Don’t Let a Cybersecurity Incident Spoil Your Summer Fun

It’s the summer solstice tonight, the official start of the summer season. While most of us want to focus on honing our grilling skills and soaking up as much sun as possible, we can’t afford to let our cybersecurity awareness falter as a result.

Let’s review how you can stay secure while enjoying the season.

Make Sure You’re Secure, No Matter Where You’re Working

Being able to work from anywhere—functionally reversing the “staycation” and exploring while still making some money—sounds pretty ideal in theory. However, this ideal overlooks the unfortunate reality that “anywhere” encompasses many places that will have significantly fewer cybersecurity protections in place to keep your data safe.

For starters, while your office space should have thoroughly secure Wi-Fi connectivity, public spaces—hotels, cafes, and the like—will often provide connectivity for their patrons to use that lacks this level of security. This means you and your team will need the means to protect your connection.

This is where a virtual private network, or VPN, proves its worth. A VPN allows you to securely receive and transmit data over the Internet by shielding it behind encryption, ensuring it remains private.

Don’t Let Snoops Go Sightseeing, While You’re Seeing the Sights

Numerous cyberattacks employ minimal technology and are, therefore, relatively easy for a cybercriminal to execute. For instance, a username and password could be stolen through phishing… but they could also be stolen by someone just looking over your shoulder as you type. Similarly, when we become too comfortable (which is, more or less, the goal when on vacation or traveling), it becomes easy for us to forget about security and walk away from our devices—even if only for a moment.

Do your best to minimize your screen’s visibility to others, both in terms of where you sit and how you handle your device. Never leave it unattended, and invest in a specialized cover or privacy screen protector to block your display from being readable at all angles. If you do step away—again, not recommended—make sure to lock the device, at least.

You’re on Vacation… Your Business’ Data Isn’t

Data is only useful to a business if it can be functionally utilized, which means it needs to be accessible to those with the permissions to use it. This is why it is incredibly important that it is saved in the correct place so that it is available to those who need it. Imagine that you had an incredibly important proposal that a client was expecting… but the only copy was saved on the laptop of the team member who was attending a destination wedding in Ibiza. That’s a problem… fortunately, one that can be avoided.

In short, you need to be certain that all of your data is stored on a centralized server. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Keeping all data centrally helps ensure that it can be accessed as needed.
2. It also helps ensure that backup measures are fully protecting all data.
3. Audits and other data management tasks are much simpler to complete.

That isn’t enough, however. You also need to ensure that you have an insurance policy, of some sort, in case something goes wrong and impacts your data. A backup that follows the 3-2-1 Backup Rule—at least three copies, stored in at least two different locations, one of which is the cloud—will significantly enhance your data security and protection against various issues.

Work With Us, and Worry Less About Your Technology

We all need a break every now and then, and keeping track of all this on your own (especially while you’re on vacation) may seem like a lot in the best of circumstances. However, businesses around Greater Washington DC & Maryland don’t have to worry about this, as we’re here to help them come rain or shine.

We hope you take these tips to heart and have a wonderful summer, both for your business and your team. If you’d like help managing your security or any other aspect of your business’ IT, reach out to us at (240) 226-7055.