6 Essential Tools for Your Business’ Protection

Cybersecurity tops the list for any business’ needs, particularly when one considers just how many threats are out there today. This makes it essential that today’s businesses (yours included) put an assortment of cybersecurity tools and protections in place.

We’ve assembled a list of the ones we recommend.

Network Firewall

You can think of a firewall as the first layer of protection your network has, a hazmat suit keeping contaminants out of the organism inside, while also preventing the organism from introducing its own contaminants to the environment.

This is because a firewall controls all traffic in and out of your business’ infrastructure, enforcing predefined rules which control access to different resources and monitoring to ensure these rules are followed. If you have any form of security system in place currently, chances are good that a firewall is already included, helping prevent intrusion and malware infection.

Antivirus/Anti-malware

For things that a firewall can’t or doesn’t stop, antivirus and anti-malware software can be there, helping stop viruses, malware, ransomware, and various other malicious programs. These tools identify such threats on the network and swiftly quarantine them before ensuring they are removed. There are options designed for home use, but businesses should exclusively use those designed for their needs with their more robust features.

Some of these features include things like real-time threat detection, network analysis tools, and endpoint security.

Active Cybersecurity Monitoring

Cybersecurity threats happen fast, and some are designed to slip past automated tools like antivirus and firewalls. Active monitoring can detect suspicious activity on the network and quickly mitigate it. No single solution is perfectly infallible, but modern cybersecurity tools use cutting edge technology including AI to actively keep your network secure.

Encryption

Speaking of encryption, it itself helps protect your business’ data by scrambling it beyond recognition for anyone that doesn’t have the decryption key. This key will help put the data back in the right order, but without it, the content will appear as gibberish. Encryption is a fairly common feature of many tools that regularly handle sensitive data, as well as communication tools. It can be seen as critical, especially due to its usefulness to Internet, email, and file transfer processes.

Identity and Access Management

In short, these tools give you control over who is able to use what amongst your business and its resources, which greatly helps you ensure that only those with authorization have access. Ideally, the tool you will use will put single sign-on (also known as SSO) into use, allowing you to give your team members access to all their tools via one instance of signing in.

Generally speaking, identity and access management tools are one of the most important factors for keeping your company resources exclusive to those who are supposed to access them.

Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)

Backup and disaster recovery are critical elements of any comprehensive business continuity plan, and need to be ready to be wheeled out in case a disaster impacts your business’ data.

Data loss is no joke. Fortunately, a good BDR implementation can help you put a limit on how long you suffer from it by ensuring you have backup copies of your data to fall back on, updated incrementally to ensure minimal data is permanently lost. Best practices dictate that multiple copies of your backup exist, spread between on-site and off-site storage, particularly in the cloud, to achieve total redundancy.

A good BDR plan’s importance cannot be overstated, as there is no predicting when it will be of use.

We Can Help You Implement Any and All of the Above

Reach out to OnSite I.T. at (403) 210-2927 to learn more about any of these options.