Cyber security
Business Practices
In this final part of our Cyber Security Basics series, we bring everything together into everyday practice.
Strong SMB cyber security isn’t just about technology. It’s about leadership. Business leaders don’t need to be technical experts, but they do need a clear view of where their biggest risks lie, who is responsible for managing them, and how well the organisation can recover from a cyber incident.
At Microsolve, we’ve seen that organisations with clear conversations about cyber risk usually respond faster and recover with less disruption. In this article, we explore how you can make cyber preparedness a part of how your team works, and not something that only gets attention after an attack.
Where We’ve Been
This five-part series has covered the Essential Eight and the foundations of multi-layered security. We’ve looked at patching, backup strategies, access management, employee awareness, and responding to incidents.
In this final instalment, we’ll focus on making sure all these elements come together into a practical, living framework your team can understand and use when it matters most.
Why Response and Contingency Matter
Even the best defences can’t stop every attack. The real test of your cyber resilience is how your organisation responds and recovers.
An effective incident response plan does more than document steps. It builds confidence that your team knows what to do and who to call when systems slow down or data disappears. Without that clarity, even small disruptions can quickly turn into business-wide crises.
Here’s where many organisations get caught out: they assume that because they have backups, or antivirus, they’re “covered.” But when something goes wrong, backup files are incomplete, authorisations are unclear, or recovery time drags on for days.
That’s why readiness isn’t just technical. It’s also about communication, accountability, and culture.
Five Conversations to Have with Your IT Team
Rather than checking boxes on a list, think about having these five practical conversations with your IT team or managed service provider in the next quarter. Each question is designed to help leaders uncover what’s really happening inside their cyber defences, and where small improvements could make a big difference.
1. Patching and Updates
Ask: “How do we know our systems are up to date this week?”
Keeping all your devices and applications patched is one of the most important actions from the Essential Eight. The challenge is visibility. Many leaders don’t know which systems are being updated automatically and which depend on manual maintenance. At Microsolve, we often find that when patching is automated but not monitored, gaps appear quietly over time.
2. Backups and Recovery
Ask: “If we lost access to our main system at 10am today, what would staff actually do?”
Reliable backups are the cornerstone of cyber recovery. But it’s not enough to have them, you must test them. Microsolve often finds that organisations believe backups are running, but no one has tested a full restore in the past year. A documented recovery process (and regular testing!) turns a theoretical backup into a real safety net.
3. Access Control
Ask: “Can we quickly remove access if someone leaves or a device is lost?”
Clear and controlled access protects sensitive data. The fewer people with unnecessary privileges, the lower your exposure. Consider multi-factor authentication (MFA) across key systems, and regularly review user permissions. These steps limit risk from compromised accounts and internal oversights.
4. Awareness and Culture
Ask: “How confident are we that our staff would spot a phishing email?”
Human error remains one of the top causes of cyber incidents. Building phishing awareness doesn’t mean overwhelming people with IT jargon. It means creating a culture where staff pause before clicking links and feel safe reporting mistakes early. Short, regular awareness sessions work better than once-a-year training.
5. Incident Response
Ask: “If an incident happened right now, who takes the first call?”
Every organisation needs a clear, practiced incident response plan. This plan should outline roles, responsibilities, communication steps, and escalation triggers. Microsolve recommends running a short tabletop exercise once or twice a year that simulates a realistic data breach or system outage to clarify who does what and when.
Building Confidence Through Consistency
When these conversations become routine, cyber security shifts from being a reactionary process to part of your organisation’s DNA. The goal is readiness, not perfection.
Leaders who ask the right questions help create accountability. Teams that test what they’ve documented build confidence. And when things do go wrong, those organisations can recover faster, communicate clearly, and maintain the trust of their stakeholders.
Resilience, in the end, comes down to practice. The more you test, the better you respond.
Microsolve’s Experience
At Microsolve, we work with organisations of all sizes to turn policy into practice. We’ve seen that where security planning meets everyday operations, incidents become learning experiences instead of roadblocks.
Our clients benefit from a multi-layered security approach that combines automation, monitoring, awareness, and rapid response. But what really matters is leadership engagement: cyber security becomes part of business governance, not just an IT issue.
If you’re ready to strengthen your response and recovery capability, now is the time to talk with your IT partner. Ask these questions, review your incident plan together, and turn your security framework into something practical and proven.
Part 2 - Storage and Access Controls
