How to Secure Your Business Communications

Business communication is the backbone of all organizations.

If it works well, you can get more work done with fewer errors and better morale, too. If it doesn’t work well, you’re stuck attempting to parse out messages and tasks – a surefire way to frustrate people and witness lower-quality work.

Focusing your efforts on creating a series of streamlined communication channels within the enterprise is a major component of business success. Of course, as with any effort, you’ll find that there are several challenges in the way.

For IT departments and CIOs alike, security immediately comes to mind.

Figuring out how to secure your business communications is a very important process. It keeps prying eyes away from your IT infrastructure, and it keeps cybercriminals at bay to prevent compromise and exploitation of insider information.

Without further ado, here’s how to keep your business communications secure.

1. Look at your existing communication channels

Before you dive into a new project, you’ll want to analyze what you’ve already got. Let’s say you’ve got a single domain that you use to send emails. It’s got hundreds of users sending emails back and forth, both internally and externally.

You might also have staff messaging each other through chat applications such as Slack or Skype for Business. Keep in mind that these applications also support document sharing, as well as video conferencing.

“84% of enterprises say collaboration technologies have improved the productivity of individual employees.”

Cisco

Though it’s not a “traditional” communication tool, keep in mind that online storage options (such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive) can also be used to exchange and share documents between people. File sharing is an especially sensitive aspect of your business communications.

Regardless of the specifics, you’ll need to notate each and every application within your operational environment. Once you do that, you can focus on improving their security.

2. Focus on data encryption best practices

You might have the best security policies in the world within your enterprise. However, the world is becoming more connected and open – which can spell trouble for your cybersecurity posture.

Take remote connections as an example.

Emails sent and received from unsecured networks can pose a serious security risk. An employee connected to an unsecured airport Wi-Fi could have their emails intercepted by a cybercriminal with relative ease.

So how do you stop message interceptions? How do you secure your communications?

The best call for action is end-to-end encryption. In short, it allows you to impart your messages with a digital lock, and only those with the key are able to open them.

You shouldn’t just encrypt email messages, either. To truly secure your business communications, you must incorporate applications that support end-to-end encryption. That means encrypted chat applications, VoIP phone systems, video conferencing programs, file sharing platforms – the entirety of your communication platform.

3. Modify your existing security infrastructure

There’s a good chance that you’ve already got an IT security infrastructure in place. That might include anti-malware and anti-virus, content filtering, firewalls, and more.

But if your security infrastructure isn’t built around facilitating communications securely, you might find yourself facing a tough challenge. The natural instinct of enterprise security is to build a security shell that’s impenetrable from all outside threats.

That’s still the case here – but your infrastructure must contain tunnels that lead to the outside, securely.

“A direct cyber attack can cost businesses as much as $40,000 per hour.”

Data Center Dynamics

Modifying your existing security infrastructure to allow for these communication channels can prove to be a difficult security challenge. That’s exactly why many enterprises choose to partner with security experts that can design and implement security infrastructures for them.

In the end, partnering with security experts gives enterprise IT departments more time to focus on other critical projects and tasks. The security team can handle the project and seamlessly manage it without disrupting operations.

4. Train your staff to communicate securely

Even with advanced security tools in place to encrypt messages, there’s little that’s more effective than good old fashioned security training. Enterprise IT departments should host regular training seminars to spread awareness of the threats that can attack communication channels.

Training can cover everything from Wi-Fi security to VPN tunneling, as well as how to spot malicious communications (such as phishing attacks).

It’s also important to cover the best practices of communication security. That can cover things like:

Not sharing sensitive information through email (like social security numbers or bank information)
Regularly changing the passwords for different accounts
Using multi-factor authentication to access their data in the first place
Scanning and otherwise screening their messages for malicious attachments or suspicious behavior
Separating business and personal communication channels from both work and personal devices

Keep in mind that it’s not enough to just tell your staff to do these things. Be sure to explain the why behind it all – people are far more receptive to being part of a strategy rather than pawns in it.

Security-minded communications for the enterprise

Creating a secure business communication infrastructure is hard, but we can take care of it for you. We understand the challenges of the enterprise and we create custom, functional security solutions that fit around your needs and your infrastructure.

In other words, we design, deliver and operate our security and communication services and solutions with care.