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It is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure data safety and protect your personal and professional data in the online realm, whether you’re operating as a one-man show or if you’re running your very own business. The risks of someone trying to breach your data center and steal sensitive business information from under your nose is becoming increasingly prevalent in this digital age, simply because hackers and scammers stand to gain a lot by throwing malware at your firewall and trying to coerce your employees into relinquishing valuable information.
Needless to say, you can’t allow this to happen if you want to preserve your brand’s reputation and keep your company from going under quickly. And remember, recovering from a data breach can be next to impossible in this competitive modern business world. This is why you need to focus on elevating your cybersecurity in 2020, and you can achieve this by integrating the right tools into your system. Here are the solutions you need.
Start by optimizing your antivirus software
First things first, you can start by optimizing your antivirus software to fit the exact requirements of your company, and every device in your network. Keep in mind that you can’t just run an antivirus straight out of the box and hope that it will satisfy all of your needs, which is why you need to analyze its features and functionalities, and spend some time optimizing the settings. If you have a cloud-based firewall, your provider needs to scale it to fit your needs and maximize network security on all fronts.
Why go through all this trouble? Simply put, hackers have become very skilled at what they do, and they are nowadays able to create sophisticated malware that can pass through most firewalls without a hitch, which is why you need a powerful solution and why you should combine a software firewall with a hardware firewall as well – more on the latter in a bit.
Stay in control of your entire network
Nowadays, you have to stay in control of your network and monitor all inbound traffic in order to minimize and spot potential threats, maximize bandwidth availability, and simply keep your data and your employees safe. After all, you need to know exactly what your employees are doing in the online world in order to prevent them from installing malicious software or go to any shady websites where they might pick up a piece of malware.
To do this, you can integrate a web monitoring tool, also known as a secure web gateway, to retain full control of your entire network. This tool is excellent for real-time deep traffic inspection, and it will allow you to prevent access to suspicious websites. You can also use it for early risk detection so that you can stop a potential cyber-attack before it even gets a chance to strike.
Add a hardware firewall to your system
One of the most powerful cybersecurity solutions you can implement nowadays is the hardware firewall. This is a piece of equipment that can keep your entire network safe, and it acts as a barrier between you and the outside world. The tool will provide you with complete visibility of your network, as modern firewall hardware features real-time detection and rapid response functionalities, along with layered security and granular traffic inspection that allows you to identify every user in your network.
Maintenance and upkeep for hardware firewalls is minimal, and you can even set it up quickly as it usually boasts a simplified deployment system that you can use to integrate it quickly even if you don’t have a dedicated IT staff. These and many other benefits make the hardware firewall one of the top solutions for companies of every size.
Educate your employees on cybersecurity
Of course, you can’t hope to keep your company safe if your employees don’t know the first thing about data security. More often than not, it won’t be the firewall that fails you, but an unwitting employee who gave away a valuable piece of information to the wrong person. This is why you need to focus on employee education and training.
You can do this the old-fashioned way and bring in cybersecurity experts to conduct workshops, or you can use a dedicated training tool. In the case of the latter, there are many specialized training platforms that utilize videos and online testing to educate employees on data protection and then test their knowledge using a realistic scenario.
Implement penetration testing tools
Last but not least, it’s important to run regular security audits and put your security measures to the test. Your IT experts should use the same tools and methods the hackers use to try to uncover any weak points in your system and use them to gain entry into your data center. Running these tests regularly will ensure you’re always pathing up security holes and staying one step ahead of the cyber criminals.
Wrapping up
Data security is becoming an increasing concern for companies around the world as hackers and scammers become more proficient in their trade. To prevent cyber-attacks, be sure to use these tools that will elevate the safety of your data and your employees.
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