Top 7 CyberSecurity Solutions for Small Business Enterprises – 2021 Guide

Updated on July 26, 2021

Cybersecurity Solutions for Small Business

Today, it is not surprising that cyber threats are on the rise and attacks become increasingly sophisticated. While an attack can be a setback for a multinational, for small and medium-sized businesses it could be devastating. Losing critical business information, such as coveted trade secrets, or exposing confidential customer information, could easily put a small business out of business. This is the reason small businesses need enterprise cybersecurity solutions in 2021.

For many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) there is no sense of urgency about the threat. Many executives believe attackers are more interested in targeting larger multinationals, rich in the bounty of personally identifiable information and higher-value corporate data, such as groundbreaking research and trade secrets.

However, a recent study suggests that 61% of 2017 data breach victims (so far) have been companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.

Regardless of size, all businesses face similar threats, and SMBs can actually be prime targets for a number of reasons. A small retail business can be attacked because of the credit card details it owns. Or, a small business that is part of a larger value chain may be seen as easier prey to enter the back door of a multinational, as was the case with a major retailer where attackers broke into the network. through the passwords of a link with the electronic invoice of a heating supplier.

Smaller companies can also be attacked with malicious software, a malware attack, and turn their systems into “zombie computers”, which can be used in larger attacks. Ransomware attackers also target smaller organizations, many of which will pay the ransom due to no established protocols for data backups.

• 43% of cyber attacks target small businesses.
• 60% of small businesses that are victims of a cyberattack go bankrupt within six months.
• Cybercrime costs small and medium-sized businesses more than $ 2.2 million per year. (Fundera)

Ultimately, however, it is up to small and medium-sized businesses to address the “people, processes, and technology” required effective cyber security solutions.

This immediately implies strengthening the security of the computer network. But what exactly do we mean by network security for a business?

What is Network Security Solution for Small Enterprise?

The performance of the various tasks within a modern company generally requires the exploitation of various data within a computerized system.

However, it turns out that this system (otherwise the corporate network) is most often exposed to technical failures (breakdown), malware intrusions or simply handling errors. The data collected, stored and exchanged within the company network is however often confidential. This, therefore, requires managers and managers to guarantee control of their network.

Basically, a corporate network involves several components that ensure communication and data exchange between the various actors, both internally and externally. Securing this network, therefore, amounts to optimizing the state and functioning of its components in order to protect against computer attacks and incidents linked to misuse.

Many tools and devices need to be put in place to ensure the security of your network. Overall, it is a question of putting in place legal and organizational measures which tend on the one hand to prevent and protect the network against the risks of insecurity, and on the other hand, to allow a set of tools to improve the protection of the resources it contains.

Securing the corporate network also involves choosing the right solutions and technologies, and regularly maintaining them. It ranges from infrastructure to protocols, fabric to computing resources and back-up systems. These are all elements that contribute to the robustness and performance of operations and which above all play a crucial role in optimizing the security of your system.

Importance of Network Security Solutions for Small Business

Securing a network for a company supposes making the various devices that constitute it more reliable, so as to allow better conservation of information and to ensure that it is in the hands of people who have the rights to dispose of it.

It is important to use a security system to keep sensitive information safe and prevent its disclosure in any way.

The protection of confidential data is also a guarantee of confidence for the company’s partners (customers and suppliers among others) , since a lot of valuable information about them is stored in its system. To another extent, this makes it possible to convey a rewarding image which in turn constitutes a strategic lever for loyalty.

THE RISKS OF A FAULTY OR ABSENT SECURITY SYSTEM:

If the company has not made the right choice of its security solution or has not considered the implementation of a protection system at all, the risks can be disastrous. Alteration or loss of data, access to unauthorized persons, power failure and paralysis of the system, denial of service, computer virus are all dangers to which it can be exposed.
The security failure can in particular result from a simple technical fault, a physical failure due to the environment or a wrong handling on the part of a user. But it can also result from malicious actions: computer attacks.

