With many more clients working from home and home offices. there is a greater need for easy and simple network and security policies for small business and home business. In that spirit, here is a very simple requirement for a micro and small business security and network policy as it relates to hosting, domains, websites and email services:
Passwords:
1. How frequently do you change account passwords? (For example: Once a week, once a month, once a year – some experts recommend that small business changes passwords every 30 days)
2. Password strength: What number of minimum characters? Upper Case, Lower Case, Numbers and Ascii characters? (Define your business password requirement)
3. Do you allow staff to share passwords? How many people know your passwords? Who is allowed to know your passwords (Make a list – and NO, Nkosi is not one of them – we need not know your passwords and our cloud(s) DOES NOT STORE YOUR PASSWORDS – We encryption your password, using various processes, store that encrypted result and each time when ANYONE presents a password, we apply encryption to it and compare the encrypted result with the stored encrypted result)
4. There are many other password related issues for larger small business as well as medium and large companies, but the above three are, in my opinion, the most important and minimum considerations for micro home businesses
Anti Virus, Email (and whatsapp, telegram and other services) generic policies or business rules:
1. File Attachments – Do you just open anything you receive? Or do you have rules?
2. Do you have PAID anti virus? (Yes, paid quality is very different from free quality – free is okay for home but not okay for business.)
3. Do you click on links any in emails and messaging services? – how do you verify before you click?
Is your business a target? Do need help? – Please email support@nkosi.co.za
Security and Network policies also include and are affected by your IT policy. The most important issue for micro and small business is the simple question:
Do you use pirate or unlicenced software?
– If yes, you should consider not doing that. If you do not want to pay for software you can use open source alternatives, for example Linux.
There are many more factors regarding network and security policies and we will build on this article and expand it further as we go…