What should small businesses know about cyber security?

A cyberattack may seemingly come out of nowhere, catching businesses off guard and risking not only their credibility but their clients’ loyalty as well. As disastrous as a cyberattack may be, protecting your business is far easier than you may think, and it starts by simply educating yourself and your team about cyber security.

You don’t need to have a degree in computer science to understand what cyber security is and why it should matter to your business. On a basic level, cyber security is the protection of computer systems, software, and data from viruses. Yet, cybersecurity is much more than simply having a firewall or antivirus installed. While these are good starting points for cybersecurity, they don’t provide a strong line of defense. Most of us tend to ignore updates since they appear far too often and take time out of the task at hand. However, updates are crucial to protecting your information, and a firewall won’t do much if it’s not updated regularly. 

A great way to add an extra level of security is by creating and changing strong passwords every few months. While it may see, easy and convenient to use the same password for everything, it only makes hackers’ lives easier. Once they gain access to your password, they can get into all kinds of sensitive and important information. With this being said, the pain of creating and keeping track of strong passwords now will prevent a major headache later on, when your business may be completely shut out of its operations.

Cyber attacks come in many different forms, giving you all the more reason to take additional steps to protect your business. For instance, an attack may occur on your domain name server, essentially hacking the address book entry that allows people to connect to your website, email, and other important services. On the other hand, an attacker may be a fraudster holding your clients’ data hostage. To protect your business from these attacks, you don’t need the same resources, manpower, and funds as large companies with global IT departments. Rather, having an educated team who regularly monitor your cyber security measures and know how to spot a potential virus could save you from the damaging consequences of a cyber attack.

Photo credit – Jules Bss- Unsplash