Guidelines for Small Business Security

Small businesses need to do more to protect their data now more than ever because of the increasing reliance on the internet for business transactions. According to recent research, about 92 percent of small business owners now rely on the availability of online access to the running of their business. As Jeff Wilson of Infonetics Research observed, "Working on computers and accessing networked resources and the internet are the lifeblood of modern business, and anything that blocks acces to electronic resources is crippling..." - The Costs of Network Attacks: North America 2007.

The downtime cost for small companies has spiralled to over $30 thousand or about .04 percent of revenue, and just over one in five (21 percent) of businesses have suffered an IT security attack. To prevent these losses, small business need simple to install and easy to use protection that will enable the owners to dedicate their time to moving their businesses toward greater successes.

Here are a few things that small bbusiness owners can implement as best-practices in their environments:

• Create a company policy about downloading music, pornography, "free" installable software, pictures and movie files etc.
• Train employees to follow the procedures established in the policy
• Practice good password or passphrase and account protocols
• If employees do not need a software or application, do not load it on their computers
• Disable computer ports not in use
• Maintain security patches which will give your IT foundation the most up-to-date security protection. In this case, a managed service or managed security service may be a better option as the provider will do all the work for you. Unpatches devices are the weakest link in your IT environment
• Look for security solutions that are easy to use and quick to deploy. A CIO may come in handy here as they have the expertise to evaluate and advise on what will fit your environment best
• Seek security solutions with built-in intelligence and can adapt to your business. Your CIO should be able to help with this
• Keep up with security news as much as possible.
• Encrypt laptops  and mobile devices, especially those with very sensitive data. There are a lot of good on-the-fly encryption tools available. This will at least shield you from data leakage and very costly law suits
• Implement a transparent filtering software on your internet gateway. This blocks employees from accessing bad or malicious web sites
• Make sure your environment has a centralized antivirus solution that removes the responsiblity on definition updates from your employees. In addition, make sure the solution you acquire goes beyond just virus detection. They should be capable of stopping unknown threats from entering your environment
• Implement a good spam filtering solution at the email gateway. This will stop spam emails before they even get to your network
• Make sure you have an alert system that lets your users (or at least, an admin) know about emerging issues and can automatically take corrective measures. At the minimum, the system should be able to guide your users (through a user-friendly management console) to fix the problem.

A lot of small business owners sacrifice security based on a limited budget. In many cases, they cannot afford a specialized IT security team or staff member. More than anything, some cannot just afford to take the time and resources away from business-critical priorities. This is why it is important to seek out affordable and proven technology to assist in the managment of your IT foundation. Putting piece-meal or half-baked technologies to secure your business data is not a viable solution. It is essential that small business owners prioritize security based on business needs - a secure web site is more important to an online retailer whereas denying access to sensitive data is more critical to a healthcare provider, bank or legal firm.

Small businesses have to learn to pay more attention to the use of antivirus software and make sure they are routinely updated. We cannot stress enough the importance of using a managed services provider that can automate a lot of these processes using proactive solutions that identify and delete known and unknown malware and viruses. More important, a managed services provider has the resources to protect your environment with layered protection that would otherwise be very expensive if you were to procure them on your own.

To learn more about Managed Services, please contact Tech Prognosis at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (512) 814-8044

Happy computing