Small businesses are often short on time, resources, or expertise to secure their data. Cyber criminals know small businesses are an easy target. But the cost of not securing your company’s data has never been higher. Between the stolen data and the GDPR fines, it’s too expensive for businesses to ignore cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is primarily about creating a culture of cyber security awareness. That means training employees to implement best practices and having the proper processes in place to deal with security breaches. Merely switching to encrypted services will not solve all of your cybersecurity issues. However, encrypted services do reduce your company’s exposure, and, when paired with a security-conscious workforce, they can go a long way to preventing a data breach or hack.
Team calls and instant messages
Two-factor authentication (2FA)
The basics of cybersecurity for small businesses
If you’re running a small business, you understand the need for flexible and affordable solutions that every team member is comfortable using. Everyone is responsible for protecting your business network, but let’s take a closer look at what each team member can be responsible for.
IT team
Your IT specialist may seem like the obvious team member responsible for your small business’s cybersecurity. They are important, but they’re not the only team contributing to the effort. Your IT specialist(s) can focus on:
- Access management: Controlling who can access your business network and how is essential. Your IT team can ensure that everyone is using two-factor authentication (2FA) to log into business apps, dictate who can access which apps and what data with access policies, and keep watch for any unauthorized login attempts.
- Plan and test regularly: One of the most important ways to prevent a data breach is to proactively create incident response plans and test your architecture. Creating full backups of your data regularly will also reduce losses if you’re affected by a cyberattack.
- Encrypt all business data: Your team should implement full end-to-end encryption for all of your business data. The easiest way to do this is to find an ecosystem with end-to-end encryption built in.
C-Level management
Whatever your company’s structure is, those at the top must be advocates for stringent cybersecurity practices.
- Advocate and encourage: As leaders of the company, C-Level managers must create a culture where cybersecurity is discussed openly and made everyone’s responsibility. Every team member, no matter their role, plays a part. Holding regular training and awareness sessions and creating visibility for the IT team’s efforts makes a difference.
- Design and uphold an incident response plan: An incident response plan dictates how each department within your business will react to a cybersecurity incident. Leaders should be appointed accordingly, and C-Level management should memorize the plan and their part to play.
All employees
Some cybersecurity principles can be upheld by everyone throughout your business, no matter their IT expertise. These should be the basic rules in your security program:
- Secure and varied passwords: Every account needs its own password, and that password should meet your business’s password policy. You can find out more about creating secure passwords and use our secure password generator to get started.
- Connect to secure networks: Only connecting to trusted WiFi and using a VPN will help you stay secure. Connecting to public WiFi gives attackers a chance to target you and attempt to crack your passwords or exploit security vulnerabilities in your business network. When you’re accessing your business apps, make sure only to use trusted WiFi connections. Using a VPN will also protect your data.
The best cybersecurity solutions for small businesses
Here’s a look at the top SMB cybersecurity solutions you can use to protect the integrity of your data and systems.
Email provider
Most small businesses rely on email to handle both internal and external communications. Following cybersecurity best practices is essential to keep your business’s data safe, but some email providers can offer your company more security than others.
Proton Mail
Proton Mail offers its users end-to-end encryption. Your emails are encrypted before they leave your device so that only you and your intended recipient can access them. Unlike Gmail and other big email providers, we don’t collect or exploit your personal data. That means that even if there’s a data breach of our servers, your organization’s data will remain inaccessible to anyone but you.
This encryption also extends to forwarded messages, file sharing, and all events organized in Proton Calendar, allowing you to maintain workflow and schedule meetings without compromising security.
You can even secure your messages to non-Proton Mail users by sending password-protected emails. Finally, Proton Mail is both GDPR and HIPAA compliant.
Platforms: Desktop apps (Windows, macOS, Linux), Android, iOS, and web app
Price: Included with Proton Business Suite, along with all other Proton apps, for €12.99 per user per month. Proton Mail plans start at €6.99 per user per month.
VPN
A virtual private network is an effective way for your business to control valuable assets on the company’s internal network. A reliable VPN will enable your business to secure your most sensitive data without additional hardware and training.
Additionally, a VPN for your business is useful for employees crossing international borders for work. As governments increase internet restrictions and content censorship(nueva ventana), your team could find it otherwise difficult to use the internet freely.
Proton VPN
Proton VPN will grant your company access to an extensive server network spanning 110+ countries across six continents, guaranteeing you and your employees will always have access to a fast, secure VPN server — no matter where your operations or employees are located.
With Proton VPN, employees can seamlessly connect to your internal network even if they’re not in the office, and admins can easily control employee and contractor permissions.
When your employees connect to Proton VPN, all internet traffic is routed to a VPN server in a privacy-friendly country, such as Switzerland, Iceland, or Sweden. Any third party — or potential attacker — monitoring your team’s traffic will only be able to trace it back to the edge of Proton VPN’s network. That means you can operate your business in a secure, private manner.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows
Price: Included with Proton Business Suite, bundled with all other Proton apps, for €12.99 per user per month. Proton VPN plans start at €6.99 per user per month.
Cloud storage
Cloud storage has redefined how offices can work. By storing files on the cloud, your business can maintain a backup of all critical documents in case of a catastrophic system failure as well as easily share documents, access files on the go, and sync progress between different employees. Protecting these files and the data they contain should be one of your business’s top priorities.
