7 tips on how to protect your business from online hacking

Marriott Hotels, British Airways, Facebook just to name a few of the biggest cases we’ve seen in recent times...Countless people’s email and social media accounts experience this everyday...

What are we drawing your attention to? If you haven’t guessed it, online hacking.

Security is a core focus within our business here at Advantage. Over 3 billion records have been breached over the last 6 years & the level and sophistication of these threats is ever increasing. However, there are steps we can take to help somewhat safeguard ourselves against online hacking and malware, just by making improvements to our own online security.

With this in mind our latest tips and tricks article provides you with 7 of the very best tips on how to protect your business from online hacking.

Tip 1: Build stronger passwords

Most people often ignore this even though it is a pretty obvious way of protecting your business. Make sure that any password you create has over 8 characters & uses a combination of both upper- and lower-case letters as well as symbols.

Tip 2: Change your passwords every so often and make sure that you never use the same password on different platforms

This goes without saying but with multiple passwords setup, it makes it harder for hackers to gain access to all your accounts and devices.

Tip 3: Think outside the box with your security question answers

Some of the easiest things for hackers to find out are things such as where you went to school or your father’s name. To make it harder for hackers, think outside the box for some unconventional answers to these questions.

Tip 4: Make sure that you have the best anti-virus, anti-malware/spyware and a top of the range firewall in place

This software combines to safeguard your systems against any malicious programs.

Find out more about our security solutions today.

Tip 5: Ensure that you select the right Cloud service for your business

It is so important to make sure that your business selects the right Cloud service as it will be handling sensitive data. Make sure that you only use Cloud services which encrypt data at rest and in transit. To fully protect yourself, you might look to use something like Microsoft Azure.

Tip 6: Make sure your aware of phishing emails

If you receive either a file or a link to a website which you don’t recognise, make sure you think before you click even if it looks like a legitimate source. The first thing you can do is to check the sender email address by hovering over the link, is this person really who they claim to be? (You can find out more about how to spot a phishing email here). Phishing doesn’t only happen via email it can also happen across social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging so be aware of it!

Tip 7: Keep all your software up to date and up to scratch

Take the necessary steps to ensure that potential hackers are unable to access your computer due to a simple weakness such as out of date programs. Make sure that you keep your operating system and all the software on your computer updated. You can set these up to be updated automatically or better still if you are using an older version of Windows such as 7 you can look to get your business upgraded to Windows 10 to limit your chances of being attacked by hackers.

If you want to find out more about any of the above tips, our Cloud services such as Microsoft Azure or how to protect your business from online hacking with our Tiered Security Support Packages, please get in touch with our Managed Services team today.

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