Tip of the Week: Basic Means of Securing Your Network

Your business’ network is critical to your operations, making it all the more important that you have it properly secured. Fortunately, there are a few relatively simple and straightforward ways to help do so. Let’s share some of the network security basics you need to prioritize.

You Need to Utilize Multi-Factor Authentication

Nowadays, every account you have will rely on a combination of a username and password, but we’re seeing more and more often that this simply isn’t enough in order to preserve your business’ cybersecurity and data protections. Enter multi-factor authentication (MFA), where additional proof of identity is required before access will be granted.

These proofs of authentication take the form of something you know (like the initial password), something you have (like a device or access to an authentication token), or something you are (like a biometric scan or a voice print). Adding these additional requirements makes it much more challenging for an external party without authorization to access your resources, while only adding a small extra step to your processes.

Access Control Helps Keep People Out of Where They Shouldn’t Be

Similarly, it is important that you do everything you can to keep unauthorized users—even those who actually do work for your business, but have no need to access certain resources—from having access to more than they actively need for their role. With various tools now available to help you restrict and monitor who it is that is utilizing what, it becomes far easier to prevent data from leaking.

You Should Be Keeping Data Encrypted, at Rest and in Transit

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If you couldn’t make heads or tails of the above chunk of text, that was by design. Translated back to legibility, it reads:

“This text has been encrypted, which means the data has been scrambled and can only be read by someone who possesses the key to decrypt it. Utilizing encryption is an excellent way to protect your data, as it effectively renders it useless to anyone who doesn't have the decryption key.  We recommend that your data is always encrypted, whether it is being transmitted or stored.”

Your Network Should Be Divided for Different Purposes

Finally, you can reasonably expect any visitors to your business to want some level of Internet access. However, for your security and the sake of your efficiency, you don’t want these visitors to be utilizing the same network connection that your team is using for business purposes. Segmenting your network is therefore a worthwhile process, as it will help you to isolate potential threats from your business’ resources and save precious bandwidth.

We Can Help You Put These Tips into Action

Reach out to XFER to learn more about our managed services, and how we’ll take on the maintenance and upkeep of your business’ technology needs. Give us a call at 734-927-6666 / 800-GET-XFER to learn more.