Learn tips on cybersecurity where to start for small businesses with this article.
Cybersecurity Where to Start: Three Ways to Start With
Never start a cybersecurity initiative without first taking the following steps: evaluating and understanding your business, conducting risk assessments, and performing a cost-benefit analysis.
1. Evaluating and understanding your business
Whether you’re a new business owner or an established one, before you can even begin to think about starting a cybersecurity initiative, it’s important to understand the business.
For example, answer the following concerns:
- What kind of information is contained in your databases?
- What type of data do you hold?
- How often do you change your networks, servers, and systems?
- Are there any unique aspects to the business that might increase the risks of a cyberattack?
These are all questions that you will need to ask yourself when performing an initial evaluation and understanding of your business. While this is an ongoing process, having a solid foundation of knowledge about your business is essential when developing cybersecurity policies and procedures. You want to be able to understand how the business is affected by cyberattacks, and how you can protect it.
2. Conducting Risk Assessments
Conducting risk assessments is a vital step in any cybersecurity initiative.
How can you protect your business if you don’t understand the risks that it faces?
So, you need to understand the risks before you can even begin to develop a plan to deal with them.
Perhaps answer the following questions:
- How do data breaches occur?
- What type of data do you store and transmit?
- What type of encryption do you use?
- Also, learn more about malware, viruses, and other types of cyberattacks?
You should consider all possible threats when conducting a risk assessment. It’s not enough to just look at the obvious threats – you have to consider all possible vulnerabilities as well.
If your business stores and transmits credit card information, you should perform a risk assessment specifically for that particular type of information.
This will help you to develop policies and procedures that are customized to your business, rather than generic ones that may not be as effective.
If you have a small business on the side or even in addition to your full-time job, you may want to hire someone to perform a risk assessment for you.
A professional can give you a more detailed analysis of where your risks lie, allowing you to take the necessary steps to protect your business.
- What is the risk of a cyberattack?
- What are the possible consequences?
- How likely is it that I will be victimized by an attack?
- How much will it cost my business?
3. Performing a Cost-Benefit Analysis
When it comes to cybersecurity, you need to consider how much money you’re willing to spend to prevent cyberattacks.
For example:
- How much is your data worth?
- What would you pay to protect it?
- What can you afford to lose?
You need to do more than just look at the cost of data breaches. You also need to think about the long-term costs. Not only will it have an immediate impact on your business, but it can also have a lasting impact through negative publicity and customer distrust.
For example, if your customers aren’t confident in the security of your data, they might be more hesitant to do business with you, thereby costing you money in the long run.
Conclusion
These are just three examples of where to start your cybersecurity initiative. You might find that you need to take a different approach depending on your business’s needs. However, all of the steps above should be considered when developing your cybersecurity policies and procedures.
