The parts that matter, in order
Security sold to small business tends to arrive as a product. It is more useful as an order of operations, because the first three items stop far more incidents than the expensive ones further down any vendor's list.
- A firewall that is configured rather than merely present, and reviewed when your business changes
- Endpoint protection on every machine, including the laptop that only comes in on Tuesdays
- Patching on a schedule, because unpatched software is how most of it starts
- Backups held offsite and tested by restoring them, so an incident is an inconvenience instead of an ending
- Separate accounts and passwords, with the departed staff member actually removed
- Multi-factor authentication on mail and anything reachable from the internet
What we use
We work with ESET for endpoint protection and StorageCraft for backup and recovery. Those are long-standing vendor relationships rather than this quarter's reseller deal.
The part that is not software
Staff are where most incidents begin, and not because anyone is careless. A convincing invoice arrives at a plausible moment. We will talk your people through what the current attempts look like, and set things up so one bad click is survivable rather than fatal.
Questions we get asked
- We are small. Are we really a target?
- Most attacks are not aimed at anyone in particular. They are automated and they find whatever is reachable and out of date. Being small is not cover.
- Do you do compliance work?
- Tell us what you are being asked to meet and we will tell you honestly whether it is within what we do. We would rather say no than sign off on something we are not equipped to certify.
- What happens if we are hit?
- Ring 1300 561 349. The first hours matter: isolating what is affected, working out what got in and when, and restoring from a backup that predates it. That last part only works if the backups have been tested, which is why we test them.