With the ongoing pandemic affecting almost all businesses, we’ve been talking a lot about cyber security and the importance of ensuring your data is protected to help prevent you from being hacked. Cyber attacks typically increase during chaotic times, so it’s important to ensure your security systems are up-to-date.

It’s also common to think it won’t happen to you and your business. That attacks like that happen to large companies in the states or overseas, or to those dealing with sensitive information. But in early March, the City of Châteauguay, Quebec was the victim of a cyber attack.

Hackers often target municipalities or other organizations by sending phishing emails and using them to gain access to their systems, holding it hostage until they receive a financial payout.

Given that this pandemic is ongoing and there is likely to be more attempted attacks, we thought it was a good time to remind everyone of our top security tips to keep your business from getting hacked, especially with employees working from home.

Ensure All Employees Understand Company Policy

If you read our February blog, you’ll have seen our recommendation to implement an Employee Policy for Safe Use. If you’ve recently made changes to or if it’s been a while since you’ve unveiled yours, now is a good time to have all employees re-read the policy and ensure they are aware of what is expected of them. Your policy should include things like mandatory strong passwords and not opening files sent from emails you don’t recognize.

Ensure All Staff Are Working on Devices With Proper Anti-Malware and Anti-Virus Software

While staff are in your office and working on company computers, it’s easy to ensure data is being accessed and shared across secure devices, but it’s more difficult to manage if employees are working from personal computers at home, making them more susceptible to being hacked. Make it mandatory for all staff to have up-to-date virus and malware protection on their home office equipment.

Ensure Proper Back-up and Recovery Systems Are in Place

You absolutely must have a cloud back-up solution that saves data for you at frequent, regular intervals; this is a minimum for protecting your business. Ideally, you should have a Back-up and Disaster Recovery Device (BDR) with a cloud component. This is the best way to ensure your business is protected in the event of an attack or damage.

Some places are slowly beginning the process of reopening, but it will be a while before it’s ‘business as usual’ again. Take these steps to protect your business from cyber attacks and hopefully we can all get back there sooner rather than later. If you have any questions, give us a call at (514) 634-4636 x 101. We’re always happy to help.