber criminals right into your backdoor without even knowing it.
Security awareness training teaches your employees to recognize these unsafe practices and remain safe online.
What Are Three Things You Can Do to Make Yourself Safe Online?
- Change your passwords frequently
- Don’t share personal information
- Don’t click on email attachments or links from unknown senders
3. Download and Install Security Updates
We’ve all done it before—we see that notification at the bottom corner of our screen alerting us to updates to our antivirus or other desktop software, and we think, “Oh, I’ll get to that later. I don’t have time now.” But later turns into a week, which turns into a month, and soon, your network and system are so far out of date that it’s considered vintage in the IT world.
How Do You Keep Your Network Safe?
You can start protecting your network now by downloading and installing any available security updates. An IT support team can help with network security management and ensure your programs are kept up to date with the latest security solutions and protocols. They can even help with technical problems and other support issues.
4. Secure Your WiFi Network
Securing your WiFi network is another simple task you can do to keep your network safe. Not allowing unauthorized access to your network makes it even harder for cyber thugs to infiltrate your network and steal your proprietary and secure data.
How Do I Secure My Small Business Network?
Secure your small business’s computer network by hiding the service set identifier (SSID) or the name of your wireless network. This way, only eligible employees will find it by searching for it, and hackers won’t be able to see it. Also, be sure that you require a strong password to connect to your network.
5. Prioritize IT
As the year begins, you likely are thinking about this year’s budget and goals. One of the best ways to protect your network from hackers is prioritizing IT through budgetary spending and business operations. Having an IT support team from a managed service provider (MSP) like InnoTek can lower your IT costs by having a predictable monthly payment for the technical expertise your business needs.
Additionally, by keeping proper network protocols in the forefront of everyone’s mind, you’ll have staff members that understand the importance of remaining safe online.
Need More Help Keeping Your Network Safe? Call Our IT Support Team!
There are many more ways of keeping your network safe—like securing mobile devices, requiring usernames and passwords to have two-factor authentication, and more. However, the most crucial step to ensure your network is safe is working with the IT support team at InnoTek Computer Consulting.
Our high-quality customer support team can help ensure that your network is safe and protected from cybercriminals who would love nothing more than to make your small business another statistic. You can rest assured that your company is safe and protected through proactive monitoring and robust security protocols. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help improve your network security!