Top 5 questions to ask about security at your midsized business

Top 5 questions to ask about security at your midsized business

One of the biggest challenges in running a small or mid-sized business today is ensuring security, privacy, and compliance. When companies embrace technologies like the cloud and mobile computing to connect with customers and optimize operations, they also take on new risks.

As a small or mid-sized business, it’s sometimes difficult to balance protecting yourself from increasing threats while at the same time taking fulling advantage of all those productivity gains promised by modern technology.

More and more c-suite managers at SMBs find it increasingly difficult to stay up-to-date and familiar with security best practices and the overall threat landscape. Yet this is an important part of your process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating security risks. Not to mention, you need to correctly respond to compliance requirements in a timely way.

Ask yourself these 5 questions about the security at your SMB

  1. Do you know who is accessing your data?
  2. Can you grant access to your data based on risks in real time?
  3. Can you quickly find and react to a breach?
  4. Can you protect your data on devices, in the could, and in transit?
  5. Do your users love their work experience?

How do your results compare?

Don’t beat yourself up about answering “no” or even “I don’t know” to more than one of these questions. Because you’re probably very similar to a lot of SMBs who really do want to make security a priority, but struggle with finding the right action plan that makes it all seamless and part of every-day operations. One of the biggest concerns we hear about is executives who feel like they don’t really have control over their data.

What to do next – in a nutshell

We encourage most SMBs to take a step back and consider defining their Security Action Plan. When we help clients do this, we look at four key areas that covers all end of your data security. Here are a few suggestions for your own action plan.

Secure the front door

It’s likely that your staff are accessing your data from multiple devices. That data includes everything from their email, shared folders and files, access to applications like your finance or customer database. Every time they access that data, it’s at risk. Focus your security on more than just strong passwords and strong password policies. Take a comprehensive approach against all forms of compromised identities on your system.

Secure content

Your teams are sharing information all the time with other staff members and people external to your organization. A good security action plan will work on keeping that information secure at all time, whether in your own system or in transit to external partners. An example of how to make this work at your SMB would be to include data protection like access privileges or data encryption to the cloud applications you use every day.

Secure devices

For many SMBs this might seem like a never-ending battle. Devices change frequently, some are company owned and some aren’t, you’re not sure how employees are using them. But, employees are accessing your data with those devices, so you want systems and processes in place to protect your business without stifling the productivity of your employees. Tools for data encryption, automatic detection of suspicious activity, or quickly blocking, quarantining or wiping compromised devices are some best practices.

Create a great employee experience

It is possible to have great security without limiting what your employees can do, how they can do it, or where they can do it from. Your system can be an effective combination of policies and tools that let your employees be productive and secure on any device while you maintain control of your data.

Want help with your Security Action Plan. We’re happy to help get you there. Get in touch to find out more about what we do.