Tag: cyber crime

How Much Is Cybercrime Going To Cost Your Business?

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One of the biggest threats to businesses is cybercrime. Every minute, $2.9 million is lost across the world due to cybercrime. 

Every year, figures rise. 

But if you’re not making cybercrime protection a priority in your business, then you are sleepwalking into some worrying situations. 

Every day your business will come under attack. Whether that is through attempted brute force attacks, phishing attempts, or ransomware, you need to be aware of the threats and protect yourself. 

How much is cybercrime going to cost your business? 

Let’s discuss how you can invest in making sure it doesn’t cost you anything at all. 

Bring in an IT Services Company 

If you’re not sure what you are looking for when it comes to identifying weaknesses in your systems, then it could spell disaster. 

The best thing that any business can do is to bring in the services of a specialist IT managed service provider. 

An example can be found at hudsonvalley-it.com. Your systems will be watched 24/7. If there are any signs of vulnerability within your infrastructure, your managed service provider will fix the problem. 

There are many managed service providers who will help you with specific concerns relating to your sector. For example, in the healthcare sector, HIPAA compliance is essential, but having an IT services provider who understands the regulations and threats will be very useful. 

Know the Enemy 

What do the cybercriminals want from you? Do you have a big database full of customer email addresses and passwords? Do you hold customer’s bank details, social security details, date-of-birth, or address details on file? Or, are you a major company that might have a lot of money in the bank?

Cybercriminals will target your business to either steal any personal data you have on file or to exploit your business financially. 

Understand how much of a threat businesses in your sector face. 

Carry Our Audits

Get into the routine of going through your entire company and analyzing how you use your IT systems. 

Look for how your team interacts with your systems. Are they taking care not to expose their passwords? Are passwords changed on a regular basis? 

Look at former employees that had system access. Have they had their accounts terminated? 

Team Training 

Very often, cybercriminals find success because they manage to easily steal valuable login details from employees. 

An email from a recognizable brand name asking your employee to go and log into their account will often prompt them to do this. But phishing scams use fake websites to acquire login credentials. 

Once a cybercriminal has your employee’s login details, they can just walk straight into your system through the front door. There will be no alarm bells going off because the system will just show a legitimate login. 

Investing in team training on cybersecurity is vital. Make sure that all of your employees are aware of how phishing scams and ransomware work. Reiterate these messages on a regular basis.

4 Tips For Protecting Your Business Against Cyber Crime

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More and more businesses rely on technology. In turn, this means the types of crimes that can occur against companies are changing; cyber crime is on the rise. It can be hard to find and prosecute those who commit cyber crimes without the help of skilled cyber security & computer forensics experts. This is why it is essential to make sure that you have taken all the right measures to ensure that your business is as protected as possible from all cyber crimes and data breaches:

Make sure all your software is up to date

Any software that is used by your company needs to be kept updated to the latest versions. Updates are created to add new features and improve stuff, but they are also created to solve any problems that users have had with the software. If you don’t have the updates, your software and technology are easier to attack, meaning criminals could steal important data and information, or cause damage to your technology.

You should include all of your anti-virus software on your update list, and although many things tend to update themselves automatically, some things need to be manually checked so that you do not miss any important updates.

Train your staff

Your business should have a policy for staff to follow when it comes to cyber security. It may also be helpful to train them so that they are aware of the things that are likely to be suspicious. Your employees need to know what a strong password is, and that they should be using them for all of their accounts, especially work accounts. It would help if you also taught all of your team members about how cyber criminals try to trick people. It could be a phone call or an email that even seems legitimate unless you pay closer attention. Create policies about giving information out over phone or email along with other strategies that will keep your business safe.

Encrypt and backup your data

Important data needs to have layers of security so that they cannot be accessed by just anyone. All of your business data shouldn’t even be accessible to all of your employees, only those who need to use it. After all these levels of security, encryption is still required for sensitive information and customer and employee details, as if anyone manages to get through all the security, it means that they will not be able to understand what any of it means.

Backing up your data is also essential because some cyber crime involves damaging your software or technology so that you cannot access your data. Cloud services are a handy tool when it comes to data storage. Cloud services are also useful if some of your employees work remotely.

Get a cyber security audit

If you want to know whether you are doing enough to protect your business from cyber crime, you could hire a company to perform a cyber security audit. They will be able to check the software that you have in place and find any weak spots. Once they have found your business’s cyber vulnerabilities, they will be able to help you install some more software or take other precautions to protect these vulnerabilities.

Why And How To Protect Your Business With Technology

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Technology is paramount in one degree or another for all businesses to improve productivity, reliability, and professionalism and above all safety. Those stuck in the era relying on paper trails need to get with the times, technology can solve a lot of mundane time and cash consuming business processes you use to try and protect your data, you just need to figure out what can and will work for your specific businesses industry and size. It’s natural to feel as though the world of technology is quite daunting, and where to begin to enhance your business’s safety, so here are two areas to think about to get you started.

Security

Thinking about the safety of your files is so essential when you consider the outcome of a hacker gaining access to them. Especially when you take into account Statista’s report of $1.33 billion being lost in monetary value due to cybercrime. Whether it’s access to your business account details and statements, identity, address, your work or customer credentials, you most likely have something valuable worth protecting, that could cost you a lot of money, and a large portion of your existing reputation should anyone gain access to it. Security technology is the step where most businesses should begin to guard vital information.

Begin searching for services that are appropriate for your business such as computer security software. Or you could choose to outsource this task to an IT service that can professionally guard this information for you.

