Dynamic Business

Q. What can SMBs do to protect their websites?

There are a few really simple steps that resellers can advise their SMB customers to take. Keep computers and systems fully patched and make sure software is up-to-date.  If forms or a database is used on the site, make sure it’s not vulnerable to injections. (This can be done relatively inexpensively through penetration testing, security tools or security services). And of course, if the site allows visitors to post comments or upload content, it’s a good idea to scan the postings with real-time scanning tools and products that check for malicious links or spam.  An example of a free tool that scans blog comments for spam is Defensio (www.defensio.com).

Q.  What’s best: Security-as-a-Service (Saas) or a solution deployed on the company network?

What’s right varies for every organisation. You need to consider things such as internal IT resources, network capacity and scalability, even what kind of reporting and policy management is be required.  Some companies are well equipped to deploy and manage a security solution or they simply prefer to have the infrastructure kept and managed in house. Many businesses choose a SaaS solution as it offers the same or higher levels of protection and control, but saves on management, bandwidth and hardware costs.

Q. What competitive advantage does the deployment of IT security bring?

One advantage is that you become less of a risk to deal with. Nobody wants to rely on an organisation that unwittingly distributes malware, leaks confidential data or is unreliable because its network keeps falling over.  Another important consideration is that for an increasing number of industries and professions, some form of data protection or IT security is mandatory due to compliance and regulatory requirements.