4 Steps to Modernise and Secure your Small to Midsize Enterprise
The success of a small to midsize enterprise (SME) hinges on two key things: growth and cash flow. Yet, weak security can put a stop to both of these things.
Now is the time to invest in strong, holistic security across your business. In the UK, one SME is attacked every 19 seconds, and 65,000 attempts occur every day! However, many SMEs struggle to implement the necessary security measures. Some businesses rely on cobbled-together solutions and multiple vendors, which leads to inflated costs and stagnant growth.
Fortunately, even with limited budgets and resources, SMEs can get the complete protection they need without having to sacrifice the functionality that is critical to growth and performance. By investing in the right networking and security solutions, SMEs can significantly reduce their risk using tools that are designed to work together, offer strong protection, achieve maximum value, and which are easy to use and manage.
It's all about investing in the right technologies and vendors. Here, we present four steps to modernise your business and set it up for future success.
Step 1: Create a Secure Office Network
While many SMEs have adopted a permanent hybrid workforce, the main office remains a cornerstone of the business—it’s not just a place to come together and collaborate, it’s also the center of your secure office network. A next-generation firewall (NGFW) sits at the heart of the main office, to control all traffic going in and out. Remote and hybrid workers are able to get online as they move around through the network switch and wireless access points.
However, not all NGFWs are created equal. Firewalls advertised as “simple” often come at the cost of performance and interoperability with functional limitations that impede your growth. Or, if you take a multi-vendor approach to the various components of a secure office network (NGFW, network switch, and wireless access points), you could experience administrative hassles like troubleshooting connectivity and licensing. In short, selecting the right NGFW is critical to your productivity, security, and growth.
Step 2: Support a Work-from-Anywhere Workforce
First, a brief technology history of the recent transformation to hybrid and remote work:
When COVID hit, many SMEs transitioned to VPN technology to connect remote employees, but this led to a sudden and greater demand on the virtual network. So, businesses invested in better NGFWs to handle the demand as well as SD-WAN to ensure performance and bandwidth. And because workers were no longer protected by company-owned network security, they also invested in endpoint protection, detection, and response. Then people started to return to the office, and teams quickly realised that these new technologies driving the hybrid workplace did not easily integrate and communicate with the separate endpoint and remote user systems. The situation was complex and it raised operational costs for SMEs.
But technology teams are savvy, and these SMEs discovered a solution: Find a single vendor who delivers both of these critical pieces. When your technology shares a common system, it’s not just easier to share information across a streamlined operation, it also delivers more effective, always-on security and a reduced attack surface across your native network and endpoints.
Step 3: Secure Cloud Applications and Email
Let’s return to the two driving factors of your business: growth and cash flow. Shifting applications to the cloud is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure scalability and operational savings. However, it’s not as easy to manage a consistent security posture when data is moving fluidly across different cloud vendor infrastructures. It can also be difficult to select the right cloud provider.
What is a little easier is selecting the right vendor to manage security across all platforms.
Here again, partnering with the right vendor offers a logical and affordable approach. Savvy SMEs are seeking a cloud access security broker (CASB). CASB solutions offer API-based access, built on the foundation of a well-designed NGFW, so your administrator can use SaaS applications to scan for compliance and threats and drill into user, device, and application usage. Often, these CASB solutions include out-of-the-box reports on compliance and regulatory requirements, which can speed up audits and alert you if users are sharing information that they shouldn’t be.
Step 4: Control Costs (Streamline and Simplify)
We all know that one of the biggest drains on productivity is management. Multiple vendor products aren’t designed to work together out-of-the-box, and stitched-together security solutions require significant resources to deploy and maintain, and often carry a high cost.
The ideal solution for many SMEs is to invest in products that were designed to be used together. When everything follows the same policies and rulesets, you can manage an entire security solution from a cloud-based, single window. As a result, your team can more effectively monitor network health and user activity, from anywhere employees are working. Likewise, your team can also remediate issues in a few clicks. Some SMEs are also investing in Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) as yet another cost-controlling option. The best SECaaS vendors will help you maintain a strong security platform through automation and intelligence sharing to reduce risk and long-term costs.
At Optec, we know how important growth and cash flow is to your business. It’s exactly why we’ve partnered with Fortinet to offer customisable and affordable solutions to ensure your business is productive and secure, no matter where your employees work from. For more information, please download this whitepaper. It includes a basic checklist to help you evaluate the various NGFW options to select the solution that’s right for your unique business.
Even though your SME is a popular target for attackers, it doesn’t have to be. Please get in touch with our expert team today to learn more about investing in the right networking and security tools. Smart technology investments solutions today will ensure growth tomorrow. Just give us a ring at 01280 878597 or sales@optec.co.uk.
Related posts
