Control the infrastructure: Set up your remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution to alert you when rogue devices come on the network, as they could compromise your customer’s security. You also want to monitor software installations to ensure users don’t add unauthorized software that could inadvertently (or intentionally) expose endpoints to attacks.

Monitor your customers: A surprising number of security incidents come from within an organization. (About 55% of attacks involve either malicious actors or unwitting participants).¹ It’s imperative that you keep a close watch on your customers to ensure employees are using systems as intended. For example, you don’t want to end up with someone installing unauthorized software and then stealing intellectual property or customer data.

Control user access: Building on the previous point, pay close attention to user permissions. Try to limit the number of users with admin privileges and, where possible, do not allow generic user accounts.

Keep up to date with patches and antivirus: Exploit kits target known vulnerabilities in popular software. These attacks can be automated, making it extremely important that you keep software programs updated with the latest security patches. The same goes for antivirus—new viruses are created every day, so make sure you stay protected by updating regularly.

Reduce the attack surface: If you can’t commit to continuous patching, you can still protect yourself by reducing the attack vectors available to the bad guys. Consider deleting the software that cybercriminals target—in particular, Java, Flash, Silverlight, etc.

Backup regularly: Backup is essential to security. If a customer is attacked, you need to be able to recover quickly. If you lose data, you’ll lose the customer. Your best bet is to choose a hybrid-cloud backup product that gives you the speed of on-premises backups with the redundancy of cloud backup.