Cyber Preparedness for SMEs: Key Considerations to Protect Your Business

Is your business capable of preventing, addressing and recovering from cyber incidents? 

As malicious cyber activity poses growing threats for organisations worldwide, cyber preparedness is more important than ever for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Regardless of your budget or level of expertise, being proactive about cyber security can help your business safeguard its assets and avoid unnecessary losses from cyber incidents. 

Today, we’ll be covering the key considerations you should address to better protect your business, such as the basics of cyber hygiene, developing an incident response plan, investing in business insurance, training your employees and creating a company culture that supports cyber awareness and vigilance. 

Check up on your cyber hygiene

If you haven’t heard of the phrase before, cyber hygiene effectively refers to a collection of habits and basic principles that keep your digital security systems healthy and performing optimally. Investing in your company’s cyber hygiene can help your enterprise avoid threats online and even internal security issues. 

Investments in your cyber hygiene includes cyber security basics such as:

• setting strong passwords, 
• turning on multi-factor authentication, 
• keeping your software and operating system updated, and
• conducting regular data backups.

Looking for a list of key strategies to implement? The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC)’s Essential Eight outlines effective cyber threat mitigation strategies to help businesses strengthen their cyber security. 

You’ll need to act regularly to maintain strong cyber hygiene. If you haven’t got one, you might like to put together a cyber security policy for your business that includes the Essential Eight and any other practices relevant to your operations. 

Develop an incident response plan

One of the key barriers to implementing good cyber security practices is a lack of planning for cyber incidents. Incident response plans are a vital component of responsible data management for virtually all Australian enterprises today.

So, if you haven’t already created an incident response plan for your business, now is the time to prepare one. If you’ve already got one but you haven’t reviewed it recently, make sure it’s still up to date. 

If you’re creating a new plan, you can use the business.gov.au emergency management plan template as a starting point. This template can easily be tailored to your enterprise or industry’s unique digital security needs.

When building your incident response plan, consider what processes you’ll need in place to respond to relevant threats and their impacts on your business. Who would you contact, and how? Are there ways to manage business as usual? Keep a hard copy of your plan in case the digital copy becomes inaccessible. 

Train your employees in cyber security best practices

You’ve probably heard the saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Sure, it’s a bit of a cliché, but it still rings true: it only takes one accidental click in the wrong place to expose your business to cyber threats. This is precisely why ensuring that all employees understand cyber security best practices will help protect your business from avoidable incidents.

You’ll want to focus on training that provides your employees with an understanding of common cyber threats, practical steps to maintain cyber hygiene, and how to respond to cyber incidents. If you’re not sure where to start, the ACSC offers online resources and e-Learning modules that cover the basics.

Alongside providing training to promote cyber awareness and integrating digital security training into employee onboarding processes, it’s also vital to make sure you’re consolidating your staff’s cyber knowledge with routine retraining sessions. After all, cyber threats are evolving at a rapid-fire rate  

Make sure you’re covered

Did you know that the average cost of a cybercrime incident was $46,000 for small businesses in FY22-23? This whopping figure demonstrates that no businesses are exempt from being targeted by cyber attacks – and that there’s more financial loss on the line than you may expect. 

Investing in the right business insurance can therefore help you mitigate the financial damage of cyber incidents. If you’re already insured, it might be a good idea to double check the terms of your cover. Considering a new policy? Make sure you understand exactly what is included and excluded in the cover to assess whether it’s right for your business. 

As different businesses can have different insurance requirements, you might also want to consider getting a quote for a business insurance policy that has been tailored to your specific needs. This could work out to be more affordable for your business. Be sure to talk to a licensed insurance broker, insurer or trusted business adviser for advice if necessary. 

Stay vigilant

Once you’ve got a strong foundation in place for the cyber security of your business, it’s important to stay vigilant over time. The digital landscape is always evolving, so you’ll need to ensure your cyber policies and practices are kept up to date with the latest advice from expert sources like the ACSC. The same goes for your cyber training, which again, is a vital foundational component of any strong business cyber strategy. 

Alongside updating and facilitating cyber training on a routine basis, it’s also wise to test your cyber security systems regularly (including your incident response plan), maintain strong cyber hygiene and seek support if needed from reliable providers or services like the government-funded Digital Solutions program (for SMEs with less than 20 full-time or equivalent employees). Engaging with these resources and promoting cyber learning in your workplace can help your enterprise stay vigilant over the long term – and on a sustainable budget as well.

Invest in your Cyber Preparedness 

Proactively engaging in cyber preparedness is vitally important for SMEs. Implementing solid cyber hygiene practices, developing an incident response plan, training your employees, investing in business insurance and staying vigilant can help protect your business from ever-evolving cyber threats. 

And if you need further support preparing for and responding to cyber incidents, you can contact the Australian Cyber Security Hotline on 1300 292 371.