The importance of network safety in the workplace is something that you need to focus on all the time. This is the best way to make sure that your risks are kept to a minimum and you can help your employees get their job done while protecting your customers.
As a business owner, there are different steps that you can take to help improve network safety in your workplace. Some of the steps that you should consider include:
Train Your Staff
You can have all the rules in place that you want and all the grand gestures about how important network safety is. But none of this is going to matter unless your employees have been trained in all the protocols that you want to put in place. Just listing out the new requirements and hoping the employees read them will not cut it.
A much better option to try is to have all the employees go through some formal training. This ensures that they learn the new rules and regulations and provides them with all the tools they need to make sure any risks are mitigated early on.
On-site training is one of the best ways to help with this. This will allow the employees to ask some questions and get help. In addition to doing the training, you should make sure that all safety policies and procedures are documented and accessible to employees all the time in case they forget something or have a question.
Conduct a Cybersecurity Assessment
Hackers are always looking for ways to steal your information or to cause other mischiefs when it comes to your business. Conducting a cybersecurity assessment is one of the best ways to help you be protected from some of these attacks.
When you do a cybersecurity assessment. You are taking the necessary steps to determine how likely an attack is against your business and what impact it will have based on your current security features. You can then take the necessary steps to help protect your network and close up any of the vulnerabilities that happen to be there.
This is often a good first step when you want to improve your network safety. You can see where the potential problems are, which then makes it easier for you to know exactly what to fix. You may be surprised by some of the issues that are there and may have to change some of the plans that you had in place.
Disable Universal Plug and Play
This type of technology is going to allow for a data transfer between all of the connected devices that are in a network and even allows automatic discovery for those devices. This is often used to transmit music around, but it can send video from security cameras to monitors, help with printing, and share data from one device to another.
While there are some benefits to this technology, it is not the best option to use. First, the UPnP traffic is going to use a lot of resources on your network. And they are going to make it more likely that your network will be exposed online. When you disable this feature on every device, it can limit your exposure and your risk.
Block the Open Telnet Ports
If there is a Telnet port in your network that is not being used, then it needs to be blocked. Having an open telnet port that does not have use is just asking someone to come right in and do whatever they want.
You need to work with your network specialists to make sure that these telnet ports are closed down. This makes it harder for a hacker to find an open way into your network to cause a lot of issues along the way.
Ghost Your Network Attached Storage
Network Attached Storage, or NAS, devices are going to work great for a small and home office. They are there to help you store and access lots of files inside of the network without the need for plugging into that device. Because there is so much data on these devices though, having it unsecured could be a disaster.
It is not enough to just password protect the NAS. if someone wants to get through, they will find a way through the password that you have. The best way to protect yourself is to turn off the network discoverability. This means that without permission, the other person will not even be able to see the NAS device or know that it exists.
Customize Your Router
When you do the work to set your router up for the first time, you should customize it for the specific security issues that you would like to do. First, make sure that you do not manage any of the interface parts from the internet. You should put up a firewall between the interface and whichever management network or configure local management access to it only.
Once that is done, you will want to make sure that you change the credentials. It is never a good idea to use the default credentials. Just like with the telnet ports, most of the routers will offer some default usernames and passwords that you can use.
If you leave these in place, they will make it easier for a hacker to decipher and enjoy it. As you start to customize the router for your needs, make sure to perform this change. It is a good idea to restrict which IP addresses have the power to manage the router, restricting who will be able to act as an administrator at the time. This can keep the whole network safe.
Keeping Your Network Safe
