Cybersecurity Best Practices for Small Businesses to Be Mindful Of

Cyberattacks are on the rise. As more businesses and their customers turn toward eCommerce for holiday shopping and beyond, more hackers are looking for ways to take advantage of them.

And while you might not have the resources for a full-fledged IT department to optimize backend operations, you can create systems to help protect your data. Here are some cybersecurity best practices to implement for your small business.

Update Passwords Regularly

There’s a reason this point comes up in just about every mention of cybersecurity you’ll find. As online users, we’ve made a bad habit of convenience. It’s much easier to prioritize creating a password we’ll remember than one that’ll keep our accounts safe.

This is why tools like LastPass have become so popular within recent years. They automatically collate and suggest passwords so you don’t have to remember them. If you’re someone who uses the same password for every business login or writes passwords down on a piece of paper somewhere, incorporating these kinds of tools into daily operations would be well worth considering.

Create Backups

It’s hard to prioritize backing up your system when there are so many other pressing short-term items on the to-do list. However, you’re going to spend more time trying to recover data in the event of a potential breach than you will running periodic backups.

In terms of your site, look for a web host that’ll perform backups for you. For documents and other important paperwork, you can keep them secure with backups to the cloud or perform a download monthly to an external hard drive.

Limit Administrative Software Privileges

When teams are small, it’s easy to justify giving everyone access to various tools and documentation. The issue with this comes when you start to scale.

As your team grows, be mindful about who gets access to what. Fewer sets of login credentials lower the potential instances for hacking. Additionally, it’ll be less headache on your end to manage as employees leave and accounts need to be closed or transferred.

Make Sure Your Website Data is Secure

If your website isn’t converted from HTTP to HTTPS yet, you’re long overdue for jumping on the security bandwagon. There’s some technical know-how required to SSL certificates so it might be worth working with a web host that’ll handle it for you.

There are also a number of online security tools available to small businesses. Do your research and lean into what can be automated for the sake of future you and your business’ growing base of customers.