Today is day 3 of our security showcase. As a small business, we know how important it is to protect it. Small businesses are just at risk for being breached as larger businesses, but due to budgeting constraints, they usually don’t have the same high degree of protections that larger companies have.
According to the National Small Business Association’s in 2013, the top three IT challenges facing small-business owners were listed as: the cost of needed upgrades, security issues, and the time it takes to fix problems. 94% of small-business owners said they were concerned about cyber security, while nearly half of small businesses reported having been the victim of a cyber-attack. These attacks result in service interruptions and loss of staff time, and typically cost small businesses thousands of dollars.
Being relaxed in any one area of security leaves your network open to threats. According to the survey, 83 percent of small businesses manage their bank accounts online. While that makes life easy, if proper precautions are not in place, it could add up to a big loss for a small business. For example, did you know that while individual bank accounts are protected from loss that occurs from hackers, business accounts are not. That means if attackers access your company’s banking username and password they can accesses your bank, and deplete it. It’s easy for a hacker to do that once your computer has been infected with malware such as the Trojan virus. Losing money from your bank is only part of the loss that could happen from failed security. If a hacker were to take your website offline you could lose potential business, as well as hours of staff time. If you have any patents or business files you’re trying to keep private, an attacker could access that information and exploit it. And if you have employees who work remotely, you need to be sure you have proper controls in place that only allow them into your network and keep others out.
As an IT company that works with small businesses day in and day out, we can help you see where risk lies, and can recommend options to remedy them. We can take a look at your network to see where it makes sense for you to implement security controls. We can also work with you to identify various types of threats and help you subdue them.
A small business will never have all the security controls that a large business has, but if you implement proper measures, your security controls can be just as tight. We hope you enjoyed this and found it helpful; look for Friday’s post on How Layering your Security can Benefit your Company.
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