The digital age has meant that businesses everywhere are much more reliant on using on-line resources for all aspects of their activities. Crime has historically been a problem for companies to deal with, but now that crime has morphed into cyberspace and cyber attacks are much more frequent that they were even five years ago.
How to protect their business against attacks, which are becoming more and more sophisticated, is just one more problem that management has had to take on board. Attacks that are highly publicised such as those on Target and Sony’s servers have recently made headline news around the globe, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
For large organisations, there is usually a chunk of capital put to one side to counter cyber attacks. For SMEs that don’t have this luxury, there is a significant chance that there is neither the budget nor the training to deal with any attack. In cyberspace, business data is all important and data recovery is more than just an inconvenience. In these complicated economic times, it could be the difference between success or business failure.
One huge threat that has raised its ugly head recently is ‘Ransomware.’ This program will encrypt a company’s documents, files, videos, and photos. It then travels to other PCs on the network. After files are encrypted the company has a ransom demand to pay large sums of money for the decryption code to use the documents again. If your firm has a backup, it is possible to wipe the PC and initiate the programs again. By using a backup, even though it could be time consuming, the company will potentially save thousands of pounds.
The Cloud is another terrific way to help security. One of the main fears by business managers when it comes to Cloud is that they hand over IT control to a third party. However, services offered by Amazon S3, and Microsoft Azure are extremely fast, reliable and above all secure. Both offer a 99 per cent guarantee and will replicate data in servers scattered all over the country to alleviate against natural disaster or fire.
Simple anti-virus protection is the minimum bottom line, yet a lot of firms are still falling short. This is a crucial mistake and one that could make them pay dearly. Anti-virus software is essential in today’s environment and is relatively cheap and quick to set up.
Fighting cyber attacks is not easy, but above all, education of management and employees will lower the chances of an attack. Regular meetings need to be held at all the required staff levels and simple tips continuously offered. These could include not opening suspicious attachments and general awareness.