{"id":34602,"date":"2019-03-07T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T02:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=34602"},"modified":"2019-03-07T10:37:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T02:37:13","slug":"data-protection-for-smes-from-cost-center-to-business-enabler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2019\/03\/07\/data-protection-for-smes-from-cost-center-to-business-enabler\/","title":{"rendered":"Data protection for SMEs: From cost-center to business enabler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>By Sumit Bansal<\/strong><\/em><br><em><strong>Senior Director, ASEAN and Korea, Sophos <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Data privacy and protection concerns have recently been making headlines, reminding us to be even more vigilant than ever in protecting data, whether it is of our organizations, our customers, or even our own. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, even though they are now more cognizant of their vulnerability, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still find themselves hesitant to invest, worrying about the cost in time and resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen it comes to IT security, SMEs are in a tight spot. Potential attacks on SMEs are on the rise, as they do not have the wherewithal to pro-actively combat the unknown,\u201d said Sumit Bansal, senior director for ASEAN and Korea at Sophos. \u201cWhenever a data breach or a cyber-attack happens, there is often a lot of legwork being put into examining the root cause of data breaches. For SMEs, they simply do not have the time, budget, or expertise to threat hunt, nor do they always understand why they need to do it. Even if SMEs see the value, their budgets do not come close to having a dedicated in-house team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\ngood news is that SMEs now have more options that will bolster their ability to\ndefend themselves from the evolving threat landscape. They no longer have to\nthink of data protection and cybersecurity as massive cost centers they\nbegrudgingly invest in for purposes of legal compliance, seeing them instead as\nbusiness enablers that ensure smooth and optimal operations, facilitate\norganizational savings, and guard profit-centers. They can start with a set of\neasy to implement protocols and IT solutions \u2013 what is important is getting\nevery member of their organization to embrace a focus on cybersecurity as an\nintegral part of their day-to-day work life. Sophos, a global leader in network\nand endpoint security, has listed some of these practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>1. UPGRADE YOUR ENDPOINT PROTECTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With\nmore SMEs using laptops and mobile devices that connect everywhere, and most\nattacks happening using \u201clegitimate\u201d http and email communications that can\noften pass happily through gateway protections, better defenses on computers\nare needed now more than ever. Traditional anti-virus based endpoint protection\nproducts just aren\u2019t keeping up, with hackers and ransomware in particular very\nvisibly getting past these products. They do this by exploiting legitimate\nsoftware instead of just using \u201cmalware\u201d, by using multiple techniques and by\neither avoiding executable code at all, or where it is being used changing it\nfrequently and automatically so that it can get past reactive signature-style\napproaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\nare many new \u201cnext generation\u201d endpoint protection products now available that\ncan provide more comprehensive protection against exploits and ransomware, as\nwell as helping detect and remediate compromises when they do happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>\n<strong>2. IMPROVE LOGIN HYGIENE AND PRACTICES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s\nimportant for SMEs to come up with a cybersecurity basics checklist that they\nget every member of their organization to observe. They also need to ensure\nthat guests requesting remote access to their networks also abide by these\nprocedures. It is not enough to trust the person; one also needs to trust their\ncomputer, because a PC with malware on it that connects to an office network is\nessentially letting cybercriminals in with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\nis also worth considering requiring employees to have two-factor authentications\n(2FA) on devices used for work. While it costs a little more and is slightly\nless convenient, it helps to prevent egregious attacks where a criminal steals\n(or guesses, or buys) a user\u2019s passwords today, and then uses it at their\nleisure to raid whole networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>3. USE ENCRYPTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as you won\u2019t leave your home or\ncar without locking your doors on your way out, you should also think of\nencrypting important or sensitive files as a matter of practice. Encryption\ngives you a valuable extra layer of protection against hackers, eavesdroppers,\nintellectual property thieves, and other\ncybercriminals. \n\nRegardless of geography, size or industry\nsector, organizations can find themselves targeted by cybercriminals. These\npractices will help organizations ensure they won\u2019t be easy targets and are\nable to defend themselves from cybersecurity nightmares that result in\nexpensive problems and massive reputational damage that they may never recover\nfrom.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even though they are now more cognizant of their vulnerability, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still find themselves hesitant to invest, worrying about the cost in time and resources. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":30822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[107,96],"class_list":["post-34602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-cloud","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}