Staying on top of office security without an IT team

By Chan Wern Shen

• 93% of internet subscribers not use cyber security solutions
• Cyber attacks can severely cripple business operations if not dealt with swiftly
• Audra Business allows you to secure your business network in a comprehensive yet affordable manner

There used to be a time when going digital was a luxury that few could afford. The stories of garage based companies going all-in on digital are now tales of legend. The Alibabas, the Amazons, and the Googles are billion dollar companies today. But where the few succeeded, many thousands failed – an endless stream of hopeful businesses from all corners of the globe tried to follow suit, but only a handful of them achieved a similar success.

The problem was three fold: the technology, the talent, and the money to procure them.

Back then, the simple act of getting online was in itself, a ridiculously expensive affair. You had to rent server racks, which ran on complex and expensive software, and had to be managed by the handful of technical personnel who were well versed enough to consider themselves experts. 

The scarcity of talents, complexity of execution and the expensive overheads of the day meant that getting online as a small business was almost impossible. 

Luckily, in the current digitally forward day and age, those issues are close to null. With the right tools, you can get your business online in a matter of hours, all by yourself. 

The technology is now so accessible that it would almost be silly not to consider digitization.

“Going digital is not an option, it has to be done. It is a necessity to survive,” said Malaysia’s Minister of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives, Dato Sri Dr. Haji Wan Juaidi, during the recent APEC 26th Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meeting, 

“In the new normal, businesses must pivot their strategies and business models to adapt to the digital economy,” he adds.

Locking up in lockdown

But what happens after you get your business online? You just focus on selling, right?

Well, not exactly. 

There’s still the issue of cyber security to tackle, which seems to be an area which is often overlooked.

According to a recent report, it seems that up to 93% of internet users do not use any cyber security solutions. In a physical world comparison, that would mean nine out of ten online businesses leave their doors unlocked after they close for the day, and we’re sure that you wouldn’t want to be one of them.

A subsequent report by Forbes goes on to reveal that 57% of the surveyed SMBs believed that they wouldn’t be targeted by online criminals, however nearly 20% of those same respondents admitted that they had been victims of cyber attacks in the past year. 

Although experiencing a cyber attack might not be as physically harming as being invaded by an armed robber, thinking that it’s any less dangerous to your business would be foolish.

For starters, without the adequate knowledge of cyber security, it would almost certainly be impossible to recover from attacks like ransomware or malware by yourself. These attacks directly hit the machines that run your business, and can shut you down faster than you could imagine.

Another hot commodity for online criminals is your database – for example the names, addresses, contact details and credit card information of your customers. Having this data leaked is bad enough – you might lose customer trust when they find out this has happened – but more importantly, can your business survive if the database gets maliciously wiped out? 

What can you do about it?

It goes without saying that getting the right security solution is key, however the right solution isn’t necessarily always the most expensive one that’s available. Spending hundreds of thousands on an enterprise-grade security solution isn’t practical for most SMBs, nor is the thought of spending thousands to maintain a dedicated IT team to run it. 

That’s why we developed Audra Business – the first DIY internet-security solution for businesses like yours – which offers industry leading security at the fraction of the complexity or price of other solutions on the market. Best of all, you can set this up and manage it effectively without additional IT personnel, and control it via your smartphone. 

Built specifically to cater the needs of small and medium businesses, Audra Business not only protects you from cyber attacks, but also provides you with the right tools to keep your business running fearlessly in the digital world.

The Audra Business gateway device sits at your office, and connects to the Audra AI Cloud. Here, Audra Business is capable of blocking adware and malware, Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) and spam attacks automatically before they even reach your office network. 

This eliminates any downtime that you would need to spend on removing adware or malware infections, and keeps your network safe from packet attacks without expensive firewall hardware.

Incoming threats are only half the battle, and Audra Business also provides you with the tools to help your team focus on productivity. One-click category blocking, lets you choose what categories of inappropriate content to block from your office network such as categories like gambling, adult content, and social media. The Audra Cloud AI automatically updates the sites within these categories on a daily basis, giving you additional peace of mind.

The Whitelisting tool also ensures that your team doesn’t fall to phishing attacks – an increasingly common form of cyber attack – by ensuring access to specific pre approved websites. This is especially useful when it comes to accessing financial websites like online banking, and ensures that phishing attacks fall flat.

Enterprise-grade tools like WAN Failover mean that your work network can stay constantly connected to the internet without any downtime by combining two internet connections from different providers seamlessly. The smart AI will automatically reroute internet traffic from one internet connection to another if one of them disconnects or fails. 

When both connections are active, the Load Balancing feature will distribute incoming and outgoing internet traffic over the two connections, ensuring that all your users are able to enjoy the maximum possible speed. 

The Bandwidth Allocation feature also allows you to prioritize certain connected devices in your network and feeds more bandwidth to them to ensure maximum functionality – devices like your IPTV cameras and or your data servers will greatly benefit from this feature.

Want to find out more about Audra Business? Visit the Audra Business page at https://audra.io/business/. 

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook at https://facebook.com/audra.io to get the latest updates on Audra Business, as well as information on how you can join our upcoming webinars to learn more.