Cybercrime can affect any business and is becoming increasingly sophisticated. There are several ways you can reduce this risk to occur in any businesses. Follow the five very simple steps to protect your business today.
1. Stay Alert
Staying alert is a must in our everyday work life as we often have our business devices wherever we are, any time of the day, so it is crucial to remain cautious by only using approved, secure business devices and networks.
2. Make It Two
Single password for multiple email accounts can be easily hacked into which are most likely the cause of cybercrimes. Adding a second layer of protection or using different combination of passwords will reduce the risk of cybercrime to happen. In some occasions, there are business applications or email platforms that will have a second layer of protection such as one-time pin which are sent to your authorized or set device to send a pin – which will make it much more harder for hackers to gain unauthorised access to your account.
3. Share and Learn
Over two thirds of cybercrime results are from human error. This often happens when your staff may or accidentally clicked on suspect links, open infected attachments or simplest way is losing a device or a document. When this happens, it’s always helpful for other employees to share and learn by providing cybercrime awareness training to minimise the chances of being affected by cybercrime.
4. Know Your Scams
Fraudulent emails have costs businesses around the world millions. All employees must at least be able to identify fraudulent emails such as fake email accounts resembling legitimate ones, making funds requests to bank accounts etc. All staffs should be able to understand these scams in order to reduce the risks of numerous scams that could potentially harm the business.
5. Encrypt To Protect
Encrypting your data can make it hard and unreadable for hackers by applying a secret key to a document or to a hardware that can contain confidential files, or any information related to the business. This will provide an extra layer of security for your customer and business data especially if any of your devices are lost, stolen or compromised. Most of the latest or modern technology has a functionality to encrypt data which comes as standard now, it just needs to be activated. One of the highest profile attack that was caused by a cyber-attack was on the NHS in 2017. Medical and healthcare practices are the most vulnerable victims in cybercrime compared to any other market sector. As they hold hundreds or thousands of personal information from their patients which has the highest chances of being attacked and captured by hackers as those information’s are very vulnerable to attack.
Intertec Data Solutions urges all businesses to take into account that every layer of security such as Email Security/Encryption and SSL Certificate must be considered to protect your business from cybercrime, as this can provide your business a guaranteed peace of mind before you become a victim to cybercrime.
To find out more on how to keep your business protected from cybercrime call us on 01276 691199.
