The holiday season is rapidly approaching— a time for merriment and joy. Unfortunately, for many small business owners, it can also be a time of increased vulnerability and risk. The threat of cybercrime looms especially large during the holiday season, not least because so many businesses see a major uptick in online sales transactions.

How to Keep Your Business Safe During the Holiday Season

Thankfully, there are a few smart strategies you can employ to mitigate your risk of a data breach or online attack over the holidays.

1) Make employee awareness a top priority. 

No matter the season, a majority of cyberattacks are going to result from phishing and other types of social engineering. In other words, your greatest liability may be employee ignorance. Make sure you put some time and resources behind cybersecurity training and awareness-raising for your entire team.

2) Strengthen access controls.

Another way to limit your risk exposure is to ensure that you’re granting access to authorized drives, folders, and networks only on an as-needed basis. Create clear processes for cleaning up access privileges, and for ensuring that access is revoked for employees who leave your organization.

3) Keep your software up to date.

As the holidays approach, work with your IT team to ensure all of your software is up to date, with all relevant security patches in place. Be especially vigilant about keeping your antivirus software up to date.

4) Focus on email security.

Phishing and email fraud tend to be especially common during the holidays. Implement filters to identify and block any malicious messages, and to flag emails that arrive from unknown senders. Also educate your team on how to be safe and smart about email access, knowing what types of emails to delete, never to open unknown links or attachments, etc.

5) Create an incident response plan.

While it’s important to do everything possible to prevent cybersecurity incidents, it’s equally important to have a response ready should an incident occur. Be ready to close off the affected networks or systems, to alert key stakeholders, and to make any updates needed to mediate further risk. Also know who you need to contact in the event of a data breach, including IT providers as well as attorneys.

6) Perform regular data backups.

The last thing you want is to be caught without mission-critical data during the busy holiday season. To prevent this, develop a routine for backing up your data on a regular basis. Consider both secure cloud storage as well as offline data backups.

7) Engage cybersecurity experts.

Finally, there’s no time like the present to talk with a team of dedicated cybersecurity professionals, asking them how you might beef up your data security protocols in advance of the holiday blitz.

‘Tis the Season for Robust Cybersecurity

Small businesses face many cybersecurity threats, and those threats can be especially acute during the holiday shopping season. To learn more about appropriate seasonal protections, reach out to the team at BlueArmor today.