Technology Advisor Blog

When keeping business operations alive, security is essential. Security isn’t just strong passwords of 16 or more characters across multiple different websites/accounts, or MFA, it’s a deeper-rooted step to take with your networks to prevent most cybersecurity threats.
From a 2021 Verizon study, “61% of small to mid-size businesses experienced a cyberattack in 2021”. In 2023 73% of small businesses faced cyber-attacks. In 2024, 94% of small to medium sized businesses faced a cybersecurity attack. The number keeps increasing each year with small businesses affected. Something must be done to protect businesses from such cyber attacks.

The mindset has probably come up multiple times in conversation; “I’m a small business, I’m too small to be known for hackers to try and target me”. It’s not exactly if it happens, it all matters as to when. Don’t wait until that ‘when’ turns into ‘today’ when you receive a socially engineered scam that looks legit. Scams are becoming harder to identify, when you are not investing in proper cybersecurity measures, the wrong people will notice you do not have the tools or budget.

Ways to Improve Your Network Security

If you feel like your networks has some vulnerabilities and are looking for ways to improve your measures, consider the following:

1. Physical Security: Depending on the location and size of business, physical security is usually the most overlooked. Servers and other essential equipment may be placed in public settings where the wrong people can take advantage of and extract business information, client information and sensitive financial data.  Be sure to secure your network equipment in a locked closet or cabinet.  
2. Strong Password Policy: You’ve heard it multiple times before that creating passwords are 16 characters, including special characters and numbers and should NOT be repeated or reused on multiple accounts, it’s also how often you change your passwords. A good cybersecurity practice to implement is to change your password at least once every 3 months in an ever-evolving cybersecurity environment.
3. Implement Strict Access Policies For Team Members: A small team can have its challenges with who can see what. Controlling who gets access to sensitive information will help your team ensure that systems are granted to those who really need specific types of documents.  Exercise the practice of LEAST PRIVLIDGE - meaning users, applications, and systems to be given only the minimum access rights necessary to perform their specific jobs or functions.  
4. Firewalls: Firewalls can help filter traffic and identify threats before they can infiltrate. Strong security systems can detect and prevent threats.
5. Maintain Software Updates: Patch management is an excellent and easy way to maintain your businesses’ cybersecurity hygiene. This not only allows your systems to be up to date but also keeps your ongoing applications running smoothly.
6. Network Audits: As much as these can interfere with your business operations, these are also essential to identify if there are any backdoors left opened within your networks that cybercriminals can exploit to extract and use for financial gain.
7. Endpoint Monitoring and Protection: Technology that protects multiple aspects of your devices. These help monitor and secure every entry point so no one unauthorized can infiltrate.
8. Cybersecurity Awareness Training: The best way to combat hackers is to understand their tactics. Training will help your team to spot scams and learn to deflect threats and keep you and your business safe. By learning to identify their motives, tactics they use, and you can start to predict how to resolve or avoid them instead of reacting in the moment.

Tell Tale Signs Your Network Might be In Trouble

While you know all the ways to protect your networks and sensitive information from hackers, sometimes they may have already infiltrated without you realizing. You may not notice and they may have been there for days, weeks or months. Here’s what to look out for if you feel like your systems may be compromised:

1. Unusual Network Activity: Unusual network activity can be identified as increased traffic, unknown devices on your network and unauthorized transferring of data.
   For increased traffic, it depends on what time of day this is occurring. For someone in marketing or analytics, seeing increased activity can be a good thing at first glance. However, if you notice the increased traffic is occurring after work hours, it’s a sign that there could be unauthorized activity occurring.
   Unknown devices can indicate someone somewhere has gained access without your permission leaving you feeling like your privacy has been invaded with malicious intent.
   Data transfers, sometimes its needed for business to move data, maybe for market research for a better understanding of your audience. However, large amounts of data unexpectedly being transferred to unknown locations signals for a larger problem that needs to be addressed in keeping information in a safer location.
2. Pop Up Messages From Unknown Users: When you receive a message that states, ’your files have been encrypted’ the language shown is urgent and isolating you to make an irrational decision. Hackers use this to try and get ransom for financial gain.
3. Performance Issues: These can consist of slow systems, and new user accounts.
   For slow systems, your system is likely to deal with infected malware and frequent crashes in applications failing to work or even opening. Overall, services are unresponsive.
4. Unauthorized Access: When applications are not functioning properly or you’re unable to log into services you could the previous day, that’s when you know something is wrong.  This can also be noticing multiple log in attempts or new users that were not authorized to be created.

Steps to Take For Suspicious Activity

If you notice suspicious activity across your devices/networks, we suggest doing the following:

1. Disconnect any impacted devices from the network to isolate and prevent anything from spreading within the wider network.  
2. Determine the significance of the impacted incident.
3. Notify your IT team and any relevant authorities about the incident (this is also where our team at Ekaru comes in help helps assist with resolving the cybersecurity incident).
4. Update business cybersecurity policies. Unfortunately, this is a life lesson learned the hard way, and you now understand the significance of additional steps to protect yourself and team data from hackers.

No matter how large or small your business is, there’s a lot that’s at stake. That’s just the world we are currently living in now and must adapt to stay ahead of hackers. By recognizing the importance of network security, the signs of a cybersecurity incident and what you can do to help others not to fall victim to hackers, you can protect your business from the devastating effects of a cyberattack.

As a small but mighty team here at Ekaru, we are here to help you navigate these challenges so your business can thrive. We provide extensive cybersecurity awareness training to your team along with monthly free online workshops to teach you the world of cybersecurity.  We're here to help businesses such as yours with the tools you need while taking into consideration of individual’s budgets.

Interested in how Ekaru can help you and your business flourish in an ever evolving environment of cybersecurity? We got you covered. Let’s connect!
Reach us on 978-692-4200 or www.Ekaru.com to book a free 15-minute consultation with us today.