With the new era of working from home becoming more and more popular in Britain, cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a real cause for concern.
In the past, most security threats were completely focused on office spaces, but now with so many people working from home, and often working on unsecured IP addresses, security issues are being increasingly reported among staff who work away from the office.
Cybersecurity is a serious risk that many businesses, especially smaller businesses, don’t give enough thought to.
In fact, according to research done by BullGuard, a popular antivirus programme company, up to 60% of small businesses don’t even think that they could be a target. But when you look at the global cyber-attack stats, small businesses are 3 times more likely to be a victim to cyber-attacks, with phishing attacks being the most common threats to small companies.
Year on year, cyber-attack crimes are increasing and as such, if you are running a small business, and especially if you have a hybrid workforce, you need to invest some time, effort and money into your cyber security set up.
Current Cybersecurity Threats
The threats to online business security are developing at a rapid rate, so fast that many anti-virus companies often have a tough time keeping up.
Threats like AI being used to create hacking software that will allow even the most novice of hacker to attack company data, Cloud vulnerability affecting the safety of data being stored on online servers, and increasingly sophisticated ransomware, are all things that you should keep in mind when planning or updating your cybersecurity setup.
Internal risks are also a big issue to take into consideration, with human error alone being responsible for some 34% of cyber-attacks, according to Verizon.
3 Easy Ways to Improve your Small Business Cybersecurity
Breaches in online security can be absolutely devastating. Since most businesses store data of some kind or another online, a breach can end up costing a small fortune.
All of the trouble and stress that you will end up going through when your business has been breached can really be for nothing, if you just invested more in your cybersecurity.
To help you improve your current setup, here’s what you can do.
- Reach out to IT companies
When small companies are uninformed and unconcerned, they tend to not look into their cybersecurity options. And yet if they just reached out to a reputable IT company, they could get all of the information they could possibly need as well as a list of suitable cybersecurity products that will keep them protected from even the worst of threats. If you have nothing to protect you, contacting an IT company should be your first step.
- Know what you are up against
There is a wide variety of cybersecurity issues that you should make yourself aware of, but the most concerning issue for small businesses is phishing. This tactic is used to trick companies into giving away vital information, such as login details. As a small business owner you not only need to know the signs of the various popular cyber-attacks, but you should also invest in a programme that can stop them in their tracks.
- Train your Employees and do Threat Audits
Having your employees know the signs of cyber-attacks and by running threat audits every month or so, is a great way to bring everyone, even your work from home staff, on board with your mission to protect your company’s data. You should also review passwords regularly, so that your employees are consistently reminded that they should be updating their passwords to make them as strong as possible.
All of your shared business accounts should also feature a multifactor authentication, especially if you have some out of office employees.
* Need to improve your cybersecurity? Or are you looking to have someone go over your current security setup? At 24/7 IT Services, we can help you make your business more secure. Contact us today for more information, and be sure to have a look at our other services which include Business Continuity, Managed IT Services and VoIP Solutions.