In 2020, an increasing number of businesses embraced the digital industry to survive the pandemic. However, as business technology evolves and improves, so does the risk to security and system vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity is a prominent issue across the business industry.
In fact, in the last 12 months alone, almost half of UK businesses and a quarter of charities have experienced cybersecurity breaches and attacks. These businesses experienced cyber issues at least once a week in 2020.
In 2021, over half of businesses are increasing their cybersecurity budgets in an attempt to prevent further cyber-attacks. Most cyber-attacks concentrate on phishing and privacy hacks as cyber-criminals pose as agencies to get information from a business.
So, how can business owners improve their cybersecurity in the future?
Do not underestimate your company’s value to hackers
Many small businesses think they are unattractive to hackers and thus, do not invest in cyber protection. However, according to historical Data Breach Reports put together by Verizon, a whopping 43% of cyber-attacks occur in small companies because they are more vulnerable and easier to attack. Although small businesses may be worth less money, they still have valuable intellectual property, like research and sensitive customer data. Small companies should protect their business to prevent sensitive information from being obtained by hackers.
Back up everything
Ransomware attacks are very common. Hackers use sophisticated malware software to prevent companies from accessing their systems until they pay a ransom fee.
In 2020, hackers targeted hospital and healthcare IT systems with ransomware attacks.
Educate your employees
Run cyber security workshops, hand out staff handbooks, and stay on top of the latest upgrades in cybersecurity.
You might be surprised that many of your staff are liable to phishing emails because they do not understand adequate cyber hygiene. It would help if you changed company passwords at least every 30 days.
Increase your cybersecurity budget
Smaller businesses often have limited resources to spend on cybersecurity and underestimate just how much damage a cyber-attack can do. If you are contemplating the value of cyber protection, make sure to consider what you could lose if data was stolen. Invest in cyber insurance to protect your company against future hacker attacks.
The chances are an attack will cost you far more than the cyber protection will.
Invest in a scanning tool
Invest in a vulnerability scanner to regularly check your networks, web servers, and application for weaknesses. You can identify any weak spots in your cyber network and fix them.
Enable private and secure connections
Large streams of data and private information are exchanged over your business network. Cyber attackers can intercept these exchanges and divert traffic from one network to another.
Install antimalware and antivirus software into your company system. Please bear in mind that some firewall VPNs can interrupt antimalware and antivirus software.
