Small businesses make up 99.9% of U.S. firms, and many face cyber threats without an IT department, a security budget, or a plan for building up their defenses or responding if an attack does occur.
Since 2022, IST’s Blueprint for Ransomware Defense has given small and medium-sized enterprises a framework of 40 essential cyber safeguards. Today, we’re making it easier than ever to put those safeguards into practice.
IST, with the support of Take9 and craig newmark philanthropies, is excited to present Blueprint Basics: A Small Business Guide to Ransomware Defense, a free, ready-to-use resource for owners of small businesses.
Blueprint Basics is based on the premise that small business owners don’t need a technical background or a big budget to establish defenses against cyberattacks. They just need a plan that they can take one step at a time. It starts with a single, 5-minute action: turn on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for your business email.
Inside the guide, business owners will find:
- A document with short exercises to establish processes for access control, backups, staff training, and incident response
- A walkthrough for taking inventory of devices, software and business accounts in one spreadsheet
- A 12-item checklist to track progress, plus downloadable templates
- Eight questions to ask an IT provider, with what a good answer looks like for each question
Owners can work through the guide themselves or hand the checklist to an employee, a tech-savvy friend, or their IT provider. Blueprint Basics is based on the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls® (CIS Controls®) v8 and aligned with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0.
