Cyber attacks on small businesses may not always make front-page news, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are a dangerous and persistent threat.
Recent statistics show that cyber attacks have only grown in severity over the years, and smaller companies are making increasingly attractive prey to cybercriminals. Even with Kent-based firms like Redinet, Sigma and Munio actively combatting the permeating cyber threats that plague businesses, more needs to be done by companies themselves.
It doesn’t help that there is an unhelpful attitude amongst small business owners that cybercriminals primarily target larger corporations, when nothing could be further from the truth. When you consider the broad spectrum of potential cyber-attacks (from phishing and malware to insider threats), it’s small businesses that make the most prone victims. Without building up some level of resilience to cyber threats, they could potentially end up paying the price with thousands in lost revenue, hindered relationships with their clients, and damaged reputations.
So why would cybercriminals decide to target small, local businesses or startups, as opposed to multinational conglomerates?
Lack of resources
43% of cyber attacks target small businesses. Even though hackers and threat actors may not reap staggeringly high financial rewards, small businesses are seen as the ‘low-hanging fruit’, due to having fewer in-house IT security protocols and insecure systems. With fewer people to turn to for specialist advice, businesses can often face damaging downtime.
Less knowledge
Quite often, startup and small business owners – and by extension, their teams – aren’t as knowledgeable about the modern cybersecurity threats that exist. Businesses like these often outsource their IT to third-party companies, but even if their systems or networks were to be hacked, it’s unsurprising that many employees don’t know the correct procedures to follow. Considering the threat landscape in 2023, it’s no wonder why there’s such a persistent skills shortage in this field.
Vulnerability to social engineering
Social engineering involves manipulating people into sharing confidential information or transferring money. Small businesses are more at risk, generally due to having less stringent security measures, untrained or junior employees and being hoodwinked into innocuously providing information willingly without knowing someone’s true intentions.
They’re sometimes ‘stepping stones’
It’s not unusual to find small businesses working with a range of larger clients or suppliers, and as such, cybercriminals could weave their way into these organisations’ systems. As such, hackers could ultimately find more valuable information or data to use as collateral, with a small business providing an easier ‘gateway’ to these other companies.
Regardless of whether you think your company and its assets are of any use to a cybercriminal or not, you should take steps to protect your business as much as possible. For all you know, a hacker could be covertly lurking within your infrastructure and you could have no idea about it, so who knows the extent of the potential damage or disruption your business could suffer.
Consider taking these steps to prepare yourselves and your teams against hackers.
- Provide regular training and up-to-date educational materials to your employees.
- Implement stronger security measures on your devices, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strong password policies.
- Set your data to regularly back up, preferably in one secure onsite location and another location stored in the cloud.
- Ensure that there is enterprise-grade antivirus, malware and internet protection software installed across your computers, servers, and any other personal handheld devices like mobile phones.
- Consider investing in cyber liability insurance to protect your business and your assets.
- Outsource aspects of your IT services to professionals for cloud architecture and IT support.
- Invest in managed detection and response (MDR) services that could proactively respond to any cyber incident across endpoints and infrastructure (onsite/cloud-based).
- Ensure that all of your systems are promptly and frequently updated with the latest security software patches and upgrades.
- Consider investing in a virtual private network (VPN) for home-based remote workers, to encrypt all the data they send and receive via your network.
- Secure your networks with strong passwords and do not make them publicly accessible, only give access to authorised personnel.
- Make any employees or contractors sign agreements that any misuse of sensitive data during and post-employment will be met with legal action.
The more stringent you are with network, system and device access, the lower your chances of experiencing a cyber attack or breach.
With so much technology readily accessible these days, it’s easy to lose sight of the wider implications of insufficiently protecting them and the data we store on them. While this shouldn’t dissuade business owners from using technology to help their companies become more productive and effective, it’s crucial to ensure that you have some basic security measures enabled.