What Can Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs) Do To Protect Their Business? | Storm Internet

Small and medium business owners often think cybercrime only happens to bigger businesses like the recent breach at Target. In this article, we’ll reveal why this assumption is wrong and what you can do to protect your small or medium sized business from cyber crime.

As a small or medium sized business (SME) owner you have a lot to worry about. It would not be surprising if amid sales, accounting, managing your employees, and marketing you forget about something.

Unfortunately for your customer’s data, what is often forgotten is cyber-security!

SME Cyber Security Statistics

According to a recent study by the National Cyber Security Alliance and Symantec 77% of small and medium business owners believe they’re safe from hackers, viruses and malware.

Even worse, 83% of small and medium sized businesses take no specific preparations against cybercrimes. This means that almost 90% of all SMEs are not taking proactive steps to protect themselves against cybercriminals and hackers!

All of this is in spite of the fact that almost 50% of all cyber attacks are aimed at SMEs. That means that while 90% of SMEs are unprepared for a cyber attack almost half of all cyber attacks are actually aimed at SMEs.

In fact many small and medium sized businesses do not even require their employees to use complex passwords, as the most commonly used passwords are “password and 123456.”

Not exactly the most secure password around.

Now that I’ve sufficiently scared you into thinking that your cyber security is woefully inadequate, let’s talk about what you can do in order to protect your SME from a cyber attack.

5 Easy Ways To Make Sure Your SME is Protected From Cyber attacks!

• Use one computer for all financial transactions
• Back up to the cloud
• Strengthen passwords and firewalls
• Get Insurance
• Educate employees

Let’s break this down a little further…

• Use one computer for all financial transactions. The biggest cyber threat to your business is fraud. It is estimated by the Business Banking Trust Study that 56% of all SMEs experience payment fraud or at least attempted fraud in the last 12 months. Unfortunately that’s not the only kind of fraud you need to worry about, the same study estimated that 75% of SMEs experienced account takeover or other fraud in the last 12 months as well. If you own a small business, chances are you have experienced fraud or attempted fraud. One way to eliminate fraud in your business is to establish a dedicated computer used only for financial transactions. If you only use this computer for financial transactions it will be basically impossible for hackers to gain access to your system. It’s also important to review all banking transactions every day so that you don’t miss any credit card or other types of fraud that do not occur online!
• Back Up To The Cloud. It’s not just money your business will lose in a cyber attack; you can also lose data, which can be just as bad. Especially if you are in charge of sensitive data such as healthcare information or credit card numbers. Until recently it was not cost effective for SMEs to have an online data-backup solution. The recent proliferation of lower cost cloud based backup services has finally made backup services affordable for all SMEs. With some of these services like Dropbox or Cabonite costing only a few hundred dollars a year, there is no excuse to not backup your data to the cloud.
• Strengthen passwords and firewalls. The easiest places for hackers, and other kinds of cybercriminals to access your data is through weak passwords and firewalls. An easy way to get started is to create and enforce a policy to change employee passwords every month. Make sure that you also require complex passwords that include a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Make sure that you have a strong enough firewall and keep it up to date as well as installing and updating antivirus software and anti-spyware software on every company computer on a regular basis.
• Get cybercrime and fraud insurance. No system is perfect and even the best cyber security solutions can fail, so it makes a lot of sense to get an insurance policy, which covers you and your business in the unlikely event that you do suffer a cyber attack. Think of your cybercrime or fraud insurance as an umbrella, you won’t always need it but it starts raining you’ll sure be glad to have it.
• Educate your employees on a regular basis. It’s been proven several times that social hacking or using an unsuspecting employee to get access to systems or information is much more difficult to detect and stop than cyber attacks. Because employees are vulnerable to both cyber attacks and social hacking, it is critically important that you educate your employees about what to be on the lookout for both on and offline. Think of your employees as the frontline of your war against cyber attacks and fraud. Make sure that your employees understand how to recognize potential threats and what they should do in the event of a threat or breach.

As a small or medium sized business you probably have not spent enough time thinking about cyber security!

Don’t end up being one of the 83% of SMEs who don’t protect take proactive measures to create and implement a cyber security plan!

Based on the statistics, chances are your business will be the target of some sort of fraud in the next 12 months! Don’t let yourself be caught unaware and risk losing time, money data and most importantly the trust of your customers.

In this article we went over 5 EASY ways that you can protect your Small or medium sized business for only a few hundred dollars a year. You really have no excuses anymore for leaving your business unprotected!

Storm Internet is an award winning Managed Hosting company who have been looking after SMEs since 2004. If you’d like to know more about how we can help to secure your data and protect your business, call us on 0800 817 4727 or email us by clicking here