How to Protect Your Business from Cyber Attacks

Nobody ever wants to think it will happen to their business. Unfortunately, it does.

Cyber-attacks are among one of the five biggest risks that businesses face. This includes large and small businesses alike. If you’re one of the many small businesses that operate solely online you’re opening yourself up to the chance of a cyber-attack.

Hacks against small business are increasingly rising. Small to medium sized businesses generally have less advanced security against this crime, making them easy targets. Another interesting fact, according to this article, is that one in five small businesses are attacked each year with 60 percent of those attacked going out of business within six months.

If you own a small business you have a 20 percent chance of being hacked this year. Here are some things that you can do to help protect your business from cyber-attacks.

Encrypt Your Data

Encrypting your data is one easy thing that you can do to help protect against cyber-attacks. There are many software tools that will easily encrypt your data in just a few minutes.

You should take the time to make sure all important information like bank account and routing numbers, social security numbers, and other important information are encrypted.

If you’re hacked and your important information is not encrypted the hacker can then encrypt it making it impossible for you to access your valuable business information.

Protect Against Viruses and Malware

One of the easiest ways for hackers to gain your information is by attacking your computer with viruses and malware.

This is normally done through some type of spam email. To protect your business against this be sure to always update your anti-virus and anti-malware software. This is one simple step that could greatly protect your business from cyber-attacks.

Protect Your Network

Using Wi-Fi makes it much easier for a hacker to access your information. Many cyber-attacks come in the form of the hacker penetrating Wi-Fi networks and then stealing financial information.

The safest way to protect yourself against this is to not use Wi-Fi at all. Using a network that you have to plug into makes it far more difficult for a hacker to access your information.

However, if you’re already using a Wi-Fi network be sure that is encrypted and also use a very strong password that would be hard for anyone else to guess.

Insure Against Cyber Attacks

If you’ve taken the above steps you’ve strengthened your business against the risk of cyber-attacks. Unfortunately, as technology improves hackers are also improving.

What we protect against today could change tomorrow. Luckily, you can get insurance to protect your business from cyber risk. There are specialty insurance companies that can help protect your business from hackers. You can read more about insuring against cyber risk at Lloyds.

And since small business have a 20 percent chance of being attacked insuring against this risk can be one of the smartest moves you take to keep your business afloat.

Other Things to Do

There are many things you can do to help protect your business against hackers. For instance, employee negligence is one of the leading causes of cyber hacks. Be sure to strongly educate your employees on the risk and precautions they should be taking.

Also, use a different password for each and every account you create. Backing up your data into cloud based software is also recommended. If your computer is hacked you’ll need to be able to access your business information which is why using cloud based software is important.

What steps have you taken to ward off hackers?