Cybersecurity Tips for MSPs

Introduction

Maintaining strong cybersecurity for your company as well as your customers’ networks feels like a full-time job.  Between the global shift to working remotely and ransomware attacks only becoming more prevalent, it feels like an uphill battle for most MSPs to try and mitigate the risk associated with certain vulnerabilities.  Even when researching the subject, it feels like there are so many conflicting ideas and strategies to maintain an excellent cyber defense. The Cyber Heroes here at ThreatLocker conduct continual research and have compiled the highlights as your guide. If you’re an MSP, these are the tips you need to help secure your operations.

Risk Mitigation

One of the most critical steps in figuring out a problem is first identifying what the problem is.  That's why it's so important to conduct a security risk assessment for your company.  Try and calculate the risk one could incur from things such as system failures, human error, malicious actors, or any other threat to your network that could create a vulnerability. It is essential to prioritize the most likely threats, that way you can focus on the most significant issues first before moving on to the more unlikely scenarios. Once this is established, you should implement a contingency plan for each of these scenarios, that way you are prepared in case one of these happen instead of feeling blindsided by the situation.

Educating Employees

Something that is often overlooked in many companies is education amongst their employees, and cybersecurity is undoubtedly no exception. That's why it is vital to ensure employees undergo training for awareness of common scams and phishing techniques. Develop or adopt a curriculum that is a comprehensive overview of any and all vulnerabilities that can arise and how best to handle each scenario.  It is also important to continually update your curriculum since the world of digital security is constantly changing and new threats pop up every day.  Every employee represents at least one endpoint, and they are the first line of defense in determining the validity of a threat and how best to proceed. So, ensuring they are prepared for any possible incursion is vital for keeping your network secure.  

Stacking Your Security

It may seem obvious, but every MSP should be able to protect their network from multiple angles. It may be more convenient to just have one password for everything or simply one layer of protection for ease of use. But practices like these ultimately put network security at risk and entice bad actors to infiltrate a weak endpoint.  Consider making it mandatory for employees to participate in practices like multi-factor authentication, hard drive encryption, and ongoing network monitoring.  Make sure employees use strong passwords and never use the same password for multiple endpoints/logins. It’s best to have a password manager so that one would have multiple passwords without any of them being compromised in case one forgets.  Practices like these may seem tedious or time-consuming, but they ultimately help to ensure that all endpoints are locked down and safe from malicious attacks. 

Patching Applications

Something else that may seem evident but is still overlooked is keeping software up to date.  Although this seems pretty cut and dry, you would be surprised how many companies are working on out-of-date software that is not up to par with current cyber-security standards.  Management tools and remote monitoring are staples for every MSP to ensure their software is up to date. It's also important to remind employees to keep all their devices current with the latest software updates. Even though most updates tend to strengthen network security, it's still always important to read the patch notes just in case.

Backup and Data Recovery

A crucial point that cannot be stressed enough is data recovery. So often incidents happen that cause the corruption/deletion of crucial data that can have a considerable impact on the way a business operates. That’s why mitigating this risk is so vital to any network. Multiple daily backups are recommended as an acceptable frequency. This can help MSPs recover from losses resulting from security breaches or data corruption. Something else MSPs should consider is using a data protection tool. This could assist in taking incremental backups of data periodically throughout a period of time to prevent possible data loss.

Conclusion

Some of these tips may appear straightforward, but all are crucial in ensuring that every MSP can rest easy knowing their endpoints are secure. These steps aren’t the only things to go by, as there are many things to take into account and every MSP has different needs. Consider this the foundation for which to begin the process of fortifying your network and ensuring your customers are operating with cybersecurity in mind. 

If any of these tips resonate with you, then you may want to consider adding ThreatLocker to your security stack. We have been helping MSPs with securing their endpoints for years and can help implement a personalized plan for you. Book a demo to see how ThreatLocker endpoint security could be the perfect fit for your business. 

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