It’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time when we didn’t need to be vigilant against viruses and hackers, but it’s become as much of a fact of life as colds and flu. Around 75% of enterprises will experience a breach of security in 2017, but only around 60% actually expect it to happen!

Anticipating a security problem is vital if you and your business are to avoid being in the 10-15% of companies that are unprepared and vulnerable to attack. It’s also important that you’re prepared for anything that does manage to get through.

Here are five ways to strengthen your defences against those online ne’er-do-wells.

Watch your passwords

Passwords are basically an unlocked door if they’re not strong enough. All a criminal has to do is work out a password and use it. That’s it. If your employees are still using their pets’ names as passwords (yes, they do walk among us…), then this needs to stop.

Change passwords every six months and make sure you use the upper case, lower case and numerical system too. Strong passwords are better than regularly changed ones, though. If your passwords are always changing, it’s tempting to choose easy-to-remember ones.

Identify your weakest areas

You can’t plug gaps if you don’t know where they are, so a good start it a security audit – the Cyber Essentials security assessment is a free service and it can weed out your weakspots and help you to patch them up. It’s especially useful because your advice and information are presented to you in an easily-understood format, so you don’t have to be an IT guru to stay safe.

Meet trouble halfway

Everyone is vulnerable to attack – criminals don’t discriminate, if they see an exploit, they’ll be on it. Even big companies can be hit, even despite their best efforts. So, once you’ve protected yourself, you need to think about what you’ll do if the worst does happen. If there’s a breach, you should have set protocols to enable you to hit the ground running – speed is essential here.

Breaches happen in minutes so they’re most often discovered after they’ve happened. This is why it’s important that employees know what to do so no more time is lost – speedy action can protect the most sensitive and most important data. A case management system is your best bet when it comes to security breaches.

Get back to basics

You need your basic defences in place – firewalls, anti-spyware and anti-virus protection and so on. These programmes are your first line of defence against criminals, so they should always be up and on. Don’t forget your mobile devices, either, as the mobile sector has been a bit slow to catch on to security. The criminals haven’t, however!

Patch things up

The installation of security software is only the first step; you need to keep up-to-date with patches and fixes as soon as they come out. This applies to security software as well as all your other software and apps.

No software is perfect, especially not in its first iteration and so companies release updated and patched versions as soon as they can – and you should install the updates as soon as you can.

It can seem like another job in itself, keeping your data and systems secure, but the consequences of forgetting or neglecting a security update can be disastrous.