Do you know if your data is secure?
How are you managing and erasing data?
If there was a breach, do you know how you would solve the problem?
Our passion is to serve and educate our clients and make sure their data is safe from unintended access or disaster.

Every industry is increasing the amount of information they have and while data helps make us more efficient there are also risks. It is important that you understand the risks facing your business and starting a security conversation is the first step. One essential key is to quantify the cost of data loss or downtime so you know what kind of security you need and how much you should budget. You also need to be aware of some of the threats you are facing, including ransomware, malware, and traffic attacks on SSL encrypted sites. Be mindful of the IT threat landscape.

In addition to knowing what is going on around you, you need to pay attention to your internal vulnerabilities. Are your operating systems and firewall up to date? Do you train your employees to recognize spam emails and on how to keep company records secure? If you allow employees to use their own mobile devices, do you have a BYOD policy in place? Additional practical considerations include how is your system connected, wired or wireless? Where is the information stored, locally or in the cloud? And what smart devices do you use? Do your due diligence to ensure your company is protected and you are protecting your clients’ information because you are responsible for it.

Once you have those conversations and determine the answers, you can carefully design a layered security approach. The easiest step is just paying attention to where you are going on the internet, use trusted websites that are secure. You should also systematically monitor your firewall, network, and devices to ensure they are all up to date and doing what you intend them to do. The firewall, network equipment and software should be integrated and as intelligent and automated as possible. For example there are automatic software updates available and firewalls that can shut down a network port if it suspects bad traffic. Installing Anti-virus, Anti-SPAM, and Anti-malware software is also important to protect your data. Your solution should include backups as well. Use on-site backups separate from your system and off-site backups to ensure data is always accessible.

Our team is always available to help you determine the best solution for your specific security needs. We provide software sales, backend IT support, automated backups and have a state of the art Data Center. To help educate consumers, our Concergent IT division has also partnered with Barracuda Networks to provide Threat Landscape Analysis presentations and hosts a Quarterly Tech Talk.

Watch for our next event to learn more about IT security.