How Can Small Businesses Protect Themselves from Cyber Attacks?

Just as large and medium-sized enterprises, small businesses today are at high risk of falling victims of cyber-attacks. Just in 2020, more than 36Bn records were exposed as a result of malicious attacks, leading to significant financial losses, reputational damage, and for the case of SMB, even the closure of the entire operation. To break it down into numbers, a study carried out by Accenture revealed that 43% of cyber attacks are currently targeted at smaller organizations, which sounds sufficiently alarming to start enacting proactive cybersecurity measures - as soon as possible.

Whether it is just using the internet to send emails, sharing files, or adopting a cloud-first strategy, small businesses must learn how to protect themselves from not only cyber criminals but also avoid weak cybersecurity practices on behalf of internal employees and other third parties involved in the business’ economic activity.

To help your small business create a baseline cybersecurity strategy and start building on a cyber culture, we have gathered a few tips from different specialized sources to help you take the first few steps towards a more secure business.

1.????Make sure to train your employees on the basic cybersecurity principles. This means defining easy to understand plans, policies, and practices on how to handle different types of information (including your customers’), manage secure passwords and MFAs, and basic hygiene practices to keep networks, systems, and devices safe from attacks (ie. using a well-known antivirus, ensuring constant updates, and preforming regular backups of information).

?Be smart about the resources you use for your current teams’ cybersecurity training! For instance, our Seccuri AI Platform is ready to help companies like yours upskill and reskill its Talent (no matter their technical background) on the different aspects of cybersecurity. You can register as a Company user anytime or contact us at [email protected] for more information.

2.????Establish firewall protection to prevent unknown third parties from accessing information found in your enterprise’s network.

3.????For employees working remotely, establish safe mobile usage plans and make sure they all have safe and encrypted Wi-Fi network. If possible, try providing each of the employees with devices that strictly follow cybersecurity guidelines and configurations.

4.????Carefully define access control principles and administrative based on industry standards and least privilege standards. Also, make sure to restrict your collaborators’ access to different sources of data and information, depending on their current role and job function.?

5.????Teach your employees how to identify different types of cyber-attacks and most importantly, how to act accordingly in case one of these attacks materializes.

6.????Update your software regularly to boost productivity, fix important bugs, and close identified vulnerabilities that might be prone to cyber-attacks.?

7.????Encrypt your businesses’ sensitive data (including financial information and personal data) to prevent hackers from gaining access to it. Always remember to keep the encryption key stored in a safe place, away from unauthorized personnel.?

8.????Make sure your business’ cybersecurity strategy, plans and actions are backed-up by your managers. Without their commitment, it might be hard to get everyone else in your company on board!

Sources: U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Accenture, EIRE?