The fraudulent use of a computer network is akin to an act of hacking. Most often, this is an attempted intrusion through malware or direct intervention by the initiator. It could be harmful software, password cracking, connecting to a shared network, or an email attack.

The problems of computer security can also result in a rift operating software compromising data protection. The most common are cracking and computer bugs.

THE SOLUTION TO GUARD AGAINST THE DANGERS OF POOR SECURITY:

• The advantage of calling on the services of a specialist is based on anticipating the risks associated with piracy in order to institute appropriate measures. Since organizations often only react when they have suffered harm, an enterprise cyber security solutions service provider offers a protection plan to limit the risks of failing security and mitigate the effects of IT incidents.
• At Shopsaitech, we advance a security policy primarily based on a prevention strategy to moderate risks and better deal with them, but also on an intervention program in the event of an intrusion. The security of your IT must above all be based on the respect of standard processes and architecture, according to the rule of the art.
• We are establishing a proactive security program to strengthen the protection system in the future. Depending on the nature of the threat, Nomios can carry out an exhaustive diagnosis and set up security measures adapted to your problem.

IN TERMS OF PREVENTION, THE MEASURES MAINLY RELATE TO:

• The auditing infrastructure: assess vulnerabilities of computer systems to reduce the risk of intrusion and thus preserve their integrity, penetration testing and organizational audit.
• Security advice missions,
• The permanent updating of the tools and systems operated on the network,
• The integration of security solutions, new technologies, or functionalities aimed at consolidating the protection system,
• The use of protection software against malware and viruses,
• Raising awareness among staff and all network users on good practices aimed at limiting the occurrence of incidents.

Securities being a profession of specialists, we, therefore, focus our mission on two modes of service and outsourcing. First, to provide a better response to incidents, our support service, and our outsourcing offers to guarantee immediate handling.

Top 8 Cyber security Solutions for Your Company in 2021

Computer systems were not conceived with security by default, since they have been developed mainly to be functional and practical to the requirements of the users and the needs of the business. On the other hand, even today, the architecture of many computer systems and solutions (such as the Internet itself) are largely descended from technologies and specifications of yesteryear (the 80s, 90s or the first decade of the 21st century). , and these were not developed with security as the main premise.

In the world of cybersecurity, there is no such thing as a “silver bullet”. Therefore, a good starting point for tackling the challenges we face is by practicing a multi-layered approach to security, also known as Defense in Depth or DiD. 

According to the CIS (Center of Internet Security), this approach is intended to implement a series of heterogeneous technological mechanisms and controls selectively to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the network and the data it contains. While no single technology or control can contain all threats and attacks, together they provide mitigations against a wide variety of threats while incorporating diversity and redundancy should any particular mechanism or control fail.

After introducing ourselves in these concepts, we share a series of recommendations and resources that go from the general to the specific, and that are oriented to what we consider to be the main axes to begin with the application of introductory practices related to Defense in depth.

It is worth clarifying that this publication only addresses technical controls oriented to Technology and Computer Systems themselves, leaving out other complementary but equally important axes, which make up the rest of the triad: Technology + Processes + People.

Asset Discovery And Management

The first step is to identify the devices and assets (including data) that need to be protected and monitored. It is not possible to protect an asset if we do not know that it exists, so it is essential to have visibility of all the assets that belong to the organization and that have access to its resources. This will help us identify the attack surface to protect and how to do it.

Make periodic backup copies and guarantee their operation, eventually testing their restoration (BCP/DRP).

Identify existing systems (instances, workstations, servers, mobile devices), as well as what is installed and running on them (for example, what applications, services, and open ports are present).

Carry out an inventory of the Hardware and Software of the equipment and update it periodically

Implement authentication systems to ensure that only authorized users and devices have access to network resources.

Lean on “Asset Management & Discovery” or “Remote Monitoring & Management” (RMM) solutions.

Uninstall the software and disable unnecessary services to reduce the attack surface.

