Running your own business can be a great pleasure, but it comes with a whole lot of risk as well. The biggest risk of the modern era? Cybersecurity. Digital threats to businesses of all sizes are on the rise, and if you’re not prepared, hackers and bad actors out there will take advantage.
For this reason, it’s important that you remain aware of the current cybersecurity challenges. Understanding what cybersecurity threats you face as a business can help better position you to face them.
What can you do to help better your overall cybersecurity awareness? Read on and we’ll walk you through a few threats and challenges you should be aware of.
1. Phishing Attacks
The most common threat facing small businesses across the country? Phishing attacks. A huge percentage of company data breaches that occur happen due to phishing attacks.
What is a phishing attack, exactly? When a hacker pretends to be a trusted contact of some sort, they are sometimes able to get people within the business to click on a malicious link, down a file, or otherwise give access to important information or credentials.
Once this file is downloaded or the link clicked, the hacker is able to gain some sort of access to the overall business structure. These attacks are hard to combat and may require some cybersecurity awareness training for your team.
2. Malware Attacks
While not as common as phishing attacks, malware attacks can wreak just as much havoc on your company. Malware is a broad term referring to all sorts of trojans and viruses that could infect your company system.
Malware, once installed on a computer, can hide in the background and steal sensitive information as your workers do their thing.
They can also cripple work machines and make it impossible for your business to function properly. Having strong security measures in place can help to avoid getting infected and can detect malware when it comes about.
Using end to end encrypted emails can also help to keep some of your more sensitive information secure.
3. Weak Passwords
What about threats that come from your own work and sense of security? If you aren’t using strong passwords at work, you’re leaving yourself open to the most simple form of attack.
Hackers these days have systems that can easily guess hundreds of passwords a second. If your password isn’t strong and reliable, you can easily get into some trouble with these hacking efforts.
It’s best to change your passwords every few weeks as well to keep things strong and impenetrable.
Cybersecurity Challenges To Be Aware Of
Running a business is all about mitigating risk and being on top of threats to your business’s well-being.
If you aren’t already, it’s important to be made aware of the above cybersecurity challenges. These all pose a serious risk to your business and need to be avoided by any means necessary.
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