The festive wind down is a great time to improve your cyber security so check out our top tips to help keep your business safe this season.

#1 – Identity Protection

The average business user has more than 100 passwords!

Choosing and remembering passwords can be difficult which explains why over 80% of data breaches are password related.

This is why we recommend using a password management solution such as 1Password or LastPass to help secure and manage your passwords.

We also urge you to enable Multi-Factor Authentication wherever possible as this will help improve your cyber security.

#2 – Office 365 Security

Completing these tasks will help protect the security of your Office 365 tenant:

Tasks
Office 365 Business Premium
1
Set up multi-factor authentication
✅
2
Train your users
✅
3
Use dedicated admin accounts
✅
4
Raise the level of protection against malware in mail
✅
5
Protect against ransomware
✅
6
Stop auto-forwarding for email
✅

#3 – Restrict Administrator privileges

Do you log in using a Standard or Administrator user account?

We recommend always using a Standard user account with limited privileges as this mitigates risks.

Disable your default Administrator account and create a unique administrator username and password.

Your unique Administrator account should only be used for elevation tasks such as installing new software.

#4 – Device protection 

Keeping data safe using encryption is a crucial part of cyber security so ensure smart phones have a PIN number and Windows computers have BitLocker enabled.

We also recommend enabling password protected screensavers on computers to help prevent unauthorized access.

#5 – Software updates

The run-up to Christmas is also a great time to check computers are up-to-date with:

  • Computer manufacturer drivers, firmware and BIOS
  • Operating system releases and security patches
  • Application versions and bug fixes

#6 – Backups

Protecting data from cyber crime is essential and OneDrive can now be used to ensure important folders are always backed up.

Cyber criminals never take a break so follow our security tips to ensure they don’t take anything from you this Christmas.

If tech isn’t your thing and you would rather have an IT professional secure your computers, remember we are only an email or phone call away.

We wish you a happy Christmas and a cyber safe new year!