How your small business can use technology, securely. No purchase necessary.
Technology is tough. It’s constantly changing, consistently regulated, and can be costly to maintain.
From being PCI compliant in how you accept payments, keeping your patients data secure, to ensuring that your website isn’t susceptible to hackers, it can all be overwhelming.
For your business, you’ve probably been compelled to talk about client or patient data security and HIPAA, SOX, PCI compliance, and how this one important topic can either keep you awake at night or, if you have a handle on it, help you sleep well.
Either way, managed security is a large aspect of your professional life today.
So what’s the best approach for a small business?
We figured we’d take some time to educate you on how you can accomplish all your security goals, and learn about the benefits of managed security, no purchase necessary.
What is managed security?
Managed security services are outsourced I.T. services that eliminate the headaches often related to the security of a business’s technology. As a small business, you undoubtedly have desktops, laptops, and other business computers that store sensitive data about your customers, clients or patients.
Managed security helps protect these assets from things like malware attacks, and patient/client data theft.
The business model behind managed security services is very common in larger companies. But in recent years, the model of managed security was adapted to fit businesses of your size.
Here are a couple of important reasons that managed security services exist:
- With the growth of technology brings the growth of unscrupulous opportunity to maliciously attack networks of any size.
- Regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and SOX force businesses to secure the safety and integrity of personal information and financial data.
So that’s managed security in a nutshell.
Managed security is important to you because of this one reason
Managed security services should be important to your business because it’s important to your customers.
With retailers, and other businesses losing sensitive data, consumers are hypersensitive to businesses like yours protecting their data.
If your business can’t build trust with your customers by being able to protect their basic info then it’s going to be difficult to build their trust by serving them.
How to properly use technology. No purchase necessary.
Now that we’ve explained what managed security is and why it’s important, here are some things you can do to ensure you are using technology properly.
- Have secure Wi-Fi. When guests, customers, or patients come into your office, have Wi-Fi that’s secure.And when you set it up, be sure you password protect everything.
- Make sure you have a solid firewall. A firewall is a piece of software or hardware that monitors and controls the incoming and outgoing internet traffic. A firewall typically establishes a barrier between a trusted, secure internal network and another outside network, such as the Internet, that is assumed to not be secure or trusted. Your IT provider should be talking with you about this.
- Monitor your already secure network. You can avoid unauthorized online behavior, malicious hacks, and unwanted viruses by monitoring your network through the day-to-day monitoring and interpretation of important system events throughout your network. Whether you use managed security or not, this is a must.
- Change passwords. One of the best ways your firm can avoid issues with security is to implement a password change policy. This allows you to rest a bit easier, knowing that any outside intruders will have a tougher time accessing your network.
- Website security. This is one many small businesses forget about. When you build your website, you need to make sure that your website is hosted by a secure server, which has the very best security benefits. If you allow payments to be made online, you need this. If you allow any communication from your website, i.e. forms, calendars, or the like, you need this. The last thing you want to have happen is for an online intrusion to take place from the face of your business.
Solve your managed security issues.
For some free guidance on how to solve your most basic of managed security issues, download our free e-book here.
With this guide you’ll get help to guide you on your journey to security-success.
Get it here and talk soon.
