Hilliard Office Solutions in Midland released tips for businesses about protecting their customers' information safe from cybercriminals.
The company's tips come as the holiday season approaches, and there will be more online transactions.
"As more consumers are becoming resigned to the fact that their private information is being collected by private firms, there is an even greater responsibility for organizations to keep the personal customer data safe," the company said on its website.
Here is some advice Hilliard offers for businesses:
- Have email filters that can detect spam, malware and other dangerous file types.
- Train employees on how to spot potentially dangerous emails and to report unusual emails to IT staff.
- Consider using a tool to ensure operating systems and apps are up to date with the latest security fixes.
- Separate networks with firewalls so that if one is breached, the others will be protected. "Treat your internal departments as potentially hostile to each other, rather than having one big 'inside' fenced off from the even bigger "outside," Hilliard said in its release. "Crooks want to capture more than just one user's password and confidential files — they want access to your back-end databases, your PoS network and your testing network."
- Get rid of any software that poses a security risk but has no added benefit to the company.
- When sharing sensitive data with business partners on servers or removable drives, make sure it is encrypted.
- If moving data to the cloud, make sure it is encrypted during both the transfer and when it reaches the cloud.