Tips For Securing Your Company's Network And Data

As a business owner, protecting the integrity of your company's data is important. After all, your company's servers likely house a lot of information about your employees, clients, contractors and others that you do business with. Unfortunately, too many small business owners don't understand what it takes to fully protect the server data and the network integrity. Here's a look at some of the things you should know to enhance the security of your company's data.

Flexibility In Authentication Is Important

When it comes to server authentication, one of the most important things you can do is to require unique or customized authentication. For example, two-factor authentication requires multiple levels of authentication for each user. This helps to reduce the risk of having any of your user credentials compromised, because any potential breach would require both authentication levels for a single user in order to gain access.

This is of particular importance if you have outside contractors, clients or others accessing portals on your server. Since you have only limited levels of control over how well these people protect usernames and passwords, it's in your best interest to make things more complex. Installing multiple authentication levels will help you do just that.

File-Level Permissions Tighten Controls

Establish an authorization system that allows you to set file-level permissions on your servers. This makes it easier for you to restrict access to sensitive documents, because you won't have to grant permissions in sweeping levels or allow users access to an entire directory if they only need to be able to access and modify a single file. Don't risk breaches due to loose permissions when you can install system management controls that let you assign user-level permissions by file.

Strong Password Requirements Reduce Vulnerability

Weak user passwords are a significant vulnerability for any company network. With so many brute-force password crackers, hackers can get around a weak password in seconds in some cases. If you want to reduce the risk of having any potential breach due to easily cracked passwords, ensure that your network system has strong password security requirements. For example, mandate that all passwords be at least eight to ten characters long and include several different types of characters in the password.

Detailed Access Logs Improve Visibility

Your network security should include tracking that records every single user login as well as all of the user activity during each of those login periods. This helps you to spot potential misuse of company resources as well as the signs of data breaches or unusual account activity. Logging the data is the key first step, but you'll also have to be sure that you have someone on staff to analyze it on a regular basis.

Threat Detection Is A Strong Defense

Even with all of these security measures in place, that doesn't prevent people from trying to breach the system anyway. The best offense against this type of threat is a solid and strong defensive system. Work with a threat detection specialist to set up safeguards in your system that alert you to any potentially suspicious activities. Threat detection software monitors everything that happens on your network, looking for instances of firewall breaches or attacks as well as threats like malware and other unauthorized access. Unlike personnel monitoring activity who can look away, take a break or otherwise miss something, threat detection software is automated and real-time. This means that there's always protection in place to alert you to questionable activities when they happen. This reduces the risk of a breach happening without notice. For information on threat detection software, check out websites like https://www.stealthbits.com/.

Work with a network security and threat detection specialist to protect your company's network. With these tips and professional support, you can be confident that your data is secure.

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