The digital age has brought with it a myriad of efficiency gains to all business owners. Whether it be smart accounting systems, or easy to navigate document storage, moving away from relying on pen and paper has been greatly beneficial to businesses worldwide.

While digital systems do remove many of the vulnerabilities prior methods of filing and bookkeeping were faced with, there are still aspects to be wary of when moving to a paperless business.

Here are some of our tips to ensure you can mitigate these vulnerabilities, or recover if things should take a turn for the worst.

Security

Reputable anti-virus and firewall systems have always been a must, but the need for them is constantly increasing as the number of malicious software attacks continues to rise. Along with these systems, something that is often overlooked is user education. While it may be rude to point out, users are often the biggest security weakness to a business’ systems, as exemplified by last month’s post.

Training your users on how to identify malicious websites, or spot malicious email content can provide a huge boost to the overall security of your systems.

Backup

The recent outbreaks of ransomware have been effective in part due to a lack of backup solution in many businesses. If the victims did have recent backups, the need to pay the ransom to regain files would be removed, since a restore could be made with minimal productivity loss.

There are many solutions that come in many shapes and sizes, and all depend on what would suit your business best.

Updates

We’re all guilty of hitting that “Remind me Later” button when Windows prompts us to update, but ignoring these updates, and many others like them, can greatly increase your risk of being targeted. These updates are provided often to fix security vulnerabilities with the systems, along with resolving issues you may be facing.

It’s understandable you may not be able to get all updates installed as soon as they’re released, but setting a regular schedule for doing updates en masse can greatly improve reliability, as well as security.

With these tips in mind, you can defend your business against whatever worst case scenario may occur. If you’d like more tailored advice on what can help protect your business’ IT systems, feel free to get in touch with the Altitude Innovations Team.