5 methods to secure servers at your business premises
Photo by Christina Morillo
More than ever, it’s necessary to secure servers at your business. Cyberattacks are up almost 25% compared to last year and rising. Protect your data using some of the methods here.
Hire professionals with demonstrable skills
Like any skilled job, it’s helpful to look for employees with demonstrable network and server management skills. A candidate should typically have IT support experience or a similar role. But also hold or be able to demonstrate actionable skills with server operating systems such as Windows Server OS and Mac ServerOS. Or Linux-based systems like Red Hat Enterprise. However, keep in mind that education isn’t essential for most network admin roles. It’s how well a candidate knows a system that really matters for them to do a good job.
Educate employees about cyber threats
Most people assume their business gets attacked by a malicious hacker somewhere in Russia or China. But in actual fact, most cyberattacks originate from within a company. Typical examples are disgruntled employees and lax security policies. It is therefore essential that you educate and train your staff about cybersecurity. Investing in basic security concepts such as using complex passwords, not clicking links in emails, and spotting phishing attempts takes a little time and money. Yet this will boost your company’s cybersecurity significantly.
Secure servers at your business with built-in kits
Your network administration employees should know the built-in security features of most server operating systems. Implementing free tools such as Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit will help protect your business against the 30,000 global daily hack attempts. EMET and similar tools in other OS help prevent malicious data execution, man in the middle attacks and stack overflow exploitation protection. If you don’t know what these are because your IT technicians should. They shouldn’t be working for you if they don’t.
Don’t underestimate antimalware programs
Modern operating systems come with excellent security tools. However, they can only go so far and won’t give you complete protection. For that, you need an antimalware package. Systems like Malwarebytes offer multiple tools for blocking unauthorized access, scanning for malicious programs and even email and internet protection. The importance of such devices cannot be understated in the modern world. And given they cost hardly anything, there is no excuse for not purchasing a package. Otherwise, your company, employee and client data is at high risk.
Record all use activity for tracing
People often assume network technicians are sitting in a dark room watching everything people on the network do. This isn’t the case. Most of their time is spent configuring the system for security, user access and updating. But one of the most crucial things your network staff need to do is track user logins and activity. Perhaps an employee has lousy web habits. So, monitoring logins and activity helps pinpoint where an issue occurred, so you can work backwards towards the solution. However, this isn’t as easy as you might think and requires specific scripts.
Summary
Your IT support staff can help you secure servers at your business from cyberattacks. But you can further protect your company with training, built-in tools and paid antimalware packages.
