We all know that Swindon is a hub for new businesses and at Systems Integration we are fully aware of the initial issues that many of these new businesses face and are often unaware.
What with getting your brand seen, securing new clients and building a reliable and solid team, many often overlook some of the basics such as IT security and awareness.

Nearly 50% of UK businesses experienced some form of a cyberattack in 2019-2020, and more than 60% of cybersecurity experts are concerned about data loss and leakage, among a range of other vectors. Obtianing data illegally is now a big business and the criminals and hackers are upping their game daily. If you are just starting up your business, are you aware of what level of security you will need to ensure your clients’ data and your business is safe? This month we give you some tips..

Firstly, never assume it is just big corporations that are prone to cybersecurity breaches. All business that store data are, from your sole trader with his accounts and that of clients to solicitors and recruitments agencies, all store customers and clients data of some form or another.

As a new business, consider what risks you face if you suffer a cyberattack.

• Downtime
• Clients trust
• Loss of future clients
• and of couse expense.

Thats right, not just the cost of getting a IT professionals to find the breach and fix it, but you can also be sued by your clients

As they say, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, so here are some IT security tips and things your should look for when you are exploring your It security options.

Initial Assessment

In order to build your cyber defenses, you need someone to carefully evaluate your current situation. At System Integrtaion when we take you on as a IT partner, we evaluate your complete IT infrastructure for vulnerability, ranging from your users’ passwords to hardware settings and blocking legacy authentication.

We are Microsoft Partners and using industry-standard metrics like Microsoft’s Secure Score, we can compare how your business fares against industry standards, and we can let you know what steps are in hardening your security posture.

This can also include simple task such as determining how tech-savvy your team are –

• Do they know the best practices to prevent attacks in the first place?
• We know that email is the main point of entry, but do they?

If not we can provide training.

Implementation of Controlled measures

Once the weak points in your IT security have been identified, we look at how to remove them, such as ensuring all your data is using end-to-end encryption.

Encryption ensures that if someone intercepts your data as it is being transmitted, they still won’t be able to read it. This kind of interception commonly happens over Wi-Fi, especially when public, open networks are available. It’s perfectly fine to have an open Wi-Fi network for your customers to use, but your other business actions should take place on a separate network using encryption. See our previous blog on secure Wi-Fi.

Unfortuntely though there are some cases where encryption can’t protect you, which is why we also focus on one of the most common danger zones such as email. Did you know that over 65% of hackers and cyber criminals used phishing to invade their victims’ networks?  Phishing is the act of using email to lure people into providing sensitive information. It is not uncommon for you employeess to recieve an email that appears to be an official Microsoft account asking for your Office 365 login information. If this is obtained the hackers can then the files in your compnaies cloud storage and pilfer your data.

Phishing can be prevented by securing your email servers through your web host. Systems Integration can assist in implementing protocols such as Domain-based message authentication, report & conformance (DMARC); Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM); and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) standards. These security standards will help to identify phishing attacks and alert users before they even open the email.

Advanced software can determine who in your organisation has access to data and what data they can access. It also can connect with cloud services such as Microsoft 365 to limit an individual’s access to sensitive information.
For startups, this will actually make expansion easier as you’ll be able to add users more easily and prevent new employees from seeing too much. User access control ensures that the data is seen by the right people. Data governance and a robust secure posture need never get in the way of productivity and innovation. Then you are also in a position to further strengthen the validation of user logins by setting up two-factor authentication (where possible). This requires your users to input a second code that they receive on their phone or other device, ensuring that your computers aren’t being accessed by a hacker sat down on a pc miles or even continents away.

What yourself and your team need to understand that most of the time it is not possible for these hackers and criminals to access your data unless they are invited i.e. your biggest threat is your employees, who probably will do this with have any malicious intent at all.
If required Systems Integration can provide you with soem great tutorial and educational videos along with face to face tutition on how to prevent any of this happening. After all when you work with us, we are all one big team and we like to think that all players are premiership standard

If you are a business that is just setting up and find all this to be a bit of a minefield feel free to get in touch with us. We pride ourselves on assiting new businesses and helping them grow. From IT support Contracts or services such as Microsoft experience/training, VOIP services, Disaster recovery or dats backup, we are here to help and offer advice. We all know that Swindon is a hub for new businesses and at Systems Integration we are fully aware of the initial issues that many of these new businesses face and are often unaware.
What with getting your brand seen, securing new clients and building a reliable and solid team, many often overlook some of the basics such as IT security and awareness.

Nearly 50% of UK businesses experienced some form of a cyberattack in 2019-2020, and more than 60% of cybersecurity experts are concerned about data loss and leakage, among a range of other vectors. Obtaining data illegally is now a big business and the criminals and hackers are upping their game daily. If you are just starting up your business, are you aware of what level of security you will need to ensure your clients’ data and your business is safe? This month we give you some tips..