In one of our earlier emails, we shared an alert about SBA loan scams and
tips for employees working remotely
.
We were grateful to connect with Kevin Peterson, CEO of the
Peterson Technology Group, LLC
. He noted that many companies moved online quickly in the wake of the Safer At Home order, and that quick transition left some businesses potentially vulnerable.
In the section that follows, we share some of his tips and considerations for keeping your company safe from cybersecurity attacks. We also provide a few resources below that can help you make a longer-term cybersecurity plan, especially given the extension of Safer at Home to May 26.
Assess Current Risks
- Start with a conversation of what’s most important in terms of business continuity. Taking some time to assess what elements of your business are essential components can help you focus your efforts.
- Don’t try to solve everything for everyone on every day or immediately.
- Know what you can be flexible on.
- Choose remote access and work strategies based on need, security, ease of implementation, and priorities. One of the biggest areas to consider is your business’ data integrity.
- Moving your data to a cloud-based service and having offsite backups (OneDrive, Sharepoint, Box, etc.) can help protect your information and make it recoverable if something happens.
- This is also true for your Office 365 or Gmail account; both services do not back up email automatically.
- If your business does not currently utilize a backup service, it may be helpful to note that some of these are being offered for free for a short period of time.
- VPN vs Secure Remote Access
- For overall security, consider:
- How secure are the devices at home?
- If corporate owned, can they be used for anything else?
- If employee owned, how do you know they’re healthy and secure?
- How will you manage and support your work-from-home environment and staff?
Looking Forward
If you’re looking to more extensively assess your business’ potential vulnerabilities, there are a number of places you can visit to begin the process. Here are a few:
- The Small Business Big Threat program, hosted by the Wisconsin SBDC, provides you with a chance to learn more – in a 60-minute learning course and corresponding assessment – about where your business might be vulnerable
- The Federal Communications Commission has developed a resource to help you create a custom planning guide.
- The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Resilience Review helps you evaluate your own operational resilience and cybersecurity practices.