Cybersecurity Best Practices Every Business Needs to Follow Today

Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT concern anymore, gone are the days when a ‘seasoned’ system administrator was hardening the infrastructure based on a random tip from some guy on Reddit, it is a business continuity issue, a compliance issue and now an increasingly, a human issue. 

While CISA and others offer well researched guidance much of it isn’t really written with everyday business leaders in mind and most teams don’t have the time or expertise to sit through a 100-page documents full of acronyms.  

So, let’s talk about what really matters. 

In this article, I will break down cybersecurity best practices that actually help without the overwhelming use of jargon. I will do my best to be practical and build a small manifesto. This manifesto will help both small teams and larger organizations. I will focus on the most simple yet effective approaches to protect their data. These approaches will also help keep the business moving.

Why Following Cybersecurity Best Practices is Critical today (Even when budget is Tight) 

• Cybercrime doesn’t care if your team is five or five thousand people but the numbers don’t lie: human error is still the root of most breaches. After all there is always a person misconfiguring the system or clicked a phishing email or missed a software update or… well there are a lot of ‘OR’s’ to be added but you get the picture. I hope so. It only takes one mistake to open the door. 
• Security best practices exist for a reason, there is not one flashy ‘One tool to rule them all’ kind of thing, but as boring as they sometimes sound, they do work. Strong passwords, Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), software updates, email protection, none of this is cutting-edge but it stops attacks and limits your risk, and when you layer in employee training and monitoring? That’s when you get a well defended business. 
• In fact, the 2024 Verizion Data Breach Investigations Report found that a whooping 68% of breaches involved no malware at all. Most attackers nowadays exploit credential theft via some kind of social engineering and misconfigurations which is why implementing a layered, human centered, approach in cybersecurity is more essential than ever. 
• Companies that follow cybersecurity basics consistently are far less likely to suffer a breach. But without tools that make these practices easier to apply across your company, things can be missed. That’s where Hornetsecurity comes in. 

The Essential Cybersecurity Best Practices Every Business Should Follow 

We came to a point where every employee, be it tech or non-tech background should be at least aware of the Cybersecurity best practices that every business should follow, whether you are a healthcare provider trying to stay HIPAA compliant or a startup making an effort to stay out of the headlines. 

Threat actors nowadays don’t sit at the keyboard to try and find vulnerability from the outside, they scan Jennifer’s movements, response to emails, her weak passwords and Jim from accounting who puts up his email password on sticky notes because Bitwarden is too complicated and he doesn’t have time to use it (sorry Jim didn’t mean to call you out). 

To save us from all the Jennifer and Jims in this world, caring Cybersecurity professionals around the world came together, scratched their heads and agreed on something rare, a set of cybersecurity best practices that actually work: 

Enforce Strong Access Control 

• Use Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users. No excuses. 
• Avoid account sharing (yes, even that shared ‘admin’ account). 
• Set role-based access for critical systems; not everyone needs admin rights. 
• Have offboarding processes in place. Revoke access immediately when someone leaves. 

This isn’t just a best practice; it is your digital perimeter. If one password falls into the wrong hands, MFA and access controls give you at least a fighting chance. 

Keep Your Systems and Software Updated 

Threat actors don’t always need new tricks, old vulnerabilities you forgot because it wasn’t a priority are still there and are often all they need. While automating updates is not a best practice on critical systems (you want to schedule restarts to minimize business impact), do it for all the systems you can. 

Have a documented process for tracking and applying patches and, I can’t stress this enough, do not ignore third party software, browser extensions and unused services that might be lurking on your users’ endpoints. 

Consider implementing KPIs for updating your servers and workstations.

Secure Communication and Email 

Phishing is still the go-to method for attackers. Why? Because it still works and I do not see it changing. I once sent a spoofed email to a friend for fun just to mess with him (don’t worry it was harmless) and he clicked without a second thought. Turns out he trusts me way more than he should and that’s exactly why phishing still thrives. 