Back-Up

To enhance your previous decision to allocate cyber fighting software to protect your business information, you also need to back the info up in the unfortunate event your business intel is stolen or destroyed. This isn’t limited to cybercrime, there are an array of disasters that might occur which could ruin your data. Such as a fire, flood or hurricane to name a few. Getting your business back up on its feet following a catastrophic event is costly, especially if you’ve lost all of your enterprise’s intel in the disaster. This is why it’s important not to delay this step and to back-up everything as soon as possible.

The scale of back-up you need depends on the type and size of your business. For instance, for a freelance website designer working independently, they could back up their work on a Cloud Computing service and store any finished products or client details on an external hard drive and keep this in a separate building from where they work. For larger businesses such as a document filing agency, they may require in-built servers within different locations with employee and management access from anywhere in the world. This is to store, protect and gain access to vital business information to keep the company running in the event of a disaster.

Research, source, download and purchase the technology that’s right for your business by scouring opportunities, assessing the reputation and usage of the software and always update your knowledge to keep ahead of any technological advancements that could protect and save your business from a document storage disaster that is both time-consuming and costly to fix.

Never Let Your Business’s Security Fall By The Wayside

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As a business owner, there are a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders. You need to be sure that you’re taking care of your employees, that your products are as high quality as possible, that you’re marketing your business effectively, as well as dozens of other things. However, there’s one thing that is incredibly important, and yet it still tends to get ignored by far too many businesses. That thing is security. Of course, in a perfect world, security wouldn’t be something that you needed to think about all that often but that’s simply not the world that we live in. With that in mind, here are some ways to make sure that your business is just a little bit more secure.

Physical security

The office is usually the central hub of any business, and because of that, it’s crucial that you take as many security precautions as possible. Fortunately, advances in technology have made it so that it’s far easier to make your office impenetrable than ever before. From high quality, affordable alarms to motion activated security cameras the methods by which you can deter intruders from your premises are more advanced than ever before. Of course, sometimes there really is nothing better than a big heavy lock on the front door!

Digital security

Despite how important the office is to any business, there’s no denying that most business is conducted online these days. This means that many of the attacks that are made against businesses are made online. You need to be sure that the firewall and anti-malware systems on your business’s computers are all as up to date as possible. Cybercriminals work hard every day to break through those kinds of defenses so if they’re not fully up to date, that leaves an open door for them to climb through and do some real damage to your business.

A security culture

Of course, it won’t matter how many systems, both physical and digital, if they’re not being put into practice. You need to be sure that you’re creating a culture of security in your business and that all of your employees are as aware of the way that they should be behaving as possible. This means everything from setting secure passwords to locking their computers when they’re left unattended to not discussing any sensitive information outside of work. Of course, creating this kind of culture in the workplace isn’t easy, but the best way to do it is to focus on leading by example. Security is everyone’s responsibility, even yours.

One of the most common reasons why this is something that people forget about a lot is that it’s not something that you’ll need all that often unless you’re incredibly unfortunate. Because of that, it’s easy to fall into a habit of feeling as though your security measures aren’t really necessary. Of course, the moment that you fall into that way of thinking is the moment that your business becomes truly vulnerable.

Are You Sure It’s Wise To Just Focus On Cybercrime?

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There’s no stopping it now, the world of business is surely going to be all digital. Everything and everyone will all soon be connected online, and that’s just the way it is, right? If you plan on taking pride in a tangible existence in reality, then that’s wrong. Sure you can have both, and in fact, you must modernize and aim for that two-standard philosophy. But are we sure we haven’t lost sight of what’s important to our security in everyday life as business owners? We’ve put so much energy, time and focus on protecting our intellectual property. We did this to make sure our customers feel safe, and their irreplaceable information they give to us willingly is protected from cybercriminals. Just as the hackers in the online world are forever changing and improving their techniques to steal from us and damage our businesses beyond repair, so too are the criminals who operate in front of our eyes. What methods are available to us, in the modern sense, to keep those no-good reprobates at bay?

Shutter shutout

Believe it or not, some business owners feel as if they can rely on the area they are located in to be their unofficial security. They even leave their glass windows unprotected and put too much of their faith in CCTV and alarm systems. Foolishly relying on scaring off the criminals is just that, foolish. What your business needs are a front that crushes the spirit of the criminal and swats away any potential hope they have of breaking into your business. Aluminum roll-up shutters are not only sturdy, but they’re designed in a way that each blade works like Roman armor. They overlap and slightly bend to absorb any impact such as a brick being thrown or somebody trying to kick a hole inward.

Sixth sense security

The human touch is invaluable in business. Not only do you want to create a strong relationship with your customers, but you also want them to realize you respect them as individuals. The human touch is very useful in another manner that doesn’t first spring to mind. Someone who knows the area you’re situated in, the atmosphere, the local culture and indeed the criminal behavior can be like a Jedi standing at the door. With their sixth sense, they can pick out those who protrude body language of someone who is up to no good. US retailers lose a staggering and quite infuriating $44 billion from shoplifting every single year. Giving an expert security guard company the role of being your steel guardian in your business, can stop you from becoming one of those victims. Choosing any old security company is counterproductive because they’re not in touch with your needs specifically. A guard that wants to work with you to form a unique security protocol that is convenient to you creates an environment that is doubly hostile to criminal activity.

It’s a blistering headache to say the least to have to protect your business in cyberspace and in the living breathing realm too. As long as the criminals don’t stop, neither should you; just don’t neglect the criminals who want to rob you blind, right in front of your eyes.