Small Business Owners: Why Outsourcing Computer Services Matters

4 Tips To Keep Your Business's Computer Network Safe & Secure

If you own a business, you probably already have a reliable high-speed internet provider to keep your company connected. Another great way to connect all the computers and information within your business is having a company-wide computer network. However, these networks can be hacked, so you need to make sure that you take steps to keep your computer network safe and secure.

#1 Reduce Administration Accounts

The first thing that you want to do is reduce the amount of administration accounts that have access to your network. You should have a minimum number of administrative accounts -- they provide access to your entire system, so the smaller number of administrative accounts you have, the better. Hackers can use these accounts to access all of the information about your business.

#2 Limit How You Use Administrative Accounts

Second, limit how you use administrative accounts. You should not use administrative accounts to do everyday tasks within your network. You should only use administrative accounts for installing hardware, making software updates, and other system changes. If you are the administrator, you should have a different personal account for using the business network. The administrative accounts should only be used for managing the system.

#3 Keep Your Operating System Up To Date

Third, make sure that you keep your operating system up to date. Software companies release updates to operating systems in order to keep the systems stable and in order to make sure that the hardware on your system runs smoothly.

Whenever a new update is released for your operating system, make sure that you log into the administrative account and install the new update as soon as possible.

#4 Create a Strong Password

Fourth, make sure that you have a really strong password for your administrative accounts, as well as all of the devices that connect to your network. Speak with your employees about how to create a strong password, and make sure that you have them on devices such as printers as well.

All passwords for devices and computers should have a mixture of symbols, numbers, and letters that are both upper and lower case. Ideally, your password should not spell out anything or be linked to anything personal. However, you can come up with memory tricks to help your employees remember passwords. For example, C1W3@Nb+ could stand for "Cavaliers 1, Warriors 3 @ the NBA" – little tricks like this help make random passwords easier to remember.

The key to keeping your business network secure is to limit the number of administrative accounts and only use the administrative account to update the network. Make sure to keep everything on the network up to date, and use secure passwords.


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