Today, phishing emails look alarmingly real. They are really hard to distinguish if you are not a seasoned IT pro. This is where Hornetsecurity Advanced Threat Protection comes in. It adds deep scanning, real time sandboxing and dynamic filtering for both emails and Teams messages. 

That means attacks get blocked before users even have a chance to click the link or open the attachment. 

Backups: You either have them or you wish you did 

Backups are your final line of defense when everything else fails. But they have to be current, tested, and have to be secure (because deleting or corrupting your backups is a thing attackers do). 365 Total Backup handles this across your Microsoft 365 environment, from mailboxes to Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. It’s cloud native, fast and designed for compliance needs. 

Train your people like they are part of your security team 

Because in practice, they are. According to ENISA, over 80% of successful attacks in 2024 involved human error or manipulation. Hornetsecurity’s Security Awareness Service is here to assist. It can transform your staff into human firewalls and instead of a dry, checkbox based training, it delivers targeted, ongoing education that builds instinct and increases the paranoia level (trust me it’s a good thing). 

Monitor, Audit and Log everything that matters 

Security isn’t just about prevention, it’s about detection too! Logging, alerting, and audit trails help identify suspicious behavior before it becomes a breach.  

From login attempts at odd hours to unexpected permission changes, continuous monitoring is the best way to catch sketchy issues before they become a problem: 

• Apply data protection and privacy measures. Regulations like GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA aren’t optional anymore, and they do come with consequences.  
• Use encryption for data at rest and in transit.
• Classify your data to identify sensitive information moving internally or outside your organization. 
• If you don’t know who has access to your customer data, you have a problem. Solutions like 365 Permission Manager can assist you to maintain a tight access control over documents and folders in Microsoft 365.
• Have an incident response plan and actually use it. No plan survives first contact with an ongoing cyberattack, but having one is still better than handling the chaotic incident because Jim logged in from Spain at 3AM and clicked something he really shouldn’t have. A solid incident response plan should include who to call, what to shut down and how to get things back under control before panic becomes your only strategy. 
• Cybersecurity best practices for organizations vs Small Businesses. It really bugs me when people assume that larger companies are better protected just because throwing more money at the problems magically equals better security? Sure, the pocket is bigger, but they also have bigger attack surfaces and more complex systems, meaning a bigger chance for a misconfiguration or users clicking the wrong invoice that was supposed to be signed yesterday. 
• Best Practices for small businesses usually boil down to simplicity and automation. Easy to use security tools, don’t be ashamed to outsource the monitoring, basic training that sticks and clear do’s and don’ts that everyone should actually follow. Don’t focus on complexity, just consistency. 
• Best Practices for organizations are all about scale. Centralized logging, policy enforcement across teams, layered defense and ongoing audits which actually tells you what’s wrong, but we often turn a blind eye or make promises for next year’s fix. Larger businesses have more to protect, and more things can go south quickly so visibility and control becomes everything. 
• Healthcare cybersecurity best practices deserve special attention. Whether it is HIPAA compliance or simply protecting sensitive patient data, the stakes are high. From access logs to encrypted communication and secure data backups, there’s little room for error here. Hornetsecurity supports this with built-in compliance tools and real-time protection across your Microsoft 365 environment. 

We have to learn from our mistakes, and you can read more about the ransomware that hit the UK healthcare sector that could have been easily prevented in our blog. 

Take Control of Your Cybersecurity Best Practices 

With Hornetsecurity, you can: 

• Catch threats before they reach inboxes 
• Protect cloud data across Microsoft 365 
• Stay compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, and more 
• Equip your staff to act as a human firewall 
• Conduct regular cybersecurity audits with confidence 

Schedule a demo today and start putting cybersecurity best practices into action – practically, confidently, and without guesswork. 

Wrapping Up, Time to Get Practical 

You don’t need a massive budget or a cybersecurity degree. What you need is consistency, visibility, and tools that make the essentials automatic. 

Ask yourself: 

• Are we patching regularly? 
• Are our Employees trained and aware? 
• Can we recover from ransomware? 
• Do we know who has access to what? 
• Do we get alerted when something looks off? 

If the answer to any of those is “not really”, now is the time to act.