Cybersecurity Awareness Month: 4 Simple Steps for Business Owners
Why Cybersecurity Awareness Month Is Worth Your Attention
Every October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and it’s been that way for more than twenty years. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency uses the month to push a handful of basic habits that make a real difference, and the good news for business owners is that none of them require a big budget or a technical background.
CISA is blunt about why this matters for smaller companies. Its guidance for businesses points out that no business is too small to be a target, and that small businesses are three times more likely to be targeted by cybercriminals than larger ones. Attackers go where the defenses are thin, and the four steps below are about making your business a harder target than the next one.
Step One: Use Strong Passwords and a Password Manager
Weak and reused passwords are still one of the easiest ways into a business. When an employee uses the same password for work email that they used on a shopping site that got breached, an attacker can often just log in. Strong passwords are long, random, and different for every account, which is nearly impossible for anyone to remember on their own.
That’s where a password manager comes in. It creates and remembers strong passwords for your team, so nobody has to keep a sticky note under the keyboard. If you’d like to go further, we’ve written about what a practical password policy looks like for a small team.
Step Two: Turn On Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication adds a second check when someone logs in, usually a code or a tap on a phone app. Even if a password gets stolen, the attacker still can’t get in without that second piece. CISA says turning it on makes you significantly less likely to get hacked, and it recommends starting with email, financial accounts, and social media.
For a business owner, email is the one to prioritize. Password resets for nearly everything else go through it, and an attacker inside your email can pose as you to your clients and your bank.
Step Three: Recognize and Report Phishing
CISA calls phishing emails, texts, and calls the number one way data gets compromised. These messages pretend to come from someone you trust and push you to click a link, open an attachment, or send money before you’ve had time to think. The best defense is a habit of slowing down whenever a message feels urgent or unusual, and confirming any request for payment or login information by calling the person at a number you already have.
Reporting matters just as much as spotting. When an employee forwards a suspicious email to whoever handles your IT, that one report can protect everyone else who received the same message. Good spam filtering catches a lot of these before they ever reach an inbox, although a careful team is still the last line of defense.
Step Four: Keep Your Software Updated
Updates fix the security holes that attackers already know about, so out-of-date software is basically an unlocked window. CISA recommends turning on automatic updates wherever you can and checking manually for anything that doesn’t update itself, including operating systems, web browsers, and the business applications you rely on every day.
This is the step that tends to slip in a busy office, since updates often want a restart at the worst possible moment. We’ve written more about what happens when IT maintenance falls behind and why a regular schedule makes it painless.
Making Cybersecurity Awareness Month Count
A simple way to use Cybersecurity Awareness Month is to pick one of these steps each week in October and talk about it with your team. Send a quick email, mention it at a staff meeting, or walk everyone through setting up a password manager. CISA even suggests rewarding employees who spot test phishing emails instead of punishing the ones who miss them, since people learn faster when it feels like a team effort.
If you’d like help putting these four steps in place across your business, or you just want to know how you’re doing today, reach out to Glitch Technology for a free assessment.
Four simple habits, practiced by everyone on your team, go a long way toward keeping your business out of trouble. Glitch Technology provides managed IT services and computer support in Jacksonville, IL. We take full ownership of IT environments for small businesses and municipal organizations through proactive monitoring, preventative maintenance, and strategic planning.