Here is how to implement cyber-attack protection to your growing business. It would be best if you had prevention plans for your security protection and do the best practices.
Is Your Growing Business Vulnerable To Cyber Attack? Here’s How To Protect It
How big should your business be to attract cyberattacks? Well, not so big, according to Verizon’s Official 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report. 28% of all data breach victims this year are small businesses.
For 13 years, the Verizon Annual DBIR is one of the industry’s most reliable sources for the state of global cybersecurity. We delved deeper into this year’s DBIR (yes, 120 pages of it) to show you what kind of cyber attacks are most rampant these days and how you can protect your small business against them.
The key to mitigating cyber attacks is to have a solid small business cybersecurity plan. Business owners should be more proactive when it comes to cybersecurity to prevent cyber threats. Figure 5 from DBIR shows that majority of the factors involved in data breaches are preventable.
Credentials remain the most compromised kind of employee data, over 52% for small businesses, and 64% for large businesses with 1000+ employees. In line with that, 77% of cloud breaches that involved email or web application servers, also involved breached credentials. Yes, although mostly considered as secure, cloud security threats still exist.
Source: Verizon
For small organizations, Spyware ( a type of malware) is the top threat action, followed by Brute Force Hacking and Capturing Stored Data. It only shows that the smartest criminals of today are after Credentials and Personal data regardless of the size of the organization.
With many employees reusing their usernames, emails, and passwords most of the time, it’s easier for cyber thieves to breach into a system.
Although a solid cybersecurity plan is a long-term marathon, two factors help ensure the success of cybersecurity in business, especially those who have never done such measures before,
(1) educating your employees about good cybersecurity practices, and
(2) hiring the right people on board.
Installing firewalls, anti-virus software, and other additional security measures get only half of the job done. Your company must be able to follow these best practices for your cybersecurity efforts to be a success.
Do NOT reuse passwords. As previously mentioned, credentials are what most of the attackers are after. Having the same password for every software or system you use creates an easy passage for a data breach. Encourage your employees to use password management tools that allow them to make stronger, better, and unique passwords.
Multi-factor authentication is more likely a reaction instead of a prevention measure. In case your employee’s credentials do become compromised, with 2- Factor Authentication they can restrict access to any new unrecognized device.
The main goal of phishing emails is to get information from you. To the untrained eye, phishing emails often look like they’re from legitimate sources like your bank or well-known companies. Train your employees to detect phishing emails by checking inconsistencies, spelling errors, and suspicious sender email address.
In this day and age, you can’t trust public wifi. A lot of unsuspecting people connect to public wifi with their work phones or computers, and that is a total no-no. Many hackers create public wifi zones which lets them gain access to every device which joins their network. They can install spyware or viruses that let them steal information from you without your knowledge of it.
Your laptops or PCs came with a FREE trial version of antivirus software, of course, they expire so you have to renew them to get full advantage. If you have a lot of devices that need them, you may get bundled services so you can save money.
Although work and personal life now belong in the same spaces, your employees must draw the line with the devices they use. Using work computers for personal use also put their personal information at risk.
And in the same way, using work computers for personal use such as gaming or social media where there is a lot of downloading files or software involved put valuable business data at risk.
Inform your employees of the newest updates about the programs or systems you use at work. Updates sometimes take time to finish, but they are often a fix for bugs more than an addition of new features. Many attackers look for holes in outdated software that are prone to malware infections like Ransomware.
Your small business already gives you enough responsibilities to take care of, and we know you can use a hand, or two, to help you improve cybersecurity in your company. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the efficiency of workplace cybersecurity, and that’s something that you would like for experts to handle.
Codvo.ai helps businesses of all sizes create their own remote tech teams of exceptional Cloud, AI, Automation, and Security talent that fits their business culture and delivers their exact needs. If you want to hire the best people on board to help ensure your company is safe online, reach out to codvo.ai for a 2 week no-risk trial or drop a mail at marketing@codvo.ai
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