Ask most people how to mitigate the security risks involved in connecting their computer to the internet, and they’ll usually suggest anti-virus software with current virus pattern updates and firewall protection. While these two things are an absolute must for all systems on your company network, and single systems connected to the internet, alike, there are other “attack vectors” that are often overlooked. First, let’s take a look at exactly what it is that we are securing by loosely defining the expectations of most businesses regarding computer resources.

What do you expect?

As a small business, we expect several things from our computers and computer networks. This is by no means a comprehensive list - just the basics:

• Increased employee productivity through data organization, centralizing documents, shared printers, etc. while facilitating the ability to work more efficiently as a team.
• Internet access for email, vendor and support web sites, research, and maybe a little surfing during one of those working lunches
• Protection of financial data, trade secrets, confidential employee data, customer data, etc.
• Verifiable regular backup of this valuable data
• Reliability and ease of use - we want it to work.

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