Breach Readiness Checklist for growing businesses

A practical, no-jargon checklist for growing and mid-size firms. Use it to see where you stand today — no strings, no call required. If anything on it raises a question, our 60-Second Security Fit is there when you want it.

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The checklist

Know your exposure (this week)

Check whether your domain or staff emails appear in a recent breach (free: haveibeenpwned.com).
Review the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog monthly and patch anything listed that you run.
Ask your IT provider for a list of any open RDP (remote desktop) ports — and close them unless essential.

Compliance deadlines by state

NY SHIELD Act — reasonable safeguards required for any business holding NY residents' private data.
NYDFS Part 500 — certified cybersecurity program for covered financial services firms; annual reporting.
CT Data Privacy Act — consumer data minimization and opt-out for businesses serving CT residents.
FL Digital Bill of Rights — notice and consent obligations for businesses handling FL consumers' data.
HIPAA / PCI — annual risk analysis and (for PCI) quarterly external vulnerability scans.

The 30-minute basics that stop most attacks

Enforce multi-factor authentication on email, accounting, and any remote access — the single highest-impact control.
Enable automatic patching for operating systems and browsers; verify it is actually running.
Segment any legacy or industrial systems from the office network.
Back up daily, keep one copy offline, and test a restore once a quarter — not just the backup, the restore.

Your people

Run a short phishing simulation quarterly and retrain anyone who clicks.
Keep a one-page incident response plan: who to call first, what to unplug, how to preserve evidence.
Confirm your cyber-insurance policy covers ransomware and that your provider notification timelines are met.

Quarterly review

Re-check the breach and KEV lists above — they change constantly.
Re-confirm your compliance deadlines for the next quarter and who owns each.
Review the vendor / cloud services that have access to your data and prune what you no longer use.

This checklist is free to share. If it was useful, the 60-Second Security Fit scores your readiness and recommends the exact next step — only if you want one.

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