Dynamic Business

How to protect your business

Although protecting your business assets can seem like a daunting task, there are simple steps you can take to stop valuable data from falling into the hands of fraudsters:

• Invest in SME solutions. SMEs tend to implement ad hoc IT solutions which are not necessarily based on a long-term IT plan or strategy. Traditional enterprise solutions are not suitable for SMBs. Smaller organisations simply cannot afford the same level of product as larger companies or the extensive support staff required to maintain these systems.  As an alternative, smaller organisations should investigate solutions specifically tailored to the needs of small businesses.  These user-friendly suites offer superior protection, fast restore features, disaster recovery and back-up capabilities – providing comprehensive protection that is straight forward to install, deploy and manage.

• End-to-end protection. SMEs should invest in a security solution sophisticated enough to defeat not only known threats, but unknown threats as well. SMEs need to know that their critical information is safe – wherever it’s used or stored. That means in laptops, desktops, mobile devices, and servers, in email, over the network, and in storage devices.

• Effective and accurate anti-spam protection. This is especially urgent given that Symantec last year observed a 192 percent increase in spam detected across the internet, from 120 billion messages in 2007 to 350 billion in 2008. Recently, cyber-criminals capitalised on fears of the “swine flu” to attack users, at one point sending approximately one billion flu-related messages a day, researchers say. SMEs require a solution that automatically detects spam without requiring manual adjustment of filtering rules or monitoring of false positives.

• Up-to-date security software. It is important for SMEs to use the most up-to-date security software to ensure they are protected against the newest threats. For example, the recent Conficker worm infected as many as 12 million PCs according to security researchers, and many of these systems were infected largely because they did not have the latest security software installed on their systems.

• Simplified management. For SMEs, simplicity is a significant priority. Most SMEs don’t have the staff or the expertise to spend time managing security. The security and back-up solution they select must be deployed with minimal disruption to business operations.

• Employee education. No matter which security and back-up system is employed, the best policy is undoubtedly educating employees on the potential threats and encouraging them to take precautionary measures.  Simple precautions such as treating any email attachments from unknown senders with caution and ensuring any personal account information is not disclosed to unknown sources is absolutely vital. Requests to enter personal information should be treated with the upmost suspicion, because this is the very data that cyber criminals and scammers are attempting to collect.

Finally, the best policy when online is to always be aware of possible threats and proceed with caution.

- Steve Martin is the SMB director, Pacific region for Symantec (www.symantec.com)

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