Why Small-Business entrepreneurs should care about cybersecurity

Hacking doesn't happen only to large companies, although the headline is often hit by threats involving companies that have millions of users and a large amount of data.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs still underestimate cyber security.
A few years ago, small businesses didn’t know or care about hacking. The chance of an attack was rare, and a lot of data was stored on-premise, where security gateways were tightly controlled.
Now, with Cloud and mobile devices used to store their data, rules are changed and the hackers came to realize that micro-businesses are easy targets:
there are lots of reasons why cybersecurity should be priority number one for entrepreneurs, let’s find out in the following point.

 

  • Hackers know you’re lazy. Face it: you don’t care that much about your data security, or you’d have taken steps to address the problem. You probably use cloud services, but you have never truly investigated their security processes or policies.
  • As your company grows, so do your data silos. It’s easy to forget how much data you generate, and how many customer records you retain. If your customer database is tiny for the first six months, a hacker may not be interested in it. After three years, it could be a magnet for a malicious user.
  • We all leave a trail of old accounts behind. As you build your business, you’ll sign up for myriad services: cloud tools, online services, bank accounts and more. Every time you create data, then abandon an account, you’re creating a potential security hole.
  • Our passwords are awful. If you use the same password for more than one site, you’ve created a security problem.
  • Entrepreneurs don’t have a legal team to monitor them. Sure, you might have a basic idea what cybersecurity is, but you probably don’t understand the full implications of holding customer data. Large businesses have entire departments dealing with law and compliance.
  • For a hacker, your business is just the beginning. Sure, a hacker may not care that you took a $100-order last week, but your data reveals more than financial details. If you deal with a large company, your un-secure systems could unlock access to a bigger company’s data. That’s what the hacker wants: back door entry, or an easy way to download the intellectual property of a bigger company. Your data is just an entry point.
  • Every website is a target. Hackers spend their days hammering different servers, trying to find vulnerabilities. Your virtual private server (VPS) could be the key to their next spam email campaign. It isn’t unusual for a compromised server to fire out thousands of emails a day -- all without the owner’s knowledge. Why should you care? Because it’ll get your IP address blacklisted and could cost thousands to repair.
  • Your internet connection might be leaking. Hackers can steal your data when you are not using a secure Wi-Fi connection. You should secure your routers in the office and ensure your staff members are not accessing sensitive company data via unsecured Wi-Fi when working remotely at a coffee shop.

Source: www.entrepeneur.com

 

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