Cyber crime has been a growing threat for years and it’s a major concern for businesses across all industries, whether corporate chains or mom and pops.  Business owners around the world look for ways to immunize against exposure to cyber-crime and its effects. The truth is, taking some basic precautions can go a long way in protecting your business. Today we provide a list of tips to help ward off cyber-attacks.

1. Controlling User Access to Sensitive Information

The most vulnerable entry-point in IT has always been, and will always be, the people using it. Clicking a questionable link or mindlessly accepting a pop-up alert can be the innocent mistake that lets a hacker infect your business. Using a comprehensive document management system can help you keep track of sensitive data as well as those in your business who have access to them. Granting access to only those who need it helps eliminate potential threats. By minimizing the number of users, all who have the potential to expose the business’ sensitive information you have already taken a big step toward a more secure environment.

2. Using a Secure Payment Solution

Another area of concern to those interested in protecting their business is with payment technology. In today’s world, the responsibility of having secure payment transactions lies with the business receiving the payment and many have found themselves in the middle of a media-nightmare caused by a breach in their payment system. Using a point-to-point encrypted and PCI-validated payment solution will help ensure transactions are processed as securely as possible and that no sensitive information exchanged, making it that much harder for the cyber criminals to get their hands on it.

3. Ensuring All Systems are Up-to-date

Our last tip is to make sure systems that are used across the business are up-to-date with security protocols and protected from unwanted infiltration. This is arguably the step requiring the most resources for compliance, but it can often be the task that makes the difference when protecting against cyber criminals. An example of where this is important, is the recent switch to TLS 1.2 protocol. Transport Layer Security (TSL) is designed to protect information sent over the internet. Effective June 30, 2018 all businesses accepting credit cards are required to switch from earlier protocols to TLS 1.2. For more specifics, see the PCI Security Council’s Resource Guide.  If you’re an Agilysys customer, you can email us directly at TLS12@agilysys.com.

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