Software Patches and Updates

The software is developed by humans, therefore it is prone to bugs. The more complex and functional a program is, the more likely it will contain errors in its code that can be exploited for malicious purposes.

In the context of cybersecurity, a patch is a software update that fixes vulnerabilities or security problems. Software developers issue these “patches” when bugs are discovered.

• Keep the Operating System and third-party applications updated to avoid the exploitation of known vulnerabilities.
• Monitor the status of the installation of patches and updates of each system/host.
• Evaluate if all updates are necessary or required. Prioritize security updates or patches over feature updates.
• Systems can be configured to only obtain and install security updates, or “critical” and “important” updates.
• Schedule specific days and times to install them
• Test software updates in test/staging environments.
• Secure protocols and services
• Implement secure services and protocols (HTTPS, SSH, SCP or SFTP, DoH / DNSSEC, SMTP, POP3 or IMAP over SSL / TLS). Avoid protocols that were not designed to be safe. For example HTTP, telnet, rsh, FTP or DNS.
• Disable unused or unnecessary services to reduce the attack surface
• Mainly monitor services such as HTTP / S, SSH, RDP, FTP, VNC, DNS, SMB / SAMBA, and applications such as MS-SQL Server, MySQL and web applications in general.
• Pay attention to services and ports that allow the administration of the systems in the network (RDP, SSH, VNC, Webmin, web portals, VPN concentrators, routers and gateways ).
• Change the default ports of the services that allow the administration of the systems to avoid automated attacks (RDP, SSH, FTP, MS-SQL, MySQL)
• Whenever possible, implement centralized authentication solutions (Kerberos, RADIUS, TACACS) and 2FA / MFA solutions, especially against services and assets that are directly exposed on the Internet or in the DMZ.
• User accounts and passwords
• Disable the default accounts such as “Administrator”, “Administrator”, “admin”, “root”.
• Monitor access controls and behavior of users with administrative permissions.
• Use strong and complex passwords (more than 12 alphanumeric characters and symbols).
• Configure the maximum life and expiration of passwords (at least every 2 months).
• Lock user accounts after a certain number of failed logins (Example: 8 attempts).
• Add additional authentication methods (MFA) whenever possible: 2FA, hard keys, biometric authentication.
• Store passwords securely using password managers (do not save passwords in web browsers or unencrypted documents).
• Do not reuse the same passwords for multiple services.
• Do not share passwords and accesses with anyone else. If strictly necessary, use a secure medium.
• Ensure that the systems that store passwords do so securely ( hashing and strong cipher suites).
• Implementation and configuration of Anti-Malware solutions.

They are an indispensable tool, and from the host’s point of view, they are the first – or last – line of defense against the vast majority of today’s threats and provide automatic remediation against malware and various types of sophisticated attacks. 

In any case, it is important to understand that they are just one more link – albeit an important one – in the chain of defense-in-depth, which is only as strong as its weakest link.

Keep security solutions up-to-date, both the detection by signatures, as well as the versions of the software and its components, as these eventually incorporate new protection functionalities.

Configure the solutions in such a way that they monitor the file system, registry, memory, and underlying network protocols and services.

Enable optional protection against other types of software that are not malware itself, namely ( Applications potentially unsafe, potentially unwanted applications, among others).

Enable the multiple technologies available in these to cover pre-execution, execution, and post-execution scenarios for malware, that is, multi-layer protection.

Evaluate the use of additional technologies present in these such as Device Control, Application Control, and Web Content Filtering.

Schedule comprehensive on-demand scans of equipment on a regular basis (at least monthly).

Install these solutions on various Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, BSD, Android, OSx)

Configure security product configuration protection with a password to prevent malicious users with administrative credentials from uninstalling or making unwanted modifications to them.

Audit and Event Logs

Audit logs provide information on events and modifications made to systems. The different devices and users of a network generate logs based on events that are generally related to a specific sequence or activities, which allows visibility and traceability of events. 

They generally capture events that allow you to record where activity was performed, who performed it, what activity performed, and how the system responded. In most cases, they help us answer three key questions: who, how and when.

