How to secure your small business against data breaches and hacks.

E-commerce and security experts offer 10 tips for preventing security breaches, hacks and security of customer data.

Cybersecurity – and security breaches of systems- remains a hot topic. SMEs and e-commerce companies, especially those that use an open source platform, are particularly susceptible to hacks and breaches. So what do these e-commerce business to protect their sites and any sensitive (customer) data? An article written by Jennifer Lonoff Schiff gives the overview of these ten areas.

These 10 suggestions from various e-commerce security experts.

  1. Well-trained employees.
  2. Use an experienced and reliable hosting company.
  3. Use a secure e-commerce platform.
  4. Use SSL encryption.
  5. Make sure your e-commerce site is PCI DSS’) compliant.
  6. Use of Web Application Firewalls (WAF).
  7. Force employees regularly to change their password.
  8. Use multi-factor authentication.
  9. Keep up to date with security patches, especially for open source platforms (like WordPress and Magento).
  10. Be sure to regularly make a backup of your site.

‘) = PCI DSS Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Employee training

All these ten areas actually applies to workers around the theme should keep their professional level and must be well trained. For “Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated and we are easily fooled by emails, links and attachments that look like normal applications,” said Norman Guadagno, chief marketing, Carbonite. “It only takes a single click for malware, viruses and ransomware to infiltrate your system to undermine important business data.”

Thus, “the first step to protect your data against cyber attacks is to train your staff to ensure that they are aware of the latest methods used by cyber criminals,” he says.

Security training will help improve your understanding of common errors and to identify areas for improvement. In addition, using an online training application is a good way to train employees without major disruption of business processes. It is also proven that offering small amounts of learning material periodically has a greater effect than keeping a single workshop or classroom training session.

How to secure your small business against data breaches and hacksThis is also supported by research by Hermann Ebbinghaus. He is considered to be the discoverer of the classical forgetting curve. Although suspected this for some time, he was the one who provided proof of this with a science-based research. He discovered that newly learned things could be reproduced only complete, and the further in time, the less learned could be reproduced. He also discovered that this curve eventually leveled off to a constant.

To avoid to forget the material presented quickly, he assumes the power of repetition: by repeating material and actions based questions, the learning efficiency is significantly increased.

Mobile and easily keeping track of your professional expertise

Based on this principle we developed the Security Awareness App. The Security Awareness App is a new application that supports organizations and their staff in tracking and enhancing expertise.  The Security Awareness App claims to make the organization more capable in maintaining skilled employees. The App can help scheduling changes or introducing new methods. This allows for more internal involvement and fewer security incidents or conflicts.

The Security Awareness App is flexible and practical. Users learn mobile and it can thus be used everywhere: at home, on the road, in the workplace, and so on. The Security Awareness App allows you to test your knowledge at any time. The design is simple and intuitive. Each user can easily work with the App.

Request a free demo account.

We would like to create a free demo account for you to test the Security Awareness App.

The demo consists of twenty questions in security awareness, five evaluation questions and a report. You can complete this demo in two weeks only.

The demo is available free of charge.

 

Source: “How to protect your small business from data breaches and hacks.” was originally written by Jennifer Lonoff Schiff and published by CIO.