Is your business making these mistakes?

You can find several tips and tricks on the internet on how to keep your business running smoothly. You will find the best business plans, marketing strategies and investment strategies, but when it comes to building a solid cyber-security system, the options are far less.

This is because a lot of content is created for established organisations, and while start-up businesses can take inspiration from that, they often do not have the facilities and numbers to follow the tips.

Let’s go through a few mistakes start-up businesses make and what should be avoided:

1. Lack of 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication)

Not setting up two-factor authentication on work accounts allows you to protect data from theft and ransomware, such as phishing. 2FA is one of the simplest security measures you should take, especially on financial software.

2. Passwords in spreadsheets/Cloud services

One mistake a lot of start-up businesses make, is not using the correct password management software to keep their business safe. Storing passwords in Google Docs and Excel spreadsheets is convenient, easy to access, easy to share, but these documents can be indexed by search engines and end up in the wrong hands. Using a safe and secure password management software is essential.

3. Sharing Privileges/Passwords

The staff turnover in start-up business is usually high, so many companies decide that using shared accounts could be a good solution. However, this increases the chances of a data leak because of phishing or negligence.

4. File Management

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you know exactly which file you need, but you simply cannot find where you have saved it? In start-up businesses, with the turnover of staff, maybe they saved the file somewhere and forgot to inform you? Having an organised file management system in place can prevent this problem.

5. Access Rights

Quite often a staff joins an SME, and immediately gets admin privileges and rights. It’s easier to give access to your staff at once, rather than increasing the responsibility you give them on a week-by-week basis. However, as the number of accesses your staff gets increases, the probability of making an error also does. In order to minimise this risk, the workflow of the business should be clear, and each staff should only have the necessary privileges for each assigned task.

If you need help to implement the above or would like to ask us any questions regarding your IT environment, please contact us.