Make sure that the teams and different services use enough logging verbosity so that the recorded security events provide detailed information.

Enable and install software updates that allow greater auditing of command executions in Windows.

Enable basic security auditing settings on Windows systems through a policy.

Use some event logging service of the Syslog type.

Consider implementing event correlation systems (SIEM). For more mature organizations, it is appropriate to evaluate the implementation of security orchestration, management, and response (SOAR) systems.

Consider the implementation of EDR solutions, especially in critical or highly exposed assets. Integrate them with Syslog, SIEM or SOAR.

Consider the adoption of DLP solutions, which allow greater control of the flow of data in organizations, being able to categorize sensitive information. Integrate them with Syslog, SIEM, or SOAR.

Offensive Security

To be able to defend yourself better it is necessary to learn how to attack your opponent. Although offensive security is not strictly related to defense-in-depth, it is essential to prove the solidity of this strategy. In this sense, the world of offensive security offers a range of possibilities that are applicable to organizations with different levels of maturity regarding security. 

Among the various options, we highlight Vulnerability Scanning, Vulnerability Assessments, Penetration Tests, and exercises by Red & Purple teams such as the Emulation of Adversaries.

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a device or software application that monitors a network for malicious activity or policy violations. Any malicious activity or violation is typically reported or collected centrally using a security information and event management system. 

Some IDS are capable of responding to detected intrusion upon discovery. These are classified as intrusion prevention systems (IPS).

IDS Detection Types

There is a wide array of IDS, ranging from antivirus software to tiered monitoring systems that follow the traffic of an entire network. The most common classifications are:

• Network intrusion detection systems (NIDS): A system that analyzes incoming network traffic.
• Host-based intrusion detection systems (HIDS): A system that monitors important operating system files.
• There is also a subset of IDS types. The most common variants are based on signature detection and anomaly detection.
• Signature-based: Signature-based IDS detects possible threats by looking for specific patterns, such as byte sequences in network traffic, or known malicious instruction sequences used by malware. This terminology originates from antivirus software, which refers to these detected patterns as signatures. Although signature-based IDS can easily detect known attacks, it is impossible to detect new attacks, for which no pattern is available.
• Anomaly-based: a newer technology designed to detect and adapt to unknown attacks, primarily due to the explosion of malware. This detection method uses machine learning to create a defined model of trustworthy activity, and then compare new behavior against this trust model. While this approach enables the detection of previously unknown attacks, it can suffer from false positives: previously unknown legitimate activity can accidentally be classified as malicious.

Hardware Security

It is applied to the protection of physical elements to avoid threats and intrusions. Hardware security is responsible for finding existing vulnerabilities in equipment from its manufacture to the input and output devices that are connected.

The tools used for hardware security exhaustively control the traffic that occurs on the network, providing more powerful security. This type of security is one of the most robust. Strengthens the most important systems as an additional security filter.

The most typical examples are firewalls or proxy servers. The least common are hardware security modules (HSMs) that supply cryptographic keys for encryption, decryption, and authentication.

Software Security

Bugs in software create vulnerabilities and are one of the biggest security risks. There are different types of errors that are generated in the software, for example, implementation errors, buffer overflows, design defects or their mishandling.

Software security protects applications and software from external threats such as viruses or malicious attacks. Antivirus is one of the most used tools for this type of security, which has an automatic update and helps to find new viruses. Other examples are firewalls, spam filters, content filtering software, and spam.

Network Security

They are the activities aimed at the protection of data on the network, that is, their main function is to protect the use, reliability, integrity and security of the network to prevent the information from being modified or stolen.

The most common threats on the network are:

• Viruses, worms and Trojan horses
• Spyware and adware
• Zero-day attacks also called zero-hour attacks
• Hacker attacks
• Denial of service attacks
• Data interception or theft
• Identity theft

Network security components include antivirus and antispyware, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and virtual private networks.

