Anymore, tech is an integral part of successful businesses of all shapes and sizes. With regular use of technology, however, comes the risk of keeping your digital assets—and those of your clients-safe. Businesses routinely lock their doors when closed, but few take all necessary precautions with their digital assets and systems.
Options abound for encryption for small business, but understanding the types available can take a little study. Of these, the most important and valuable cybersecurity measure is data encryption.
Types of Encryption for Small Business
The importance of data encryption for small business is often understated but becomes abundantly clear when security is breached. Compromised data presents the risk of large legal, financial, and reputational damages. Just look at many of the biggest companies today, and you’ll likely find some massively damaging cybersecurity incidents.
Data encryption should be a vital part of any business, but finding the right type of encryption software for small business and applying it correctly require strategic planning.
There are a wide variety of methods of encryption for small business, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. While the best small business encryption option depends on many factors, the data encryption methods described below are the most generally applicable and important to consider.
Salting and Hashing Passwords
Data encryption begins with protecting the most important and valuable data. This means starting with passwords protection. Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often use a form of security called hashing. While not technically a type of encryption, hashing is an important security measure, nonetheless. Hashing is a way of storing information in a coded form. The coded form, or hash, condenses a word or phrase into a string of text that always has the same length. Someone who gets access to the hash without authorization cannot turn it back into the password.
Most businesses use the hashing method to protect the passwords of employees and customers alike. But while hashing allows for passwords to be protected by storing them as strings of unrelated characters, the hashing process itself still puts data at risk.
Hashing is not a fully randomized process. While the string of characters is not immediately connectable to a user’s password, inputs are only linked to a single output, meaning if multiple users share the same password, they share the same hash.
The way to circumvent this weakness in the password hashing process is a process called salting. Salting protects passwords in storage by adding random data to the hashed string. When combined with hashing, salting allows for unique outputs to be stored for the same inputs.
A Secure Connection: SSL Certificates and Enabling HTTPS
No business is safe without securing its connection to others through the Internet. This is where Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) enters the picture.
SSL is a global standard technology that ensures the web browser to web server connection is encrypted, in the form of an HTTPS connection, and verifies the identity of websites as well. Without SSL, users cannot rely on their connection to even the most common websites and have no insulation identifying against fraudulent sites.
Businesses implement SSL by adding an SSL certificate to their web server. SSL certificates can be acquired from certificate authorities or web hosting providers.
There are six types of SSL certificates:
- Domain Validated Certificates (DV SSL);
- Extended Validation Certificates (EV SSL);
- Multi-Domain SSL Certificates (MDC);
- Organization Validated Certificates (OV SSL);
- Unified Communications Certificates (UCC); and
- Wildcard SSL Certificates.
Choosing the right SSL certificate depends on many different factors related to the needs and scale of the business. These certificates range in scope of use and cost, with some specializing in transactions and others in enabling the maximum amount of secure subdomains among other niches.
SMB Encryption through JSON Web Tokens
JSON web tokens (JWTs) are a type of open standard encryption for sending messages securely between two parties. In essence, the server confirms the identity of the user and sends it to the client (the system) to ensure access is authorized.
JWTs present several immediate benefits for smaller businesses. For starters, JWTs act as a safe and secure way to ensure proper credentials via digital signature to users across many different scenarios, customers and admins alike. This technology may also have low overhead and the ability to work across domains.
In addition, JWTs provide a business with security outside of server storage. Most types of encryption require businesses to store verification data themselves, but JWTs provide the added advantage of storing this data client-side, meaning less clutter for businesses despite providing a strong, multipurpose layer of security.
Encryption for Small Business: Which Type is Right for You?
Encryption for small business is necessary to protect digital assets and client data. Some of the encryption methods discussed here may fit some businesses better than others, but using them in conjunction means a more reliable and multifaceted system of cyber security.
No single kind of security is infallible, but with strategic planning and proper implementation, a business can be optimally protected from potentially devastating damage.