Excerpted from BusinessNewsDaily.
Last week, I brought up 4 areas where small businesses may lack in security and how to help tighten it up, especially during the holiday season. Here are 4 more way to help protect your customers, business and sanity.
1. Not enforcing an employee security policy
Few small businesses enforce security policies on their employees. In any business, employees are likely storing customer data, whether they are aware of it or not. A stolen laptop, lost smartphone or even a prying eye can lead to the wrong people obtaining your IP or customer data without your knowledge. Create a policy, if you do not have one currently, and enforce it on all employees.
2. Ignoring staff education
Whether your staff comes to you with a strong security background or is forced to "learn on the fly," a lack of training can lead to avoidable incidents. No matter their prior knowledge, make sure your IT staff receives training about the products they work with, and be sure to provide time and financial resources to help keep them up to date. Personnel training can provide a large return on investment (ROI) and help avoid incidents that could damage your business and reputation. A little knowledge can a long way.
3. Using the same passwords again and again
Every company, small or large, should strive to have some guidelines and standard operating procedures around the use — and reuse — of passwords. In order to mitigate the risk of successful password guessing and cracking in their environment, employees should be aware of the issues that may stem from the use and reuse of weak passwords. Put a password manager such as Last Pass, Keepass or Roboform in place to generate random passwords for each new account that is created and to keep track of each password. Change passwords for critical resources every 90-180 days (PCI compliance requires every 90 days), and enforce rules of complexity such as a minimum number of characters and alphanumeric requirements.
4. Letting just anyone on your network
Clients, vendors and other visitors may request access, but allowing non-secured personal or third-party computers to connect to your local area network (LAN) can be a big mistake. Make sure any and every computer on your network is secure; you never know if a client’s laptop is carrying a virus.
This is probably one of the more important areas. Clients and Vendors may "plug-in" to many different networks with varying security. At the very least, make sure they have adequate, up to date protection before allowing them access to your network. All it takes is one infected device to take down and infect an entire network.
If you have any system security questions or concerns, contact the CCS Retail Systems Support Department at 800.672.4806 or email us.
-Bryan