Top 7 Enterprise Cyber Security Solutions Providers

Next, take note of the best cybersecurity software your business needs. Don’t miss it and keep reading!

Fortinet

Fortinet offers a comprehensive, end-to-end, integrated security architecture in converged IT and OT environments. This gives security teams extensive knowledge of any device on the network. Greater visibility and control provide contextual awareness of the entire environment to maintain confidence and monitor horizontal and vertical traffic.

Check out our Fortinet Cybersecurity Solutions

SentinelOne

Sentinelone is an autonomous AI Endpoint Security Platform, developed to combat the advanced threat landscape, providing protection against known and unknown attacks by identifying and mitigating malicious behavior at machine speed.

SentinelOne replaces existing antivirus solutions while expanding protection against sophisticated exploits, internal real-time attacks, and APTs. The solution ensures deep endpoint visibility and offers comprehensive real-time forensics and search capabilities.

Get Sentinelone Endpoint Protection Antivirus

McAfee

It is one of the most widely used antivirus solution providers and has been around since the first appearance of viruses. McAfee offers a full range of security products, such as antivirus, firewall, and anti-spyware programs. McAfee Antivirus comes with a set of features that will keep your computer free from viruses, computer worms, as well as Trojans and other malicious programs.

Get McAfee internet security antivirus

Kaspersky

Kaspersky antivirus protects all your devices in real-time against exploits, such as Trojans, screen lockers, and phishing attacks. It also keeps your webcam privacy safe, as well as your online activity to prevent spies from monitoring them.

Thanks to Kaspersky Password Manager you can manage your passwords by keeping them together with your bank details, among other important files, completely safe, as well as allowing you to generate your own passwords.

Check out Kaspersky Cyber Security Solutions for Home & Business

Splunk

Splunk is the SIEM (Security Information & Event Management) solution that allows you to monitor and analyze all the big data of the company (in applications, systems, and infrastructures) through a web interface.

All this information is interpreted and reflected in a repository through graphics, alerts and panels with clear and useful information for decision-making.

Get splunk enterprise security solution

Akamai

To give us an idea of ​​the level at which Akamai is offering valuable services to the content market, this past year it had revenues of more than 1 billion euros, a figure that gave it the title of an undisputed leader in the CDN sector, that enters worldwide about 700 million USD.

Akamai customers keep copies of the content they want to deliver to their users in the best quality on local servers. When the end-user searches for content, Akamai links them to the local server that stores the requested content.

This specialization has made companies like Google, Apple, Sony, Nintendo, BBC or Facebook trust Akamai to offer their services, whether they are streaming, music, video, games or web pages. At the 2012 London Olympics, the company was in charge of redistributing and storing the broadcasts of each event on its local servers for all online viewers.

Find akamai cyber security solutions

Cisco SMARTnet

Cisco SMARTnet is a technical support service that gives technicians access to Cisco engineers and their substantial resources. Cisco SMARTnet provides a Technical Access Center (TAC), comprised of Cisco certified professionals with experience in diagnosing any issue. SMARTnet also gives IT technicians access to online troubleshooting tools, hardware replacement options, and online access to operating system updates.

As a company’s computer network grows, the impact of an outage increases dramatically. IT groups are under great amounts of pressure to fix a problem as soon as possible before it starts costing the business time and money. Cisco SMARTnet helps to quickly diagnose the problem through Cisco technical support, online knowledge base, software updates or device replacement options.

Get Cisco Smartnet Cyber Security

Final thoughts

We cannot forget that cyber security for small business is a new issue, and as such, it continues to be an issue that lacks a lot of mileage to travel, despite the fact that it is increasingly demanded and more demanded.

The specialists on the subject are still limited, the knowledge, although beginning to grow, is still not vast enough and to this day, the time that has been working on the subject is short.

It is probable that this will change soon, and that the professional careers in the subject will grow more and more before the demand; However, today it is a challenge that cybersecurity for small and medium enterprises must face.

Hopefully, you liked the article and it helped you understand the importance of cybersecurity for the well-being of companies.