Business Technology

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so our blog will spend the next few weeks educating and informing readers about cybersecurity-related topics.

If your business wants to protect its systems and data with the latest and greatest solutions, you’re probably looking into some pretty advanced cybersecurity tools. While it’s great you’re taking that initiative, it’s crucial we take a step back and assess your current IT setup.

This ever-evolving world of technology can be hard to keep up with. You’re always facing new choices when it comes to this stuff. It can be difficult to tell if you’re making the right decisions.

You use email, I use email, we all use email. But are those emails being protected? How does that all work? So, you might have heard of this thing called email encryption. Your business may have some form of this implemented. Maybe you have a limited idea of what it is or what it does- or maybe you don’t know anything about it. That’s okay. I’m new to this whole IT solutions thing and wasn’t quite sure myself. Email encryption was next up on my list of things to learn. I’m here to pass along some of that knowledge to you. We’re not going to get too into the weeds today. This stuff can become very complicated very quickly. Let’s just talk about what email encryption is and why it matters to you.

It’s another week at Innovative, and I’m continuing to learn the ins and outs of a managed service provider. That feeling of being on a different planet is slowly starting to fade away. Am I an expert yet? Absolutely not. But hey, it’s progress. My most recent learning experience came in the form of a training session on cybersecurity packages. This stuff can be pretty daunting when you first dive into it. EDR, SOC/SIEM, MFA – what does any of this mean?

It has never been more critical to create a secure password. Cyber attackers are always looking to steal passwords so they can access our information and harm our business. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 81% of hacking-related breaches occur due to compromised passwords. Don’t become a statistic. It’s on us to make it difficult for them. A strong password is a simple yet essential way to protect your accounts and your business. You can take several steps to create the most secure password possible. It can be tricky dealing with character counts, punctuation and password length. The list of requirements seems to go on and on. Let’s walk through it and explain how you can protect yourself.

When it comes to cybersecurity, it's easy to feel like solution vendors are constantly exploiting your worst fears to sell you the latest and greatest solution you need to keep your business safe.

Have you recently completed a form or answered questions from your cyber insurance carrier? There was likely something in there about multi-factor authentication. And you probably agreed to ensure multi-factor authentication (MFA) is in place for certain types of users and network access.

It feels like the list of potential cyberthreats to your business are never-ending. You put the basic safeguards in place: firewalls, password policies, anti-virus protections, and so on. Beyond that, your cyber risks are in the hands of fate. Sure, anything is possible, but other priorities need your time and attention. We get it. You're inundated with requests for resources. IT requests, specifically cybersecurity requests, always seem to play on your fears and come with a worst-case scenario story of a business just like yours that lost it all in an attack. As a leader, you're focused on growth and moving forward. You can't get hung up in every what-if scenario, or you'd never get anywhere. Making fear-based decisions makes you feel stagnant, like you're investing in maintaining the status quo when you'd prefer to invest in moving forward. You know cybersecurity is important, but so is everything that comes across your desk, and there are only so many resources to go around.

It seems like some company is always trying to push you toward a new cybersecurity solution that your business just has to have to protect against data breaches and cyberattacks. You’ve already invested in cyber liability insurance, backup and disaster recovery solutions, anti-virus programs, and firewalls.