The businesses of today have the privilege of taking advantage of highly advanced technology that has revolutionized the commercial landscape. From cloud computing to the internet of things, modern companies have an ever-increasing capacity for refining and optimizing their business models. However, these benefits are only part of the picture, and bad actors have made it their mission to exploit today’s tech for their own illicit gain. Because this disproportionately affects businesses, business owners need to take the necessary steps to foolproof their network against the omnipresent threat of hackers. Here’s what you need to know.
Network Security
The frontline of commercial cybersecurity is a business’s network. This is because networking is an important component of the operation of the company itself, not to mention its interactions with various digital and online systems. Networks can be infiltrated by hackers in a number of ways, and taking those weaknesses into account and addressing them is therefore a necessary and foundational step toward the integrity of your company’s data.
The first major hurdle to overcome is the login process itself. Passwords are a tried and true staple of cybersecurity, but the fact of the matter is that they’re not as strong as they might seem. Thanks to hacking methods and tools, cracking a password is only a matter of time in many cases. The zero trust model of network security strengthens the password by requiring the presentation of login credentials to authorize each individual task throughout the work day. Multi-factor authentication, on the other hand, strengthens password security by creating an additional login token for each login that is sent directly to the owner of the account in question.
On the other hand, network monitoring is essential for anticipating cyber attacks in advance by observing strange behavior that may indicate an infiltration attempt in progress. Likewise, intrusion detection and prevention software can help to quash a cyber attack once it’s in progress. Last, but not least, DDoS prevention software is a must when it comes to an uncommon, but ultimately devastating, distributed denial of service attack. Because these attacks are carried about by several machines under a hacker’s control, it is all but impossible to stop without relying on software yourself.
E-commerce
While your network is all that stands between your company’s files and hackers, protecting your consumers is an altogether different matter. With the rise in popularity of e-commerce, businesses can reap major rewards by offering online shopping and apps that give customers more access to their products and services. However, these services are offered via a company’s website and e-commerce apps, both of which have severe weaknesses that need to be addressed.
First and foremost, a newly minted corporate website will lack an essential feature of safe online browsing until its owner takes action. Encryption and decryption are vital for protecting users, because it scrambles data in transit so that intercepting hackers will find it meaningless and unusable. Without encrypting your website’s data, hackers can easily obtain your customers’ personal and financial information, not to mention login information for administration accounts.
On the other hand, e-commerce apps are even more popular as an avenue for engaging with businesses remotely, and they have their own Achilles’ heel in the form of APIs. Application programming interfaces give businesses the means to develop e-commerce apps from a template, allowing them to save time and money during the development process. However, APIs can have security flaws, and they are just as available to hackers as they are to business owners. This means that studying an API can allow hackers to find exploits that are applicable for apps developing using that API. API security is therefore a crucial method of protecting you and your customers from hackers by finding and fixing those weaknesses before they can fall into the wrong hands.
Today’s business landscape is heavily characterized by the use of advanced tech, but that can be a double-edged sword without proper considerations. These tips will help you fortify your business’s data against hackers.
