• Technology

The entrepreneurial adventure often starts with a single employee running a home-based operation, with no IT staff and little time to stay aware of Internet security threats. But as more small businesses realize the productivity benefits of mobile technology and the promotional power of social media, they’re treading on active breeding grounds for viruses and worms.

Entrepreneurs need to take at least some baseline, practical steps to securing IT devices. “You would be amazed at how many businesspeople put anti-virus software on their workstations but not on their servers, where file-sharing viruses still have an impact,” says Jeff Horne, Director of threat research at Internet security software company Webroot. Mobile viruses tend to steal personal information, Horne says, so change passwords often and lock your phone.
Then there’s the social media beast. “If you think about the nature of social media sites, it is easy to be tricked,” Horne says. “It is
like the e-mail security threats that we have been dealing with for years; the practical advice still applies.”

While a small, self-run business may not have the concerns larger ones have about employees downloading corrupted apps or files, there are other threat factors to consider—like kids and Wi-Fi-mooching neighbors. “If you’re a home-based business, it’s important to isolate your business computer on the network,” Horne says. And if your data usage increases beyond 150MB per month, pairing anti-virus software with an edge firewall is imperative.

With business success comes new hiring, and the job of managing network security also grows: Ensure that updated anti-virus software and security patches are downloaded to all your employees’ machines, and that firewalls and access rights are configured properly.

“If you don’t have a lot of IT people, doing all this through the cloud really frees up resources,” Horne says. “The core concept behind cloud-based security is that decisions are made on a remote server. Daily automated updates handle all these tasks in hours rather than days.”

©Entrepreneur April 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

©Entrepreneur May 2011

DAN O’SHEA is a writer in Chicago who has been covering telecom, mobile and other high-tech topics for nearly 20 years.

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business, Dan O'Shea, devices, entrepreneur, jeff Horne, online, small business, software, virus, webroot, WiFi