Tech to Protect Your Business in the Modern Age
There are a lot of different types of technology available which, in the sales literature at least, promise to protect your business. However, you are likely to require more than one of these to ensure that every angle of your business, both physically and online, is catered for. This is because there is potential daily danger and threats to your business in multiple guises.
A physical defense
Physical threats and damage were once at the forefront of every business owner’s mind, but since the internet has shown how prolific criminals can be, a lot more focus is being paid to online threats. This doesn’t mean, however, that physical threats have stopped but that they have been merely overshadowed.
#1 CCTV cameras
Having CCTV cameras located around your site, both outside and inside your premises, is a must in keeping your business safe. Ensuring that there is no blind spot where incidents can happen without being noticed, seen, or recorded is a must for your business and your employees and their safety and well-being.
CCTV can not only capture incidents as they happen but can also be a great deterrent to those wishing to seek mischief or have bigger criminal intentions playing on their minds.
#2 Mosquito devices
You may find that you fall victim to groups or gangs of people, most likely teenagers, loitering or gathering outside your business premises. Whether they are there with malicious intent or are generally just hanging out will depend on the group of people and your business location. Regardless of their intentions, they can seem intimidating to your workers and to your visitors.
Making these people uncomfortable will no doubt affect your worker’s morale and, therefore, your business. It can also affect the willingness of your visitors as to whether they are going to place orders with your business or not. Of course, you shouldn’t confront these gangs yourself, as this may just add fuel to their fire, and your business could easily wind up on the losing side. Instead, you can invest in a mosquito device which is a sound deterrent for humans. This can be used anonymously and will not harm the targeted individuals but encourage them to find other places to congregate other than outside your business premises.
#3 Alarms
You can also install some alarms which can be programmed to sound when someone either enters your premises or your buildings. Of course, these will need to be set for the times that you have nobody on site, and you will need to make sure that those workers that are first at your business premises know how to turn them off as well as those that are last out of the door the knowledge of how to turn them on.
Linking them to your phone along with any feeds from your CCTV cameras will ensure that you are alerted should an event happen, regardless of where in the world you may happen to be. This will mean that you are always connected to your business and that you aren’t reliant on an employee to tell you (or the police) should there have been an incident.
On the Internet
As the internet has now become part of everyone’s lives, more and more businesses rely upon it. This means that it is a great hunting ground for criminals wanting to take advantage of the less than tech-savvy or those with little knowledge of what is at stake. However, there are methods by which you can protect your business here too.
#1 Firewalls
You need to install firewalls to protect your business from unauthorized individuals and malicious behavior. Firewalls act very much like a security guard on the door, and they are an essential tool for every business to take advantage of.
Of course, if you have multiple remote workers working for your business, you may find that you require more than just one firewall to keep your business safe. If in any doubt about firewalls, how they work, how many you require, or even why you should actually invest in them, you should speak to a qualified and well-established cybersecurity business.
#2 Multi-function authentication
Cybercriminals are constantly looking for a way into a business to gain access to the data that they hold, and although a firewall will certainly help, it cannot do it all. For instance, if a criminal happens to come by one of your employees’ passwords or even security passes, they will be able to gain some access to your business without you realizing it, unless your employee has come forward and admitted that they had lost their security pass. For a password, however, they will not notice that it has been discovered by another, and nor will your business until it is too late.
That is unless you decide to put some multi-function authentication (or MFA) in place for your workforce. This is because MFA, as the name suggests, uses various forms of identification that will need to be supplied by your employee in order to gain access. This could be a passcode or password, a security swipe badge, and a fingerprint, making it far harder for the criminal to actually gain the access they require due to only having a limited amount of the security info they require.
#3 Phishing awareness
One of the main forms of access for a criminal is to send out phishing emails and wait to see who they catch. Many people and businesses have been caught by this ruse all over the world, and it has cost them a lot of money. Phishing emails are used to either steal data, hold it to ransom or initiate malware. Although most are for the cybercriminals’ gain, sometimes it can be to wreak havoc and bring large corporations to their knees. Cybercrime can be a business’s worse nightmare, as it can damage reputation and even spell the end of a business regardless of how successful it was before it was targeted.
Cybercriminals aren’t picky with the businesses that they set their sights on, so you shouldn’t think that your business is too insignificant for them to be interested in. So, it is a good idea to have all of your employees trained in what to look out for by a cybersecurity specialist and put protocols in place about what to do should they come across a phishing email.