Stay ahead of business cybersecurity threats with the right service provider

Security considerations for mid-sized businesses

From financials to customer and employee information, data is the lifeblood of any organization. Given the critical nature of this data, it stands to reason that protecting it should be a top priority for business owners, especially since, as recently as 2017, 19% of Canadian small businesses and 28% of medium-sized businesses reported they were impacted by cybersecurity incidents.

So how can a growing mid-size business protect itself? A strategic way to start is by choosing the right telecom provider. Whether your business is shopping for a new provider or has been with the same company for a long time, it’s important to understand whether your business is getting the security features it requires for both now and the future. Here are a few aspects of business cybersecurity that need to be considered when evaluating telecom solution and service providers.

Stay secure throughout an employee’s lifecycle 

Every new hire adds to the complexity of an organization, particularly from an IT perspective. If a business has a bring-your-own-device policy, it means adding new personal phones, tablets, wearables or laptops to its network. While this can be handy for the employee, it requires diligence on the part of the business’s IT team to have formalized policies in place to reduce risks. This includes setting password guidelines for all devices connected to the network, enabling two-factor authentication, and an easily followed process for disabling lost or stolen devices. Additionally, businesses should employ endpoint security, which protects every internet-enabled device from cyberattacks when it’s accessing the internet from outside the company network.

Despite the security measures you put in place, it’s also important to consider the entire lifecycle of an employee. If a staff member switches roles due to a promotion or a change in focus, should their access to certain systems or information also change? And when an employee leaves, what’s the protocol for ensuring that access seamlessly ends? While you might be able to quickly lock a former employee out of your network, how do you ensure that password access is no longer available for cloud-based tools that your team might use, like Salesforce? This is where an enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution comes in, especially as you gain more and more employees. This solution allows you to manage elements such as access to certain applications, device user authentication, content restrictions, and more—and a good provider will be there to make it all easy for you, offering deployment, migration, configuration and onboarding services so you can stay focused on your business.

Prepare for the worst

With malware attacks perpetually increasing in sophistication, it’s estimated, according to a recent report, that a business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds by 2021. Even though you should always educate your workforce on how to avoid malware schemes, it only takes one click by one employee to invite disaster. That’s why it’s best to deploy an anti-malware solution that’s automatic and requires little to no maintenance. Your internet provider should be able to provide this level of protection, automatically blocking user requests to malicious sites and automatically updating so you don’t need to invest time and money in peripheral hardware like firewalls.

Back up to move forward

Malware attacks aren’t the only threats to your systems out there. What if a crucial piece of hardware crashes? What if there’s a flood? A fire? A power surge? The bottom line is that there’s no way to protect absolutely everything from every potential circumstance. That’s why a business should always have a backup solution and a strategy for restoring systems regardless of the security measures in place. Comprehensive backups of all important information should occur frequently, and stay isolated from your business network, such as on an external storage drive or in the cloud. Additionally, ensure you’ve got a telecom provider that has proper backup measures in place for its business customers. This should include backup and replication of crucial data, the ability to help with restoration, real-time monitoring and reporting, and frequent testing.

Your telecom provider should invest in your security

The more your business grows, the greater the risk of a security breach. That’s why your telecom provider should be an active participant in protecting your business. To learn how Rogers can do that for your organization, please reach out to a Rogers Business Specialist.