SC&C Guest Author: Lisa Walker
Tough market conditions and cash-flow problems aren’t the only things that could put you out of business—cybercrime could do it too. A cyber-attack costs a small business $200,000 on average, says CNBC. Not all small
businesses can afford such a hit, causing many to shut shop soon after. While professionals can help you recover your machines from a computer virus, you’ll be better off in the long run investing in cybersecurity resources before you get infected. You must pay attention to cybersecurity and put some measures in place to protect your business.
This mini-guide explains how.
What you could lose
Before you devise a strategy to protect yourself, you need to understand “what” you’ll be protecting—it’s not just your data at stake.
- Your data or other assets: Hackers may target your company data, customer data, intellectual property, software assets, and more.
- Your infrastructure: Sometimes hackers take over company servers for storage space or to utilize company resources for their own programs. Sometimes they even use your computer to hack someone else.
- Your identity: Hackers may assume your employees’ or customers’ identity to commit fraud.
- Your money: They may steal your credit card information or get your employees to send them money.
- Your reputation: Being hacked is bad for your reputation. The end goal may even be to hurt customers’ trust in your brand.
Best practices to protect yourself
Now you know what you’ll be protecting, here are some best practices you should be employing:
- Employee awareness: In almost all successful hack attacks, human error is the hacker’s way in. By coaching your employees on how to work safely online and what threats look like, you can cover this chink in your armor.
- Strong passwords: Use passwords hackers can’t guess or crack easily. Security professionals recommend that they have a combination of numbers, capital letters, lowercase letters, and special characters. Password managers can help you devise and keep track of these.
- Layers of security: Make sure you have a holistic security setup that covers every avenue of approach. Some layers to implement are anti-virus, firewall, MFA, network monitoring, WiFi privacy, and a monitoring tool.
- Penetration testing: Penetration testing is the practice of pretending to hack your security setup, allowing you to identify holes to patch up.
- Frequent updates: Software manufacturers often release security patches to counter known vulnerabilities. Stay updated to stay protected.
- Access control: Access control is the practice of giving employees only as much access as they need to do their jobs. Any more may lead to data breaches.
What to do if you’re taken down successfully
It’s important to acknowledge the fact that, despite your best efforts, you may end up being taken down anyway. No
security setup is perfect, and hackers can be a persistent bunch. What separates the survivors from the victims is the ability to bounce back quickly and resiliently. Here are some recommendations on what to do if you’re attacked (with some tips from McKinsey):
- Isolate affected files and servers: Start by quickly identifying and separating the infected files and servers from your network.
- Have a security audit: Run some scans and tests to see what happened and what’s been stolen or affected.
- Recover: Use your backups to recover or continue operations. Having backup resources like servers is a bonus.
- Live and learn: Why did the hackers get through? Patch up holes or acquire upgrades to prevent similar attacks in the future.
Having a team to oversee the recovery effort and minimize the hit to your reputation is a good idea, as is obtaining cyber insurance.
Conclusion
Don’t make the mistake of thinking your business is safe – it’s not. Obtain some security now and save yourself a great deal of trouble down the road.
As an HR specialist, Lisa Walker has made a career of helping people find job success. The Great Recession opened her eyes to just how volatile the job market can be, and it inspired her to work with people one on one as a career coach. She created JobDreamTeam.com as a passion project to reach a wider audience and share information that will help her readers find, land, and succeed in their dream job.
Stewart, Cooper & Coon offers Human Capital Strategy Services to both individuals and corporations. Our staff is dedicated to our clients’ success via innovative job search processes, employment management strategies, and state-of-the-art technologies. Contact Fred Coon – 866-883-4200, Ext. 200
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