Cyber-crime: Protect Your Business By Getting To Grips With The Basics

In this short series of blogs, we’re teaming up with The Defence Works to help you get to grips with your fraud and cyber-crime prevention measures.

You’re probably familiar with some of the widespread media coverage we’ve been seeing recently about cybercrime. Yet, whilst the majority of incidents reported in the press relate to the large conglomerates, small businesses are being targeted by fraudsters with devastating effect.

In a recent report prepared by the Federation of Small Businesses, it was found that 66% of small businesses had been the victim of a cyber-crime in the last two years, with those affected having been victims on four occasions on average. Can you afford not to act?

To get started, it’s important that you have at least got basic IT measures in place within your business to help prevent you becoming a victim. So, in this short blog, we’re going to cover some of the basics that you should ensure you have.

The absolute basics: anti-virus/malware software and firewall

First and foremost, ensure you have a suitable anti-virus anti-malware and a firewall in place. We must stress, these are the only the basics and the following are also needed to help sufficiently reduce your risk.

Ensure the use of strong passwords

Despite basic measures such as those above, incidents of fraud and cyber-crime are growing by the day – particularly for SMEs and, therefore, it’s crucial businesses do more than just the bare essentials. Passwords are a key component to the security of your business. You should ensure that you adopt a Password Policy and provide employees with guidance how to create (and manage) strong passwords.

Download software updates

Ensure that all software updates are downloaded as soon as they become available. Such updates contain crucial security updates to help keep your devices safe. This applies to any apps you or your employees use too!

Train your employees

Don’t overlook training of your employees. Fraudsters prey on the fact that the vast majority of businesses do little above and beyond the basic IT measures. Did you know that over 90% of cyber related incidents aren’t caused by a lack of IT measures, but because of human interaction? You, me, our employees – we’re the cause of the overwhelming majority of such incidents. That’s why training is so important.

Are you confident that your employees would spot a phishing email? What about if you are they were targeted through invoice scams, bogus boss emails and social engineering? Traditional phishing emails may be relatively easy to spot, but they’re getting more and more convincing – hence why they’re such a huge issue for businesses.

Empowering employees is the key to helping reduce the risk, as they’re at the forefront of everything an organisation does online. Security awareness training needn’t be expensive or time consuming, but it is a must have.

If you have any questions or concerns about fraud or cyber-crime, don’t hesitate to speak to the The Defence Works via [email protected].

The Defence Works help SMEs reduce their risk to fraud and cyber-crime through their unique online portal, through which businesses receive online security awareness training, best practice policies and emerging threat alerts. In addition, The Defence Works provide vulnerability assessments to SMEs to ensure they can analyse their risks and take the appropriate action to further protect themselves against fraud and cyber-crime.

[email protected]

thedefenceworks.com

0800 772 0878