Proton Drive
Proton Drive provides end-end-encrypted cloud storage for all your business files and supports encrypted sharing of files and folders. With a Proton Business Suite plan, each user in your organization gets 500 GB of storage, providing the space and security your business needs to operate without worry of cybersecurity threats. You also get access to Proton Docs, a secure document editor that helps you collaborate seamlessly with other team members in real time (more on Docs below).
Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android
Price: Included with Proton Business Suite, along with all other Proton apps, for €12.99 per user per month. Proton Drive Professional is available for €7.99 per user per month.
Team calls and instant messages
Many businesses have employees and contractors working remotely. This can make coordinating a challenge unless you use a team collaboration app. Given the amount of information that can be exchanged and stored on these platforms, using one that is encrypted is a necessity.
Wire
Wire(nueva ventana) is one of the only end-to-end encrypted services that allows for group calls. It’s outside the Google ecosystem and more secure than Slack when trying to manage team communication. Wire has been independently audited and is entirely open source, allowing you to be sure that Wire’s code is doing exactly what they say it is.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and web browser add-ons
Price: Starts at €7.45 per user per month (annual payment).
Password manager
Creating strong, unique passwords or passphrases for your accounts is one of the basics of cyber security, but no employee can remember all the passwords necessary to log in to all the platforms they need to use for work. A password manager changes all that. By safely encrypting all your passwords, a password manager allows you to create passwords that are impossible to crack, without having to remember them all. Using a trustworthy password manager to secure your passwords is one of the easiest ways to improve your company’s security.
Proton Pass
Proton Business Suite gives you access to Proton Pass, which includes 100 vaults by default (which can be increased to unlimited upon request) and unlimited aliases.
The best way to ensure that everyone within your business can protect your sensitive data is the give them a tool that helps them create strong, unique passwords and eliminates the need for memorizing or recurring password resets.Proton Pass will make it easy for your team to create and securely share logins. Additionally, administrators will get access to tools to ensure their teams adopt small business cybersecurity best practices, including two-factor authentication (see below).
You will also get to use our high-security Proton Sentinel program, which works for both Proton Mail and Proton Pass and has blocked thousands of account takeover attacks since it was launched in August 2023. This is a security-first feature you won’t find anywhere else.
Proton Sentinel uses artificial intelligence and human expertise to detect and block suspicious attempts to take over accounts. The program leverages insights Proton developers discovered while building anti-abuse systems that protect over 100 million accounts.
Platforms: Windows, iOS, and Android
Price: Included with Proton Business Suite, along with all other Proton apps, for €12.99 per user per month. Proton Pass for Business starts at €1.99 per user per month.
Learn more about Proton Sentinel
Two-factor authentication
To ensure your important accounts are secure, you should enable two-factor authentication (2FA) in addition to using a strong, unique password. By using 2FA on your accounts, you can prevent intruders from accessing your accounts even if they get a hold of your passwords.
Proton Pass
Proton Pass features an integrated 2FA authenticator. And Proton Business Suite users can even enforce 2FA for an entire team to make sure everyone is protecting their work accounts properly. That means administrators can quickly check how many team members have set up 2FA and contact them directly to explain why 2FA is so important with simple instructions to set it up.
Platforms: Windows, iOS, and Android
Price: Available with Proton Business Suite, bundled with all other Proton apps, at €12.99 per user per month.
YubiKey
The YubiKey(nueva ventana) is a hardware token (a specialized USB stick) that you can plug into your device to confirm your identity. While it is thought to be the most secure form of 2FA, relatively few services support hardware token 2FA.
Platforms: YubiKey 5 NFC works with macOS, Windows, and NFC-equipped Android and iOS devices
Price: A YubiKey 5 NFC costs €50.
Notes and documents
Every business needs a secure way of creating documents and taking notes. Whether team members are working in the office or remotely, your document creation solutions need to offer an end-to-end encrypted way to work. Choosing the right tools has a large impact on how secure your essential business data is.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes(nueva ventana) is a simple, end-to-end encrypted note-taking app that can sync your notes across all your devices. Its clean interface and numerous extensions mean that you can use Standard Notes for everything from writing yourself reminders to coding.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and web browser add-ons
Price: Free.
Proton Docs
Creation and collaboration are both totally secure with Proton Docs. None of your data is collected or scanned: Only authorized individuals within your business have access. Files can be created and edited on the go from any device with automatic syncing for everyone. Team members can leave comments or work in real time easily without having to worry where they’re storing information. Proton Docs is part of Proton Drive, an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage drive where you can guarantee that none of your data will be scraped to sell ads or train AI products.
Platforms: Desktop apps (Windows, macOS), Android, iOS, and web app
Price: Included with Proton Business Suite, along with all other Proton apps, for €12.99 per user per month. Proton Drive Professional is available for €7.99 per user per month.
Protect your small business with encrypted services
For businesses that have not yet secured their data, encrypted services are a good place to start. Download and subscribe to our end-to-end encrypted services to start protecting your company’s data.
While encryption alone will not guarantee your small business’s cybersecurity, they are necessary tools that every business should consider.
Whether you’re an individual entrepreneur or company CEO, Proton has the right plan to keep your business data secure. We offer a suite of end-to-end encrypted apps to keep your data safe, however big or small your business: Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, Proton Docs, Proton Pass and Proton VPN(nueva ventana).
Plus, switching your business to Proton’s privacy-first ecosystem is simple. We have even published an easy-to-follow tutorial that won’t require any onboarding or extensive cybersecurity training.
Making the move means not only protecting your business from cybersecurity attacks that could threaten your company’s existence but helping shaping a better internet where privacy is the default.
