In today's digital business environment, security has become a necessity. It is no longer safe to coast on business software solutions alone.
Even if your software has security features and your SaaS providers tout secure operations, a business needs a comprehensive IT security solution to remain safe from the landscape of hackers and automated malware now common in the digital environment.
To safely handle customer information or keep your operations private, even the smallest business requires a comprehensive security strategy.
Hiring a managed IT service is the best way to safeguard your office's digital assets. This is done by taking on the role of your IT department, providing multi-layer infrastructure, monitoring, and support to ensure your business data and digital assets are continually secured.
This article explores how your managed IT service can provide a comprehensive digital defense.
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Building a Secure Network and Software Stack
The first step to securing a business's digital assets is securing the network and the company's software stack. Business networks today are typically hybrid systems, a combination of on-site networking using physical routers and workstations combined with a cloud network that connects employees no matter where they are located.
Hybrid networks support multiple business locations, remote workers, hybrid schedules, and a widespread network of connected users.
Securing your network, on the other hand, is a matter of router settings, firewalls, access control settings, and sophisticated routing permissions. Your managed IT service will also audit every piece of software in the company's tech stack to ensure that they are, together, handling company data securely and streamlined.
Implementing Regular Updates and Security Patches
Once the company's infrastructure is complete, the next step is ensuring everything updates smoothly. Software updates are essential to digital security because of the evolving nature of cyber threats.
New attack vectors are introduced daily, often targeting popular business platforms and tools. Fortunately, your software providers usually have a live team ready to design new defenses released in each update. Extremely specific reasons are sometimes released in optional security patches, as well.
A great managed IT team will watch for updates and software patches, ensuring that your business software stack has the latest defenses available. They will also monitor the update process to prevent update-related data corruption and other problems that sometimes occur when company software is updated.
Testing for Vulnerabilities and Closing Security Gaps
Of course, no software stack is perfectly secure. This is why vulnerability tests are a necessity. Managed IT services will put your defenses through a battery of tests seeking any possible security gaps or vulnerabilities in your workflow.
If a problem is discovered, they will then devise the correct solution to overcome the risk. This can mean adding external defenses over a weak point in the software stack, seeking security patches, or even writing their own security solution to ensure your digital assets are fully secured.
New tests will be run regularly whenever a change is made to your network or digital infrastructure.
End-to-End Encryption Protection
Encryption is a business' best defense against a successful data breach. In the event that malware slips through an employee's email or a hacker manages to crack into your servers, encryption is what can keep your data safe.
When encrypted, data is parsed into "gibberish," a hashed code that cannot be read unless you have the key. Modern encryption keys are so randomized and complex that hackers can only crack them with their own counter-software.
This means that even if hackers copy a significant section of your servers, the data inside might still be safe because it is unreadable.
Managed IT services can ensure your business has end-to-end encryption, meaning that data is always encrypted in storage, transit, and when in use.
Providing Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity and Access Management, or IAM, is how businesses maintain the internal security of digital assets. The system involves assigning specific access permissions to each individual employee account.
Employees have access to the files and tools they need but not to digital assets outside their job scope. This protects the company if an employee account is hacked or otherwise misused because each account can access only a tiny portion of the company's total digital assets.
A managed IT team can help your company allocate employee and partner accounts, assign the correct access permissions, and keep those permissions up to date when employees are promoted, change teams, transfer to new locations, or leave the company.
Dedicated Protection of Sensitive Data
Your managed IT services can also provide exceptional protection for more sensitive digital assets. Personal, financial, and medical information, along with proprietary business data, are all classified as sensitive.
Through both human and programmatic identification, these elements of your digital assets can be kept with more robust defense measures, and access to these assets can be actively monitored.
Dedicated protection of sensitive data can ensure that only the right accounts and use cases are authorized to view or edit your company's most sensitive data.
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Security Training for Your Company Staff
No cybersecurity solution is complete without employee training. Hackers today know that firewalls and network defenses are robust and often seek to go around these challenges by targeting employees instead.
Infected links in emails, customer service tickets, or commonly visited websites, as well as more direct attempts to scam a business through its employees, are all matters that your staff needs to be aware of.
Through knowledgeable cybersecurity training from your Managed IT Services provider, you can elevate the security level of your entire business.
This will allow your staff to become a security force in their own right, recognizing and reporting attempts to use 'social engineering' hacking methods. A well-trained staff closes any hacker's final route once your business's digital systems are made into a fortress.
Related Video: Cybersecurity: Are Your Employees Trained?
Employee Device Security Management
Device security is another aspect of managed IT services. Your IT team will not only handle the configuration and security of the company's network and computers, but they can also administer security for the company's many laptops, phones, and tablets.
Technicians can set up employee devices with security programs and configurations. They can also help employees prevent malware infections and remove any malware on company devices.
Through these measures, it becomes possible to create mobile devices that can safely access the company's secure platforms and digital assets for remote, traveling, and active employees who are not always using networked company computers or workstations.
Live Monitoring for Suspicious Network Activity
Network monitoring is an advanced security service performed over a specific device, server, file system, or a company's entire hybrid network.
Using manual and AI-driven monitoring tools, it becomes possible to identify suspicious and unusual network activity that may indicate lurking malware in the system or a live hack in progress.
Managed IT provides detailed network monitoring, making it possible to identify threats in real-time and take preventative actions amid a breach before damage is done.
Network monitoring can lock down a hacked account showing unusual behavior, shut off access to your most secure digital assets in the event of a threat, isolate an infected device, and learn new red-flag behaviors for the future if an incident occurs.
Incident Response Plans for Malware and Data Breaches
Incident response planning is a way to prepare for potential malware threats ahead of time. Your IT team will determine the steps to take and assign roles to help your entire company take immediate action in the event of a cybersecurity incident.
Response planning can play a vital role in stopping an attack in progress or enacting swift recovery after a breach.
Routine Backups and Comprehensive Backup-Recovery Planning
Lastly, your managed IT services should ensure that there are always comprehensive and recent backups of your business's entire digital operations.
System backups can allow you to reinstall a server, computer, or entire network swiftly if natural disasters, corrupted data, or ransomware attacks damage your systems.
Daily data backups of live file systems make it possible for your business to pick right back up where you left off should an interruption occur.
For example, in the event of a ransomware attack that encrypts/corrupts vital digital systems, backups make it possible to restore your business without paying the ransom or losing a single day's worth of data.
With comprehensive backups (regularly tested for operability), your IT team can wipe the affected systems back to factory settings, restore your programs and configurations, and then reload recent data to have your teams back up and running in a matter of hours without ever considering paying a questionable ransom.
Responsive Resolutions to Technical and Security Matters
Every business in operation needs a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, continuously implemented by a skilled team of IT professionals. With Managed IT Services, you don't need an internal IT team or dedicated security specialists on the payroll. Instead, you can partner with technicians and admins who specialize in securing the digital assets of businesses in your industry.
AIS is here to keep your company's network, accounts, and digital assets safe from your deepest archives to your company phones and everything in between. Contact us today to learn how we can fulfill your business' need for active and skilled cybersecurity through Managed IT Services. We’re here to give you peace of mind to help you win more business.
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