Though it takes years of training to becomes a cybersecurity professional, anyone can take the prudent steps that make themselves and their company more secure. The eight chapters in these books teach you the basics. These books use plain language to tell you how to become more secure. It’s not rocket science, but it does take discipline. That makes sense, right? If it was easy to be cybersecure by buying a product or a service, we’d all be secure by now. Every chapter comes with prudent steps you can take right away to be more secure. It tells you want you must do, and each chapter provides “Pro Steps” so you can take it to the next level.

Protect your Practice offers additional advice addressing special circumstances pertaining to clients and patients, including extra data privacy concerns and compliance.

Section 1: Securing Your Business

Chapter 1 – Lock It Up

The first step is to control access to the business. Gangs and organized crime have moved into cybercrime, but they still look for opportunities for the easy score. Learning about physical security helps protect you and your business or practice and gets you started on the path to digital security.

Chapter 2 – Cyber Awareness

Next we move on to some basic cyber awareness. We describe phishing, proper cyber-hygiene at the high-level and discuss industries (those that take credit cards, those that provide healthcare services) that have specific rules.

Chapter 3 – Protecting Your Network

We keep it simple and talk about Anti-virus/Anti-Malware software, network, routers and firewalls, WiFi basics, VPNs, and performing regular updates. Taking regular backups is a critical step. We address onsite and offsite backups and how you protect your business from mistakes, losing files due to server or disk failure, and from ransomware.

Chapter 4 – Passwords

The we have the password conversation. It’s not about fancy mnemonic techniques to create uncrackable passwords. We’ll teach you how to create and manage good strong passwords.

Chapter 5 – Access Management

Next we tackle three more technical issues. We start with access, and talk about specific access by function, giving access to employees that is not all powerful and knowing when and how to use virtual private networks (VPNs) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Section 2: Securing Your Brand

Chapter 6 – Web and Social Media Security

The small business/practice owner’s web presence has changed a lot over the years. We’ll discuss the basic procedures that are needed. Social media is more than just Facebook and Twitter. We talk about the key services you need to worry about and the importance of managing your online reputation.

Chapter 7 – Data Privacy

In this chapter we discuss the requirements that small businesses and practices have for handling credit card data, financial information, and medical records. We explain your basic requirements in both books, and in Protect Your Practice, we do a deeper dive that includes how to comply and keep your clients’ and patients’ data safe.

Chapter 8 – Cyber Insurance

This is a great time to talk about the insurance policy, what you should look for, what it covers and what it doesn’t and how to work with carriers to be an acceptable customer. Verifying riders and terms and conditions.