Cyber-Attacks: Are you vulnerable?

Systemagic’s senior technician Scott gives businesses his top tips to staying protected against Cyber-Attacks…

It’s often the assumption that malicious cyber-attacks are aimed at large corporate businesses however that’s no longer the case. A recent study conducted by Symantec showed in 2015 there had been a steady increase of attacks on Small/Medium businesses. In fact 43% of all attacks were aimed at SMB’s with at least one in eight being infected by viruses.  Sadly, this a growing trend with a 125% increase on the previous year!

The impact can be significant and can damage your business, its reputation and consumer confidence by;

• Loss of intellectual property
• Exposure to litigation, financial penalties and other legal action
• Increase in operational costs
• Client satisfaction
• Client retention
• Loss of new business
• Reputation and brand damage

If you own or manage a business, you need to acknowledge cyber-attacks and security measures as you’re expected to know and respect the laws and regulations governing the use of computers and information; what’s at stake for all stakeholders and the legal requirements for confidentially, integrity and availability of data.

By implementing and investing in good security systems and practices you may just save yourself from financial losses! The UK government estimate that the cost to business is £21bn and likely to be growing. 60% of small business were forced to close within six months of an attack.

So how can you protect your business? Larger Enterprises have had to significantly increase their network security over the years and these technologies and practices are starting to be adopted by SMB’s

Cyber criminals often exploit vulnerabilities in inadequate, outdated or new software often such weaknesses are exasperated by human intervention, such as transferring infected files or opening unsolicited emails.

SMB’s can protect themselves by implementing some or all of the following:

• Ensure software is patched or replace antiquated software on a regular basis
• Consider migrating some software to secure cloud based systems
• Ensure you have implemented a secure password policy
• Encrypt emails
• Upgrade firewalls
• Ensure systems backups are implemented and maintained
• Implement business continuity and disaster recovery processes
• Staff network usage policies and training

Despite all technological measures that are put in place, no system is completely invulnerable from attack as there is always a human element involved. Not implementing any preventative measures is no excuse. To help alleviate the user effect on security it is key to implement suitable policies that staff must adhere to and to support this with good documentation or training programmes.

If you’d like more information on how your business can take positive steps to protect itself against Cyber-Attacks then why not get in touch! 

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