Businesses of every size are potential targets of cyber attacks, including small firms that assume they have little worth stealing. The real question is whether your team would know what to do if it happened tomorrow.
Cyber criminals are looking for easy opportunities
Many cyber attacks are not highly sophisticated. Criminals often rely on simple weaknesses such as re-used passwords or employees clicking on convincing phishing e-mails.
Small and medium-sized businesses are attractive targets because they often hold valuable customer information without having the security resources of a larger organisation. Your business could also provide a route into the systems of suppliers or clients.
An attacker doesn't necessarily need to steal millions to cause serious harm, according to SevenC. Encrypting your files or gaining access to a business e-mail account is sometimes enough to demand payment or commit fraud.
Technology alone cannot protect you
Firewalls, anti-virus software and secure cloud platforms all have an important role to play. However, cyber security is not simply an IT problem.
Your employees are often your first line of defence. Would they recognise a fake invoice sent from a compromised supplier account? Would they question an unexpected request to change banking details? Do they know whom to contact after clicking a suspicious link?
Regular cyber security awareness training can help employees recognise common warning signs, say the experts at SevenC. Training also creates a culture in which people feel comfortable reporting mistakes quickly. A fast response from trained employees can prevent one mistaken click from becoming a much larger incident.
Do you have a response plan?
A business might invest heavily in preventing cyber attacks without properly planning for what happens when those defences fail.
A practical incident response plan should identify which systems must be isolated and how affected customers or partners will be informed. It should also include contact details for your cyber security specialists and legal advisers.
The plan must be available somewhere other than your main computer network. If ransomware locks your files, a response document stored on the same system will be of little use.
Running a simulated cyber incident can reveal gaps that are easy to overlook. You could discover that nobody knows who has authority to shut down a system or that important contact information is out of date.
Backups need to be tested
Backing up your information is essential, but you need to know that the data can be restored.
Keep secure backups that are separated from your everyday network and test them regularly. Consider which information and systems are most important to your operations. How long could your business continue without access to customer records, accounting software, e-mails or online services?
Preparation starts before the warning arrives
Cyber security involves regular software updates, strong access controls, employee training and a clear recovery plan.
You cannot remove every cyber risk, but you can make your business harder to attack and quicker to recover. The best time to find weaknesses is while your systems are still running, not after an attacker has already found them.
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