business focus 23
Chartered accountants Haines Watts presents a series of articles based on its blogs. It offers analysis, reviews and comments and welcomes your feedback at
www.hwca.com/blog
of the month Protect your business from online threats
How often do we hear that a well-known e-business has had its systems hacked and its customers’ personal details potentially compromised? It seems to happen all too frequently; even on Christmas day the Sony Xbox and Playstation servers were hacked.
In the European Union, surveys have shown that consumer confidence about Internet security and data protection is a very real barrier to the growth of e-commerce, particularly across member states.
We cannot, however, turn our backs on the growth in Internet services and paperless ordering and payment systems. This includes the trend towards cloud-based IT for the full range of accounting systems that are used by a typical SME. The remoteness of these systems brings with it a
writes Barry Potter, partner at Haines Watts
different set of risks that need to be managed using a robust set of security policies and procedures.
There are several things that a small business can do to protect itself. These include:
• Ensure that your business is protected by a firewall.
• Ensure sensitive data is encrypted in situ and in transit.
• Don’t store sensitive details, particularly customer information such as credit card numbers or any other personal data, on your web server or other computers connected to the Internet.
• Protect your corporate information by insisting that every user has a password to access the company’s computer system. Passwords ought to be at least eight characters long and have a mixture of letters,
numbers and symbols and ideally be changed quarterly.
• Administrators should set access rights for employees. Most networks include an audit log that needs to be ‘switched on’ to track which parts of the system and what files users are working on. Importantly, systems can be configured to alert the administrator to excessive failed login attempts.
• Strict control should be maintained about what software is installed on your computer system.
• Ensure your corporate software has
the latest security ‘patches’ installed and your anti-virus software is kept up to date so that it can cope with new threats.
• Manage and monitor the way that your employees use their own mobile devices, applications and cloud-based storage at work.
• Have a response plan in case a virus or a security breach is detected.
Overall, consider the internal and external threats and engage with your team to work together to minimise the risks.
Details:
www.hwca.com
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THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – FEBRUARY 2015
www.businessmag.co.uk
JIB216.07.14
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