Eight-step protection from hackers

Consider this unfortunate scenario for your business: You wake up one morning and find that hackers have encrypted your computers and servers and sent you a ransomware note with instructions to pay ransom or else lose all your data. You are unable to access any of your systems. Cyberattacks are a growing problem for businesses. They can have a devastating effect on your company and even lead to financial ruin. Too many companies do not take these risks seriously enough, wrongly believing they are too small to be attacked or that they are “all set” with sufficient protection.

How do you know that you have not already been hacked? It may take weeks, months or even years for a breach to come to light.

Recent high-profile attacks make it clear just how much this issue needs immediate attention. It is far too easy to think that high-profile, well publicized attacks on the likes of Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya don’t apply to your business.

Wrong. Small and medium businesses are at risk — and are often easy prey for the unscrupulous.

Small and medium-sized businesses can be just as vulnerable to email hacks. It doesn’t take much. Just a single attack can result in a ruined reputation to say nothing of damaged revenue streams.

According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Report, 85 percent of the breaches in the small and medium business category involved a human element while 61 percent involved credential data (e.g., username, password). External parties discovered 80 percent of breaches with a whopping 70 percent of system intrusion cases involving involved malware and 40 percent involved hacking actions.

A frightening 99 percent of ransomware cases fell into the malware and hacking pattern. Business email compromises were the second most common form of social-engineering-driven attacks.

Small businesses are the least protected and most attacked — 60 percent go out of business within six months of a severe cyberattack. Most don’t have cyber liability insurance.

No business is immune to cyberattacks, but you can limit your risks with a bit of planning and foresight.

Here are some steps you can take to protect your business.

1) Implement companywide Cyber Awareness Training.

2) Implement encryption to protect your data,

emails or other communications.

3) Implement password policy and controls. Your password policies across the organization should require the use of strong, long passwords and use of multifactor authentication. Consider using a companywide Password Manager to simplify this task.

4) Develop a local and cloud backup and recovery plan; this will provide the resilience to recover from a cyberattack.

5) Implement cloud firewalls to secure critical locations.

6) As business email compromise is a common threat, implement reputable cloud-based email security.

7) Your computers and servers are the primary targets for cyberattacks, and a simple antivirus subscription is no match

for the hackers. To detect and respond to evolving threats, you must deploy nextgeneration antivirus with 24x7x365 live monitoring.

8) As a safety net, Cyber Liability Protection coverage should include insurance against ransomware, business email compromise, compliance failure protection, business income protection and cyber legal liability protection.

All these protection strategies are available to mall and medium businessesand are surprisingly affordable, typically without an upfront capital investment.

Don’t wait until it is too late.

Arvin Chaudhary